Fifty Minutes

Therapy was meant to solve her problems, not make them worse... Twenty-year-old Dani is desperate to overcome her demons, leave her supermarket canteen job and return to her hard-won place at university. Using her limited earnings to enrol with a psychotherapist isn't a light decision, but Richard Goode's practice is a short bus ride from the flat where she's crashing with her sister, and he seems the perfect person to help. He's sophisticated, educated and worldly - all that Dani aspires to be. Dani's symptoms improve as Richard intuitively unpicks her self-loathing. She assumes the fantasies she's developing about him live only in her head, but then in one session, to Dani's shock, her therapist shatters the professional boundary and reciprocates her feelings. As they descend into a maelstrom of twisted desire, manipulation and mistrust, the power struggle between them escalates-and when Richard tries to deny their relationship altogether, Dani knows she must seek justice... Fifty Minutes is a powerful, propulsive and bold debut that exposes the complex nature of trust and the subtle balance of power and vulnerability in our modern age, and marks Carla Jenkins as a vital new voice in fiction.