The Thanatos Syndrome: A Novel

by Walker Percy

Overview

Returning home to the small Louisiana parish where he had praticed psychiatry, Dr. Tom More quickly notices something strange occuring with the townfolk, a loss of inhibitions. Behind this mystery is a dangerous plot drug the local water supply, and a discovery that takes More into the underside of the American search for happiness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312243326
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	09/04/1999
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	1,078,381
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Walker Percy is the author of over ten books of fiction and nonfiction, including the bestsellers The Moviegoer and The Thanatos Syndrome. He was awarded numerous prizes during his lifetime, including the National Book Award, and is considered to be one of the greatest American writers of our time. He died in 1990.

Editorial Reviews

There is ample evidence of Percy's brilliance in The Thanatos Syndrome - the droll Dixie anthropology, the pitch-perfect dialogue, the sheer intelligence everywhere on the page.... It is splendidly, uproariously catholic, as well.” —Douglas Bauer, Atlantic Monthly

From the Publisher

When psychiatrist Tom More returns home to Feliciana, Louisiana, after doing time at a minimal security prison, he is dismayed by the bizarre behavior he encountersthe ``curious flatness of tone,'' the loss of sexual inhibition, of complex speech, even of context in conversation. More is further dismayed to discover that fellow psychiatrist Bob Comeaux is masterminding an unauthorized scheme to eradicate social ills by manipulating cortical functions through surreptitious doses of heavy sodium. And the suspense is only beginning, for More wants to investigate signs of sexual abuse at his children's school. The loss of human response smacks of a grade-B horror filmMore himself speaks of ``bodysnatchers''and the moral implications of social engineering, though given the most contemporary interpretation here, have already been considered. But in crisp, masterful prose Percy delivers a relentlessly compelling tale. BOMC dual main selection. Barbara Hoffert, ``Library Journal''

Library Journal