The Model Patient
Ashe’s psychological thriller is set in swinging sixties London, where Evelyn Westbrook lives with her husband of two years, Henry. She loves Henry, but his interest in their sex life is diminishing. Evelyn gave up her modelling career to marry, but her desperation to be the best, the most beautiful, the model wife, the model daughter, seems bottomless—these obsessions having arisen in her childhood and exacerbated by modelling. Henry’s mother encourages the couple to have a child, but Evelyn isn’t ready. She continues taking the pill, much to Henry’s annoyance. Evelyn’s recurring nightmares frighten her so much that unbeknownst to anyone, she seeks out psychologist, Dr Daley, known for his advanced work in mental health.
Much of Ashe’s novel takes place at Evelyn’s appointments, with random scenes at home and with her best friend, Diana. As Evelyn tries to untangle her dreams, the doctor-patient relationship becomes something else. Daley encourages her to talk about her fantasies, assuring her she is in a safe place where she will never be judged. Evelyn, however, feels as though she is stumbling about in the dark, obliged to discuss things she wants buried—her past, her parents, her modelling. As a reader I felt as frustrated as Evelyn as the calmly manipulative Daley turns her every question into the same question: ‘how does this/that make you feel?’
As explained in her historical notes, Ashe sets her novel in 1963, due to the many changing theories about psychoanalysis, mental health, contraception, feminism and the patriarchy in the 1950s and ´60s. WWII wrought great societal change, as much or more so than WWI, and Ashe’s deep dive into psychotherapy and its early trials with transference relationships pays homage to those changes.
