Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1268 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'There is something rare and special about Vickers as a novelist. In exploring the connections between faith and imagination, art and redemption, religion and science in an intelligent, unusual but very readable way, she manages to touch something buried deep in all of us. It gives her work a quietly compelling quality.' Peter Stanford, Independent 'Kindred spirits and soul mates are at the heart of Salley Vickers' new novel set in a South Coast psychiatric institution and in Rome!This is a fine and multi-layered novel which suggests that suffering is necessary and that opportunities for happiness should be taken whenever offered.' Daily Mail 'Compelling.' Alex Clark, Observer 'Ferociously readable.' Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph 'Love and pain, death and life, self knowledge and insensibility -- all these big, vital themes converge in this moving, utterly engrossing novel.' Guardian 'The lives of the characters in this gently absorbing novel continue to resonate with the failures, possibilities, regrets and redemptions -- consoled and mirrored by art -- that we all endure.' Carol Ann Duffy, Telegraph 'The evocation of place, and the pervading sense of sadness, are skilfully created, and the flawed humanity and depth of feeling of the characters are compelling.' Times Literary Supplement 'The writing is so good and the structure so skilful that she manages to make the delicate and difficult notions vivid. Her territory is the faultline along which memories of loss are experienced by an individual both as integral to their identity and as constraints on their engagement with the present. This may be true of a great deal of fiction, but it is rare for a novel to present it so directly and with such success.' John de Falbe, Spectator 'Aborbing, intellectual!enjoyable.' The Tablet (Novel of the Week) 'Vickers's astute descriptions of jealousy, passion and grief shift seamlessly from one character to another in the present without faltering!In her experienced hands the characters are complex without being contrived.' Time Out 'This slow burning novel wraps itself around you, while questioning the nature of love and the redemptive power if art.' Woman and Home '"The Other Side of You" is a brave and unusual book, a gripping read that offers the tantalisations and rewards of a whodunit.' Literary Review

Sunday Times
"Vickers writes elegantly but romantically about the process of
analysis ... a good story, neatly and absorbingly told."

Karen Armstrong
"With imagination, sensitivity and skill, Salley Vickers gives us
valuable psychological and spiritual insights about grief, regret and
reconciliation."

Customer Reviews

Impressively sage
This is a very fine novel about human frailty. As I read it I felt understood, and it also made me question my own life and the decisions I have made. This author has a knack of opening doors in the mind which have been kept shut, or locked, a rare quality. I don't cry easily but I wept several times reading this. It was recommended to me by a high court judge, who is also not given to tears. It is however a discreet book, not at all sentimental and the writing is beautifully cool and precise.

Elegaic
I have read all Salley Vickers's novels but this is easily the best. It has a command and authority which takes you at once into the story so that you want to read on. The cast of characters is broad, a black schizophrenic cleaner, a bewildered Pakistani Muslim, a man who believes he has a wolf trapped in his skull (my favourite) but the characters who really engross us are Dr David Macbride and his patient Elizabeth. The latter has attempted suicide, which is why she is under this psychiatrist's care but what is most compelling about her story is the way it shadows her doctor's, so that in the end the two stories become intertwined and the two characters are linked by their tragedies. I loved the desciptions of Rome and Caravaggio. There is a very subtle ending. A very rich book and it is also beatifully written.

Superb writing
I have read all Salley Vickers' novels, and liked them all, especially Miss Garnet. But this is easily the best. I began it at 9 o clock last night and read until I had finished it at 4 am. Seven hours, the length of the conversation David, the narrator, has with Elizabeth, his patient. It is a profoundly moving novel, full of insight and shrewd observation. And wonderfully written. An absolute winner. It will outsell even Miss Garnet.