Group

How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life

By: Christie Tate

Narrated by: Christie Tate

A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK

‘This unrestrained memoir is a transporting experience and one of the most startlingly hopeful books I have ever read. It will make you want to get better, whatever better means for you.’
Lisa Taddeo, New York Times bestselling author of Three Women

For fans of Three Women and Everything I Know About Love comes a refreshingly original memoir about self-discovery, loneliness and love. A guarded young lawyer reluctantly joins a psychotherapy group where she has to share her innermost thoughts with six complete strangers. In turn she finds human connection, and herself.

“What’s going to happen to me when I start group?”
“All of your secrets are going to come out.”

Christie Tate has just been named the top student in her law school class and seems to finally have got her eating disorder under control. So why is she driving through Chicago fantasising about her own death?

Desperate, she joins Dr Rosen’s psychotherapy group, and through his unconventional methods, he challenges everything she thought she knew, about herself and others. In group, secrets are not allowed. This means telling a group of strangers everything – about her struggle with bulimia, her failed sex life, her overwhelming sense of loneliness and acute longing for a relationship. And as she keeps sharing her thoughts and feelings and listens to the others doing the same, her life slowly begins to change.

This is a deliciously compelling read, and an intimate journey through the daring, exhilarating, painful, and hilarious journey that is group therapy – a process that breaks you down, and then reassembles you so that all the pieces finally fit.


Praise for Group
‘This book will remind you how to come back to yourself even when you want to give up, make you laugh, make you cry, help you breathe. This book will save lives’ Lidia Yuknavitch

‘Real transformation is not for the faint of heart, and in these pages Christie Tate captures her evolution in all its misery and hilarity, along with the beauty of bearing witness to one another as we grow.’ Sarah Hepola

‘Christie Tate takes us on a journey that's heartbreaking and hilarious, surprising and redemptive – and, ultimately, a testament to the power of connection.’ Lori Gottlie©2020 Christie Tate (P)2020 Simon & Schuster UK

Critic reviews

“Eugene Onegin made me want to move to Russia and Little Women made me want to have sisters. GROUP made me want to rewind a decade, sit with a number of strangers and one shamanic doctor, strip down and survive. This unrestrained memoir is a transporting experience and one of the most startlingly hopeful books I have ever read. It will make you want to get better, whatever better means for you." (Lisa Taddeo, New York Times best-selling author of Three Women)

"Group sucked me in and never let go. Real transformation is not for the faint of heart, and in these pages Christie Tate captures her evolution in all its misery and hilarity, along with the beauty of bearing witness to one another as we grow. Group reminds us that we are hurt by other people, but we can be healed by them too. Damn, I want to join a group now." (Sarah Hepola, New York Times best-selling author of Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget)

Honest journey to intimacy

I enjoyed every moment of this honest account of Chrities’ journey to finding herself, her sheer longing for intimacy, the driving force to mental health- what a beautiful testimony to our inherent need to understand ourselves and to be seen by the other. As a therapist, I want to start a group myself after listening to this wonderful account of groupwork

Cult?

Christie Tate did group therapy 3 times a week, spending more than $800 a week. She attributed the therapist, Dr Rosen, for all her successes while blaming herself for anything that went wrong. He gives off cult-leader vibes, especially as he rejects the concept of boundaries.