Currently Reading: By Blood


Set in 1970s San Francisco and narrated by an (as yet) unnamed former professor, By Blood is a dark novel.  The former professor has rented an office so that he has a reason to leave his house during the day, only to discover that it is next to a psychiatrist's office and that he can hear every word spoken during her sessions.  He becomes increasingly obsessed with a young lesbian patient of hers who comes from "mysterious origins".  Her story of finding out her adoptive background only leads to a deeper infatuation.

The former professor has his own mysterious origins, having been asked to leave his college due to an "interest in that boy".  He is hiding his own dark urges, but what those are, I don't know yet.

I'm only about 150 pages in, but the story only gets more and more tangled and interesting.  The young patient's life is turned upside-down by her discovery of her birth mother's story, while the former professor's life becomes more turbulent the more he learns about the patient and fantasizes about her.  With the Zodiac killer as a backdrop to all this, I can only imagine what will happen next.

Definitely enjoying it so far, though its a little dark and vulgar at times.  But I am looking forward to finding out the reasons for the professor's dismissal, as well as how the patient deals with her new found background.

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