Psychologist Oliver Thompson spends much of his time helping others out with personal problems but he himself is left despondent after his only satisfying relationships--with his mistress, his niece, and his golden retriever--suddenly disintegrate...
When Dr. Melville, a psychoanalyst, falls in love with one of his patients, a beautiful and neurotic young woman, he begins to lose faith in the basic assumptions of psychoanalysis and questions his own sanity...
Sitting beside his dying mother, the narrator recalls fragments of her life--her childhood in Louisiana, her marriage to a doctor, the death of her husband, and her retirement and illness--in an exploration of life, death, and the importance of famil...