Title: A Love Song for the Sad Man in the White Coat
Author: Roe Horvat
Narrator: Vance Bastian
Publisher: Self-Published
Run Time: 6 hours and 52 Minutes
Category: Contemporary
At a Glance: Love, pain, tragedy, and ecstasy aren’t just tangled up here; they are tightly braided into the lives of every character in the book. Buy the book for the great narration, but listen to it on a sunny day in a well-lit garden. You’ll be glad that you did.
Reviewed By: Mike
Blurb: Simon had always expected love to feel different than this. Whether it was his Catholic upbringing or the poetry he’d read, Simon had thought that true love would be uplifting, fulfilling, that it would give a meaning to his loitering, and add joy to his leisure. But not this kind of love. This love was a flesh-eating monster, sharp-clawed and evil-eyed, ravishing his mind with medieval cruelty.
Dr. Simon Mráz is a respected specialist and lecturer at the Charles University in Prague. He is a serious man, responsible. His students call him “The Cruel Doctor Frost” not because he’s unkind, but because of his unwavering, ice-cold composure. As a psychiatrist, he values sanity. And sanity can be found in work, restraint, and self-control.
Not many know of that one time in the past when the “Cruel Doctor Frost” lost his cool. His ill-advised, secret affair with a student left Simon deeply wounded. Since that day, every minute of Simon’s life has been a struggle to remain sane and functioning. He’s managed so far. As long as he is needed, and as long as his work makes a difference, Simon can scrape together enough strength to get up in the morning and run off the nightmares. But when his friends begin drifting away, his beloved protégé becomes independent, and the man who bereaved Simon of his precious sanity might return…. Simon’s mind and body stop responding to his impressive willpower.
Review: Dr. Simon Mraz has a reputation for being cold and precise, leading his students and colleagues to call him the “Cruel Dr. Frost”. As a psychiatrist, he avoids public displays of emotion—he rarely shows emotion at all. When he lets his composure slip just once, he finds himself in the midst of an affair with a former student.
Matej has a troubled homelife. His mother is dead, his father is a violent alcoholic, and he and his teenage sister bear the brunt of their father’s lashing out. When Matej can no longer sit back and take his father’s abuse, he strikes back. Matej’s words result in a drastic outcome, and he flees Prague, leaving his now orphaned sister in the care of his former lover.
A Love Song for the Sad Man in the White Coat is an East European romance. As such, do not expect chirping birds and bursting heart motifs. Love, pain, tragedy, and ecstasy aren’t just tangled up here; they are tightly braided into the lives of every character in the book.
Vance Bastian does his very best with difficult names and difficult situations. His talent is obvious and deep. As the story spins out, more and more of the circumstances of that final fight between Matej and his father are revealed, and Bastian take us to each heartbreaking point in the disintegration of a family. At the same time, Simon’s life has come to a standstill. He took one chance, and that chance kicked him hard in the teeth and left him reeling for years. Bastian helps make this cast of mostly unlikeable, morose, and even at times selfish people seem understandable and likeable. This is no small feat in a story that has few light moments.
The story is good but the narration makes it worth the time and effort to sit through the grinding tragedy to try and find an outcome that is satisfying. It takes real talent to do that. Bastian is more than up to the challenge. Buy the book for the great narration, but listen to it on a sunny day in a well-lit garden. You’ll be glad that you did.
You can buy A Love Song for the Sad Man in the White Coat here:
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