Book Review: The Case Against Satan by Ray Russell

Title: The Case Against Satan
Author: Ray Russell
Published: Penguin, 2015 (1962)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 170
Total Page Count: 534,170
Text Number: 1956
Read Because: saw this pop up in a Yuletide letter, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Immediately after being relocated to a new parish, a priest is confronted with an apparent possession. This is a brief, dense, directed book, contained and complete. As the priest wrestles with his belief in the existence of Satan, as a congregation looks suspiciously at the strange goings-on at the rectory, the possession and exorcism are seen from all angles, belief and doubt, spiritual and psychosomatic, clear or complicated. I didn't find this scary, but it's an engaging, lively metaphysical puzzlebox.

Book Review: A Shining Affliction by Annie G. Rogers

Title: A Shining Affliction: A Story of Harm and Healing in Psychotherapy
Author: Annie G. Rogers
Published: Penguin, 2008 (1996)
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 335
Total Page Count: 534,505
Text Number: 1957
Read Because: mentioned by chthonic_cassandra, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: While treating a troubled child during her PhD internship, the author becomes mired in memories of her own traumatic childhood. Therapy is a chain of interconnections, patient to therapist to therapist's therapist, and Rogers insists that these relationships must be two-way in order to be effective and sincere, despite that they're intentionally stymied or curtailed in most therapeutic practice. But this is more experiential than didactic: it sits within events as they unfold, proactively interpreting them in a way which is intimate, evocative, and surprisingly concise. I liked this, I found it compelling and nuanced and compassionate; it also gave me uneasy, hopeless feelings about why I don't do therapy—maybe that's inevitable.