The Hypnotist's Love Story

Ellen O'Farrell is a hypnotherapist with a serene, examined life and a healthy curiosity about human nature. So when she falls for Patrick, a warm, grounded widower with a young son, she is intrigued rather than alarmed to learn that his ex-girlfriend has been stalking him for years. Ellen has always wanted to meet a genuine obsessive; now she is dating a man defined by one. Surely, she thinks, she can be understanding about it.

But the ex, Saskia, is not a distant abstraction. She is a presence — turning up at restaurants, on beaches, at the edges of Ellen and Patrick's new life together — and the novel lets the reader inside her head as well as Ellen's, tracing the heartbreak, self-deception, and longing behind the surveillance. As Ellen's relationship deepens and her own life changes in ways she never planned, the neat line she has drawn between compassion and self-protection grows harder to hold.

The Hypnotist's Love Story is a slower, more introspective Liane Moriarty: a wry, tender novel about love, obsession, and the stories we tell ourselves to keep going. By giving equal weight to the woman being pursued and the woman doing the pursuing, Moriarty turns a familiar premise into a humane, surprisingly moving study of what it means to be left behind — and what it means to move on.