On "Easy Go" by Mary Beth Caschetta (3403 words) ***

Maybe I'm just dense, but I wasn't really expecting what eventually occurs in this story, and I liked that. It's a tale of a woman whose husband has left her, her psychologist husband. And as expected, she has some problems with that and needs counseling, needs something to get her through. That's really all I want to say, lest I spoil it. But as far as tales of psychologists go, this story seems to have a bit in common with Nabokov's Pnin, another tale of a spouse jilted by a psychologist partner. It's interesting how psychologists in literature and film are often of two extremes--one the hero who saves the day, as in Real People and Good Will Hunting; and one a horrible, self- or politically motivated fraud, as in the aforementioned Pnin or that episode of Cheers where the person in therapy ends up having an affair with the therapist. But I guess I'm not thinking of Alan Thicke in Growing Pains, where psychology seemed to be just a nice job to pay the bills while working from home. Anyway, ponder the portrayal of psychologists in pop culture all you want, but you might want to read the story here at the Del Sol Review first.