In this incandescent novel Frances Raval gives superbly vivid, powerful and at times wickedly funny portrayals of the foundations of Freudian psychoanalysis as it emerged in the 1890s and thus by implication of the inner life of the whole epoch. The Story of Dora is a richly ironic and imaginative reconstruction of the famous Freudian case-history, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. The novel shows Freud's handling of the case to be one of his most scandalous impositions of theory onto a reality that protests it. Frances Raval's narrative vividly captures the heady sense of Freud's...