Sister Morphine: Women’s Narratives from the Case Notes of a Community Psychiatric Nurse

Masterful, darkly comic and unputdownably brilliant, this first novel by Catherine Eisner is an instant 21st-century classic. Sister Morphine tackles themes of suicidality, sibling murder, child abuse, morbid self-harm, guilt, jealousy, incest, drug addiction, infidelity, illegitimacy, obsessive compulsion, bereavement and a case of grand larceny in the second degree. Eisner’s suite of women’s narratives is premised as confidential pages from the case notes of a Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN), documenting neuroses and drug therapy interventions. These disturbing case histories, reconstituted as fictions by the CPN for reasons of legal privilege, explore the relationship between aberrant antisocial behaviour among women and the multifaceted, unpredictable side effects of psychoactive prescription drugs and their more bizarre manifestations as criminal behaviour.

Table of Contents:
Soft Skin (Felicia F. – Alprazolam) Mr & Mrs Camilla Revisited (Charlotte N. – Buspirone) You Better Go Now (Zoe W. – Amitriptyline) One Minute Apart (Elenore S. – Lorazepam) Confessions of a Kissee (Eveline M. – Buproprion) The Cheated Eye (Miriam R. – Fluvoxamine) Cousin Ludwig’s Subtraction Game (Grete B. – Imipramine) Honeymoon Without Maps (Esther G. – Thioridazine) Elegy from a Locked Drawer (Marianne E. – Clonidine) Red Coffee (Irina P. – Carbamazepine) Dispossession (Mary H. – Desipramine) A Stranger in Blood (Elspeth P. – Mirtazapine) Thought Police (Theresa O. – Temazepam) The Eleven Surviving Works of L v. K (Isolde B. – Diazepam) Three Tiered Grave (Roberta J. – Clozapine)

About the Author :
Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Eisner has `mastered the twist in the tale and her stories cascade vividly into derangement’ affirms a national review crisply, an insight endorsed by a reviewer stimulated by `startlingly inventive and genre-busting tales.’

Review :
I've long been an admirer of Catherine Eisner's piquant and highly original fictions in the literary journal, 'Ambit', and of her singularly rich pictorial and sensuous prose (she's an academically trained painter, I understand). Here at last she is given a very much broader canvas for her character studies of women at the end of their tether, though it's the minute detail of their dysfunctional, drug-dependant (and even criminal) lives I admire so much.