This new novel by the author of After Delores and People in Trouble takes off on the case history of one of Sigmund Freud’s best-known patients.  Schulman’s Anna O., a zaftig, witty, 31-year-old New York Jewish lesbian, hates people telling her that she “hates men” or “wants to be a man” because, obviously, that means the man in the sentence is more significant than she is.

     Anna has an unfortunate yen for bisexual women who leave her, and a gift for putting her finger on society’s sore spots.  Her encounter with “Doc,” a self-trained therapist who hands out his card on street corners, leads to some sidesplitting (and sometimes distinctly Jewish) humor.  Anna and Doc dissect and pulverize stifling, alienated families, Lower East Side drug dealers, yuppie trends and national policies, not to mention Freudian analysts and the mysterious woman in white leather who seems to have hurt them both.  By the time Anna meets her mate (named for another famous Freudian patient, Dora), she’s ready to be loved by a woman who really loves women.

     This isn’t a 19th-century sort of novel that goes on all winter, packed with clothes and recipes and subplots.  It’s an entertainment, a drama or a dream, structured by troubling memories and recurring images that mean more than they signify.  It’s also more fantastic than realistic, insofar as nobody’s lifelong relationship problems can possibly be resolved by going to bed with a wonderful woman you met on the subway.

     I found the end confusing, the way you wake up wondering what happened in that little dream you had in the morning just as the alarm went off. However, Empathy is also very funny, provoking the kind of laughter that leaves an ache before it heals.  Once you finish this book, be sure to make your therapist read it.

© 1994 Jacqueline Lapidus