Double Blind follows three close friends and their circle through a
year of extraordinary transformation. Set inLondon, Cap d'Antibes, Big
Sur, and a rewilded corner of Sussex, this thrilling, ambitious novel is
about the headlong pursuit of knowledge--for the purposes of pleasure,
revelation, money, sanity, or survival--and the consequences of fleeing
from what we know about others and ourselves.
When Olivia meets a new lover just as she is welcoming her best friend,
Lucy, back from New York, her dedicated academic life expands
precipitously. Her connection to Francis, a committed naturalist living
off the grid, is immediate and startling. Eager to involve Lucy in her
joy, Olivia introduces the two--but Lucy has received shocking news of
her own that binds the trio unusually close. Over the months that
follow, Lucy's boss, Hunter, Olivia's psychoanalyst parents, and a young
man named Sebastian are pulled into the friends' orbit, and not one of
them will emerge unchanged.
Expansive, playful, and compassionate, Edward St. Aubyn's Double Blind
investigates themes of inheritance, determinism, freedom, consciousness,
and the stories we tell about ourselves. It is as compelling about
ecology, psychoanalysis, genetics, and neuroscience as it is about love,
fear, and courage. Most of all, it is a perfect expression of the
interconnections it sets out to examine, and a moving evocation of an
imagined world that is deeply intelligent, often tender, curious, and
very much alive.
