By Samuel Shem. 436 pp. New York, Fawcett Columbine, 1997. $24. ISBN 0-449-91118-7.
A roman à clef — from the French, "novel with akey" — is a novel that thinly disguises real people andreal situations. It is a fictional representation of reality,first popular in 17th-century France, that is still often usedto emphasize a social point. Stephen Bergman, an accomplishedauthor whose pen name is Samuel Shem, is a practicing psychiatristin the Boston area. Mount Misery is his most recent roman àclef — a farcical novel about Dr. Roy Basch's first yearof psychiatric residency. The thinly disguised Boston psychiatryscene, in which famous and infamous physicians, hospital . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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