One would not describe An Indecent Obsession as spellbinding, nor think of Australian novelist Colleen McCullough's treatment here of an army nurse assigned to oversee a half-dozen mentally disordered patients at the end of World War II as in any way comparable, let's say, to Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Her book has neither the emotional power nor the intellectual toughness associated with that American novel. Still, like her earlier work The Thorn Birds, this is a fairly well-crafted piece of fiction with a good story line and, for the most part, convincing characters.

Honour Langtry stands at the storm's eye, shepherding men whose lives are at loose ends, suffering from battle weariness and jungle fatigue but also, the reader is led to believe, something more serious, more troubling. The suffering of Ward X is not medical; the pain signals rather a malaise of mind...