This was a bit of a weird book and I found it a bit confusing up until the end when it became a bit less muddled.
I found Tamara an absolute nightmare and Beth a bit wet and didn't empathise with her at all.

I'm afraid I found this book quite confusing and difficult to get into. The initial chapters didn't flow easily and sadly I didn't finish it.

Sorry I’ve seen other reviews raving about this but I just couldn’t get into it . It was very slow and I didn’t like the characters. I only read a third of the book and gave up as I thought it wasn’t going anywhere

I loved this book and was totally hooked by the predicament that Beth is in. Joanna Briscoe is a wonderfully visual writer and her descriptions of the houses and canals made me feel as though I was there. Beth, a talented artist, is encouraged to seek therapy by her husband Sol in an attempt to understand her past and this leads her to an obsessive relationship with her alluring but increasingly manipulative therapist, Tamara. I read this novel during a weekend and didn’t want to finish it too quickly as it was so good but equally had to keep turning the pages as I was desperate to find out what happened. Beth is an appealing character and I felt so sorry for her worsening relationship with her 13 year old daughter, Fern. I definitely recommend this novel. Five stars!

As a trainee counsellor I was disturbed by this book. Beth is an artist who is haunted by her mother's absence. Her mother abandoned the family home when Beth was thirteen and it marked her for life. Now Beth's daughter Fern is turning thirteen. Her loving husband Sol encourages her to talk to a therapist. Beth is supposed to receive cognitive behavioural therapy with Tamara Bywater. Instead, Tamara throws out the rulebook. She draws Beth into talking about childhood trauma and the state of her marriage. At furst we are not sure if Beth's experience of Tamara is all in her head. At the same time, Beth's relationship with her daughter begins to break down very fast and she begins to rely on Tamara too much.
The story goes down the rabbit hole and Beth and Tamara are drawn closer together while her family life falls apart. The story is interspersed with distressing flashbacks from Beth's past. I read, aghast, at the speed life can fall apart. Lurking in the background throughout the book is Beth's mother and a devastating betrayal. This is a dazzlingly well written and pretty scary. I read most of it in one sitting.

Didn’t finish it as firstly it was very difficult to follow in the format it was in. Not only disjointed but numbers appearing everywhere. I know it’s not the finished version but it was very offputting.
I also found it hard to get into the story or engage with the characters.

Having enjoyed Joanna Briscoe’s previous novels, The Seduction was high on my most anticipatory reading list. However ultimately I just couldn’t get on with this one, mostly due to its slowness of plot and lack of tension and suspense.
This is set in the middle-class, literary world, like many of Briscoe’s books, following Beth, an illustrator married to Sol. They live in Camden Lock with their 12-year old daughter, Fern, who is about to turn 13. Beth is anxious about Fern, who she feels is hiding things and beginning to change. Anxious about her mothering skills she’s urged by her husband to get therapy, where she meets Dr Tamara Bayswater. There we learn that Beth’s mother abandoned her when she was 13-years old the same age Fern is now and that Beth has been receiving anonymous calls whom she assumes is her mother against whom she has a restraining order. Pretty soon Beth starts to become dependent on her therapist and thinks she’s seeing her everywhere and it’s not long before she becomes ‘seduced’ by her...

As per usual I adored Briscoe’s atmospheric and sensual prose, she gives London an unique perspective through a hazy, albeit hypnotic view. However, good prose aside I just couldn’t connect with Beth, whom I personally found dull and over-reacted on little things. I understand she’s meant to be neurotic, but it did make a rather slog of a read. Also, the plot was ever so achingly slow. Just to clarify this isn’t quite a thriller, so don’t expect pacy twists and turns. This is more of a literary character-study about a middle-aged affluent white woman whose daughter, about to become a teenager, triggers anxiety related to her past and the subsequent therapy and relationship she has with her therapist. An interesting concept that unfortunately doesn’t have anything new to say, at least for me. However to emphasis this is just my personal point of view and a reflection of my taste. 3/5.

I thought I’d read the author before but it turns out that I haven’t. Oh well, I enjoyed this so I may check out more of her work. Beth is a great character. I felt she was very realistic. Tamara intrigued me. She was a bit of a strange one, stand-offish, cool, calm and collected. Just what was her deal? I enjoyed the way the author played these two very different women against each other. There is something off about Tamara from start. She came across as unprofessional a lot of the time and her sessions with Beth just seemed unethical a lot of the time. It didn’t help that her colleagues are also concerned about her attitude and behaviour. I enjoyed the way the author explored the boundaries between patient and therapist which at times here are very fluid. Tamara seems to be trying to lure Beth into her bed but Beth is half-convinced she’s imagining things. Tamara seems to be almost cruel and calculating towards Beth, taking advantage of her issues.

I loved this straight from the cover - with its artful invitation to be a Freudian fly on the wall for an analysis of what makes love and lust tick.

Following her recent detour into more ghostly realms with the wonderful Touched this latest novel finds Joanna Briscoe back on her usual stomping ground: the human heart. More specifically, the hearts of mothers and daughters, in all their depths and frailties, and the power they have to send those whose chests they beat in off kilter. Which is not to say the needs and desires of the central male characters aren’t also deftly handled - just that it’s the dynamics between daughters and mothers (and/or vice versa) - and how this can spill out into all other relationships, which drives the action.

Beth is a happily married, successful conceptual artist, living in the house of her dreams on Camden Lock. She loves her husband, who is also professionally successful; he loves her in return. But, lately, Sol’s become worried that issues long dormant for Beth are resurfacing. The catalyst for the novel comes when he suggests she could do with speaking to someone about it.

Although initially reluctant to engage with therapy, Beth soon finds herself as curious about her elusive and unfathomable shrink as Dr Tamara Bywater is about her. As their sessions progress it occurs to Beth that, if only they’d met in another context, the two might have become friends. (But as things stand, is she mad to be feeling they already seem to be tumbling passed that?)

As we learn from Tamara's colleagues - who are already worried about her cavalier approach to accepted/safe practice - the dynamic in play here is known as Transference. It's a well-known risk in any therapeutic relationship and therefore something the practitioner must not only be alert to, but also skilled enough to navigate their patient through it.
By twists and turns, Ms Briscoe cleverly exploits this dynamic to muddy both professional and personal boundaries in ways that tease the reader. Is Beth imagining things, or is her shrink really trying to seduce her? And, if it’s the latter, is the way in which Tamara seems to be using Beth’s abandonment issues against her consciously calculated - and therefore even crueller? Or is this just Tamara being Tamara?

I also loved the use of the art world as a backdrop. The way Beth’s work in particular paid off reminded me of Siri Hustvedt. The emotional range is similarly symphonic, the prose as limpid and the ending delivers just what I long for in a love story. Catharsis.

All in all, I found The Seduction to be Ms Briscoe’s most controlled and thought-provoking work yet.

With many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me see an advance copy.

That was disappointing from Briscoe who I've liked in the past: the story felt too aimless, lacking drive and energy. There are lots of current tropes at work especially mothers and daughters but it doesn't amount to much. Workmanlike writing, and a distanced feel - no tension of pull-through makes this putdownable.