Trauma by Patrick McGrath

Trauma, the novel by Patrick McGrath, tells the story of a New York psychiatrist who specializes in helping Vietnam vets suffering from trauma. As he learns more about his own family life, though, he finds himself caught up in his own trauma, and fighting the madness he knows is approaching.

Charlie Weir is a man who tackles other people's demons for a living. He has seen every kind of trauma during his years as a psychiatrist in New York.Yet he hasn't found a way of resolving his own conflicts, particularly the fatal mistake that caused his wife and daughter to leave him condemning him to corrosive loneliness and restless anger.Years later, he meets a beautiful but damaged woman who promises to restore his dwindling faith in both his profession and himself. But as he realizes that she has become more of a patient than a lover, events conspire to send him reeling toward the abyss. Addictive and enthralling

McGrath paints a dark picture of 1980s Manhattan as a backdrop for the human suffering Trauma explores.