'I was helplessly caught in its spell from the first page ... I wanted to pass it on to all my friends' SHEILA HETI, author of True Colour
It's maybe six hundred times a day," Susan says, and then she stops and the therapist tilts her head.
"That I think about you," Susan goes on, the word you said so quietly as to be barely audible.
Susan is only happy when she is at therapy. This is because she is in love with her therapist. She wants to kiss her, roll around on the floor with her, be adopted by her, become her pet dog, Butter. It's an obsession, sure, but whether it is - as her therapist suggests - a case of extreme transference, erotic transference even, or simply a lost person's need to connect, Susan isn't sure. All she knows is that she can't stop thinking or feeling things about her therapist, and for the 167 hours and 10 minutes every week when she is not at therapy, she is counting down the seconds until she can sit in that room, with her, again.
She has a small life outside therapy - a job at a veterinary surgery, a couple of friends, and her little old dog Curtains. On a walk one day she makes a new friend, Chloe, and they bond over their shared love of Pierrot, the clown of unrequited love. Susan's world opens up slightly - they go for coffee and for dog walks and to events together, and Susan even offers to share her therapist with Chloe. But soon after, the therapist delivers some devastating news, and Susan must face an uncertain future with new and lasting ways of coping, of trying to be a functional person with a normal life in the real world.
