Team Charlie

The book Team Charlie takes the reader on a journey with its protagonist Charlie Davis, a man in his late forties who has lived with several voices in his head for the past 20 years, has lost his marriage and career and become estranged from his children. He has lived out those years dependent on his now-dying father who refused to let him seek psychiatric treatment. The voices are introduced early on in the novel and include a pirate, a priest, a lost love, a philosopher, and a pragmatist. As a clinician, I found the premise to be jarring, because patients do not usually present voices as benign or positive disparate entities, whereas in this book they become characters in their own right, a “team” advising Charlie at each turn.

After his father’s death, Charlie is taken in by his well-meaning religious aunt and her family. Charlie’s “team” advises him to run away to escape their own perceived possible annihilation at the hands of the faith healer his aunt wishes Charlie to visit. What follows is an almost Candide-like experience of wayward characters and helpful ones alike who keep Charlie going as he begins to decompensate unsheltered from the streets of Los Angeles. After being hospitalized and started on medication, a brief period of stability follows where Charlie excels at his former job and finds love again, only to be lost when he tells his beloved the whole truth about his past.

The idee fixe of the novel is Charlie’s innate skill to play the piano by ear, which often brings him close to people, whether or not he is hearing voices. His love of old movies is also a common thread and paints him as a rather naïve fellow, so whenever any sexual imagery occurs, it can feel out of place for this character. The novel closes with an ending that causes one to think about the meaning of self-delusion and whether choosing to live with one type of delusion versus another should ever be judged.