Two characters, a reclusive professor of psychiatry and a brilliant, erratic student, are thrown together by circumstances beyond their control. Each has a theory of mind, gradually revealed and put to the test as a result of their interactions and conversations, as well as their encounters with a number of unusual characters: sideshow performers, an escape artist, three eccentric philosophers, and others.
Like "The Plague" by Albert Camus, Heather Folsom's novel explores urgent contemporary themes: the nature of good and evil, truth, and freedom -- using allegory, irony, and Socratic discourse.
Fiction. Heather Folsom's HYPOHYPOTHESIS: A NOVEL is a madcap romp, a dark comedy which stands psychiatry on its head. It has a party scene to rival the Mad Hatter's, and then, in a tour de force, performs the historic function of the novel: bringing news (in this instance, a rigorously-argued original theory of the mind). Two unlikely protagonists, a serious, somewhat pompous professor of psychiatry and a brilliant-but-unsound student, are thrust together in a disaster zone. They encounter a host of supporting characters-twin sideshow fat ladies, squabbling philosophers, an escape artist, and other unusual zany persons. The author, herself a psychiatrist, writes in the spare and elegant style of her first book, PHILOSOPHIE THINLY CLOTHED AND OTHER STORIES (Cadmus Editions 2003) which received favorable critical attention.
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