Outside Looking In

Starred review from February 1, 2019

An old pro with more than 25 novels and short story collections under his belt, Boyle (The Terranauts) typically focuses on an event or moment in history and gives us his own take. This time around he sets his sight on Timothy Leary and his psychedelic "experiments" at Harvard in the early to mid-Sixties. Struggling psychology PhD student Fitzhugh Loney and wife Joanie are drawn to Leary and begin attending the Saturday night "sessions" in which Leary and his inner circle conduct "research" on the effects of psilocybin mushrooms. Soon, they graduate to LSD, then decamp to Mexico and later Millbrook, NY, to explore the psychedelic counterculture and the ideas of group think and communal living. The arrangement begins to take a toll on Fitz, Joanie, and their son, Corey. Things get weird, lives get ruined, and readers are along for all the highs and lows. VERDICT While it may be hard to get behind many of the deeply flawed characters, there is much to learn and enjoy here, as Boyle takes us deep inside the lives of Leary and his convention-bashing acolytes, offering a brisk read that provides much food for thought. Boyle fans will enjoy. [See Prepub Alert, 8/15/18.]--Stephen Schmidt, Greenwich Lib. CT

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 15, 2019
Once Timothy Leary opened the Pandora's box of LSD, everything changed.Few novelists have benefited more from the freedom unleashed by the psychedelic revolution than the prolific Boyle (The Relive Box, 2017, etc.), but here he shows a buttoned-down control over his material, a deadpan innocence in the face of seismic changes to come. It's an East Coast novel of academia by the West Coast novelist, and it's a little like reading Richard Yates on the tripping experience. The novel's catalyst is Dr. Timothy Leary ("Tim" throughout), though Boyle has wisely opted not to make him the protagonist but instead a figure seen and idealized through the eyes of others. At the novel's center is the nuclear family of Fitzhugh and Joanie Loney and their teenage son, Corey. Fitz has been struggling to support himself as a Harvard graduate student in psychology, one of Leary's advisees, though one who is, as the title says, on the "outside looking in" as the psychedelic hijinks commence. It isn't long before Leary seduces his student into the inner circle, where Joanie joins them and the nucleus of this family starts to destabilize as they make themselves part of a larger communal tribe. All in the name of science, as Fitz continues to believe, though Leary soon finds himself ousted from Harvard, his work discredited, his students in limbo. Is he a radical, reckless visionary or a self-promoting huckster? Perhaps a little of both. Without advocating or sermonizing, and without indulging too much in the descriptions of sexual comingling and the obligatory acid tripping, Boyle writes of the 1960s to come from the perspective of the '60s that will be left behind. It is Leary's inner circle that soon finds itself on the outside--outside the academy, society, and the law--living in its own bubble, a bubble that will burst once acid emerges from the underground and doses the so-called straight world. In the process, what was once a means to a scientific or spiritual end becomes a hedonistic end in itself. And Fitz finds his family, his future, his morals, and his mind at risk. "I could use a little less party and a little more purpose--whatever happened to that?" he asks, long after the balance has been tipped.Keeping his own stylistic flamboyance in check, Boyle evokes a cultural flashpoint with implications that transcend acid flashbacks.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 15, 2019
Harvard psychology doctoral candidate Fitzhugh Loney is diligently working on his thesis while trying to support his family when visiting lecturer and advisor Timothy Leary arrives on campus. So begins Boyle's spellbinding fictionalized take on the now-infamous Harvard Psilocybin Project, which Leary began in 1960. His intention is to study the therapeutic potential of LSD under supposedly controlled conditions, but he soon conscripts ambitious and naive grad students to participate as subjects. The action follows this inner circle from group sessions at Leary's home to Mexico and eventually to the Millbrook estate, where the group decamped after securing the favor of the Mellon heirs. Boyle is the ideal Virgil to guide one through this inferno of experimentation, debauchery, and early counterculture ethos as he incrementally doses out the hallucinatory effect of falling under the sway of an outsize personality and into the grip of a mind-altering drug. Cameos by Allen Ginsberg, Ram Dass, and Ken Kesey further capture the time period, while Boyle's trenchant cultural observations slyly depict how establishment gives way to antiestablishment in this engrossing, mind-expanding trip.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With the nation's renewed interest in psychoactive drugs, Boyle's latest work of countercultural, biographical fiction will lure his devotees and the newly curious alike.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)