Her doctor at the clinic disagrees. Theodor Busbeck, 10 years her senior, a prominent mental health researcher, appears to be an intelligent, saintly man. He's convinced Mylia is healthy, falls in love with her and marries her. He spends the rest of his time researching his obsession, the predictability of torture and genocide in history, trying to understand the pattern between suffering and causing suffering.
After eight years of marriage, he commits Mylia to a mental institution, where another patient impregnates her in front of the other inmates.
Mylia's illegitimate son, Kaas, a boy with abnormally thin legs and a speech impediment, lives with his adoptive father, Busbeck, until the terrible morning when he's convinced his father has abandoned him. Kaas sets out alone to find him, into the dangerous city where Hinnerk Obst, a mentally damaged war veteran, spends his time watching children on the playground through binoculars while aiming an unloaded gun. Hanna, the prostitute who lives with Hinnerk, has an appointment with--Dr. Busbeck.
What a crew. They're all about to collide in a tangled, tightening Gordian knot of unrequited loves and violent deeds. The reader just doesn't know how, and that's what keeps the pages turning. The plot of this slender Portuguese novel, revealed scattershot, is never straightforward, and figuring it out is half the fun. It's delivered in a rapid-fire assembly of short narrative fragments following these characters through their interactions and intersections, leaping back and forth in time. The novel isn't perfect. It takes itself a tad seriously. It's not entirely free of occasional artsy-fartsy intellectual showmanship--soliloquies by the asylum inmates or philosophical passages read from a mysterious book. The title is a biblical reference: "If I should forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand wither." Which means what? Just another mystery to gnaw at the back of your mind as you rush to discover how it will all turn out, the shocking poetic justice of this convergence of fate-lines and destinies. --Nick DiMartino
Shelf Talker: A convoluted tale of unrequited loves and violent deeds--showy, mysterious and sometimes baffling.