Patients required
Alastair Campbell's first novel is a difficult book to read - more accurately, to finish - and a scary one to review; there is little public evidence to contradict the description of its author by the former Telegraph editor Charles Moore as "the most pointlessly combative person in human history". There is also the problem of how to read it. All in the Mind has an openly didactic purpose: to educate us about mental illness, and depression in particular. There's no doubt that Campbell is serious about his aim: he has spoken openly of his own breakdown, most recently on the BBC2 documentary Cracking Up.
In a recent interview with the Bookseller, Campbell has admitted - although there was no sense in which it was an admission of guilt - that he is not "a great novelist". But even bad writers can write readable novels, particularly if the book seems like something its author would enjoy reading. If you want to read an honest novel about depression, addiction, sex, fame and power (can there be anyone who doesn't?), then Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls is a genuinely good book. It's not possible to say the same of Campbell's novel. And since the same Bookseller interview mentions the possibility of a second and even a third, the sincerity of his intentions should not protect his book from being judged on its literary merits.
All in the Mind is set during a weekend in the life of a psychiatrist called Martin Sturrock who is seriously depressed - he diagnoses himself as a six on a rising scale of one to ten - but hasn't told anyone about it. The book follows Sturrock's moods as he treats patients at his clinic. It also follows these patients away from the sessions. They are: a traumatised burns victim; a suicidally depressed young man; a refugee who has been raped; an adulterous barrister whose wife thinks he's a sex addict; an alcoholic secretary of state for health who thinks his drink problem is a secret; and a former prostitute from Sierra Leone, who Professor Sturrock fantasises about.
The novel's main problems are its structure and its sentences, both of which require tenacity on the part of the reader. With sections marked "Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday", "Monday", "The Aftermath" and "The Funeral", the chrono logical approach leaves no room for surprises. The few surprises that do exist come when the characters are, coincidentally, near one another without knowing it. But since nothing significant happens in these moments, they're not that interesting.
There is a lot of explanation in the novel. At times, it seems as if the Labour Party's former director of communications is making the case for the benefits of private-public arrangements in the health service. Professor Sturrock likes NHS work: "He tended to get some of the toughest cases, and they always provided inspiration for his research work." He's no ideologue, though. A few pages later, we learn that "he was always keen to have private patients. The income helped him fund his various research projects, his current one being a study of the psychiatric impact of resettlement on asylum-seekers, particularly from the Balkans."
Unfortunately, All in the Mind is a novel about psychology which is unreflective about its own language. The results seem simple-minded. There are many unintentionally comic moments - or is it possible that sentences such as "The worst thing about going to a whorehouse was the moment of entry" are meant to be funny? It's probably best not to think too hard about the answer.
