[In the following review, Post contends that Dorfman constructs a playful and effective narrative in Blake's Therapy and notes that the novel solidifies “Dorfman's place within the grand tradition of experimental Latin American novelists.”]

Most of Ariel Dorfman's work to date has addressed the detrimental effects of dictatorships upon the body and mind (Hard Rain, Konfidenz, Death and the Maiden), but in his newest novel, he leaves Latin American politics behind to explore the corruptive power of corporate culture. The premise of Blake's Therapy is simple enough: Graham Blake, the marketing mastermind behind Clean Earth Inc., is suffering from chronic insomnia, forcing him to check into a radical psychological institute designed to treat wealthy businessmen. Blake's therapy resembles an insane “reality TV” show—he is assigned a family that he can monitor twenty-four hours a day. Beyond that, he is given a godlike opportunity to change their lives forever, because the true “therapy” occurs when all of his whims (both good and bad) are enacted on the family. Blake immediately becomes obsessed with one member of the family, Roxanna, a young Latino girl, and orchestrates a string of misfortunes with the hope of winning her love after the treatment is completed. Then Blake finds out that the family is actually a set of actors and actresses, and the metaphorical rug is yanked out from under both him and the reader, transforming the very structure of the book into a playful (and deceptive) exploration of truth and falsity. The post-therapeutic Graham Blake is no saner than the man who entered therapy; he becomes more and more obsessed with retaining control of his life, friends, and business, primarily by videotaping all of his acquaintances and spending sleepless nights pouring over their interactions. After discovering that Roxanna was modeled after a real worker at one of his factories, Blake grows increasingly paranoid that someone may be behind the scenes, controlling his life. Both Blake and the reader are drawn into a complex quest to uncover what is real, what is a simulacrum, and who's truly calling the shots. Although the plot of this novel is not as compelling as some of Dorfman's earlier works, the mastery with which he manages to dupe the reader time and again gives rise to his main concern—the nature of narrative and its manifold possibilities. The games that he plays with both the style and framing of his story line recall the writings of Borges and Cortázar, solidifying Dorfman's place within the grand tradition of experimental Latin American novelists.