SOURCE: "My Husband Became a Zombie," in The Spectator, Vol. 272, No. 8640, February 12, 1994, pp. 29-30.

In the following review, Brookner finds Affliction—published as Trouble in the United States—topical but less than satisfying.

To lose one's husband to another woman is bad, to lose one's husband to another man may be slightly worse, but to lose one's husband to a pair of therapists, one of each sex, is arguably the worst blow of all. Of course the husband in question has to be singularly disturbed for this to happen, and therefore axiomatically in need of a therapist. So the unsupervised practice continues. Something of this fate seems to have been visited upon Fay Weldon, one of the most independent and vigorous writers of contemporary fiction, and her new novel [Affliction] chronicles the sinister takeover that wrested an amiable but credulous man from the bosom of his family and...