mental illness
Hold your Breath
Having written a thriller myself, I’m always now intrigued by their structure and component parts. One attribute is a capacity to make you suspend your breathing, just willing the protagonist to escape whatever horror lies in store. So Hold your Breath seems such an appropriate title for a book in this genre.
This one is by Barnaby Walter who dives into the disturbing world of mental illness – a world where things spin out of control, and people are scarily unpredictable. One key ‘character’ in this tale is the setting: a spooky forest, backdrop to shady night-time happenings.
Dark elements of child neglect and exorcism and witchcraft and disordered minds pile on the shivers. With the main action removed from the safety and scrutiny of suburban civilisation, events feel even more sinister, and the truth more elusive.
We know from early on that something dreadful happens, but so much is unknown and unknowable or half-understood because it’s synthesised through the young impressionable mind of the protagonist, Kitty Carlson. Adults are concealing the truth from her; she herself witnesses incomprehensible behaviours; we cannot be sure where fantasy ends and grown-up reality begins. As her mother’s mental health regresses we feel the approach of something dreadful, we hold our breath, fearful as to what form it will take.
Kitty is only 10 when the tragedy happens, but she’s already traumatised beyond her years. She knows that her family has secrets; they’ve always been different. It’s why her father took them to live in the woods during the half term holiday. It’s why unmentionable things are done in the haunted rental house, and why she’s sent to wander alone amongst the trees when the Catholic Father arrives.
As a young child she just buries her experiences.
She knows …
that her mother ‘gets upset’ and ‘makes scenes’, that her paintings have become disturbing, that she says and does violent things, that she needs to be handled with care, that she needs psychiatric help.
She knows …
that her father has become more like a dictatorial school teacher than a loving parent, that he is liable to ‘flamin’ rages’, that he is involved with another woman.
She knows …
that she herself is mesmerised by small living creatures, that she resents having her innocent enquiries deflected, that she has learned early on to be self-sufficient, that she is a loner.
It’s only when she grows up that she starts to ask the most difficult questions, and delve into painful memories. The past has been buried for a reason. Eventually she’s driven to write a book, crafting something definite, something physical, out of her dreams, her nightmares, her memories. ‘It was probably the fusion of catharsis and hate that did it. Working through my issues by putting them onto the page, only to shoot them through with a strong dose of anger and resentment.’ She has a story crying out to be told.
Although Kitty insists it’s fictional, there’s enough fact in it to identify people, places and events, and the book triggers powerful reactions. Her father and his new wife are incensed by the revelations. Her stepmother takes actions that have massive consequences. And 33 years after the tragedy, Kitty is summonsed to Newcastle to a police station. She is under caution, not yet arrest. But what she has to say could change all that.
Walter captures the perspective of a young girl sufficiently authentically for me to be taken in. I believed her account of what happened … the narrative that found expression in Kitty’s book. Writing it was ‘an act of self-therapy’; it blows demons right out into open view. Kitty herself knows she couldn’t cope with the attention a true-to-life memoir would attract, but nor can she relinquish her personal take on events and injustices. As a young girl she attributed human emotions to spiders and beetles; her mind has been altered by the things she’s seen in her childhood, by the emotions she’s suppressed. Small wonder that her own behaviours and reactions fall outside the box of normality.
The ending is rather too neat for my personal taste, but I was relieved that Kitty survived the re-living of her past. I cared about the child turned woman, and that’s another key element in the success of this book.
Real life ethical challenges – alive and well
Wow! The year has begun with a bang as far as medical ethics is concerned. Lots to challenge us.
Just in one day this week we had the news that …
Every secondary school in England is to be offered training to help them identify and support children who are suffering from mental illness – a government-led initiative. Mrs May describes it as a first step in a plan to transform the way we deal with mental health in this country. There’s a long way to go but this is at least a concrete measure. Is it the right one, d’you think?
A terminally ill man with Motor Neurone Disease who fears becoming entombed in his own body has asked judges to allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs for him without fear of prosecution. Sound familiar? Well, actually it’s the first case of its kind for 3 years would you believe – surprised me to learn that too. Should he be allowed this option? Is the UK ready for change? Where would it lead?
There’s been a rise in demand for live-in au pairs for elderly folk. It’s an attractive alternative for some to going into residential care. OK, I’m listening! And it comes amidst the controversies over standards in care homes and the soaring costs involved. But of course it comes at a price. And it inevitably excludes some people. Will it take off? Should it?
Viscount and Lady Weymouth have become the first members of the British aristocracy to have a baby carried and delivered by a surrogate mother. Apparently Emma Weymouth has a rare condition which puts her at high risk of having a stroke during labour; she suffered a brain haemorrhage and an endocrine disorder during her first pregnancy. This was deemed the safest way for them to ‘complete’ their family. But of course it has higher significance to an ancient lineage like the Longleat Bath family than to the average couple. Any thoughts?
After lengthy wrangling, judges have decided that a Gulf War veteran, policeman, and father of one, aged just 43, should be taken off life support and allowed to die, in line with his expressed wishes. His wife sees it as a final act of love. Others decry it as the thin end of the wedge to denying the sacredness of life. Where do you stand?
As I’ve said before, I shall never run out of material for my writing. And this ongoing interest in my subject spurs me on.
NEWSFLASH: Yesterday I completed the first draft of novel number 10. Wahey! Drum roll, please. It’s about a professor of Medical Ethics going on a train journey from Aberdeen to Penzance to deal with a crisis in her own family, but encountering all sorts of challenges along the way. The most fun of all my books to write so far, but I still cried at one point!
Ethical issues for everyone
I’ve been taking stock of where I am in my writing career of late and I thought I’d share with you a couple of noteworthy things from this appraisal.
The first relates to the prevalence of my subject matter.
To one side of my desk I have three large boxes full of folders. Each file contains material related to topics I’m interested in; each one a potential novel. (Yep, you’ve got the picture. I’m obsessive. Nothing newsworthy there.) But some of these files are very thick; one topic even runs to two volumes. And reviewing the contents, I’m reminded of how often I cut things out of the daily papers to slip into the said folders. Deduction? My kind of subjects must help sell newspapers; ordinary people must be interested in them.
Alert to this, I did a mini survey. Result? Just on one day this week there was something on
– mental illness (OCD and depression and self harming all dealt with)
– organ transplantation (growing human organs inside other mammals)
– assisted suicide (the BMA’s position: should doctors to be free to follow their consciences?)
– body image and identity (eating disorders, celebrities’ experiences)
– balance of risks and benefits (related to heart disease)
– care of the elderly and those with dementia
All on just one day in one newspaper.
The second point relates to the currency of my subject matter.
When I start planning a new book, I do try to imagine life a bit ahead of present understanding so that when it comes out it’s still relevant and topical, but I’ve been surprised at how much these issues remain current. Take assisted dying, for instance. My novel, Right to Die, was published in 2008. In the eight years since then parliament has revisited the issue repeatedly; professional bodies have regularly debated the pros and cons; a considerable number of high profile cases have come to public attention; campaigns have been fought. It’s still a hot potato and it doesn’t show any sign of cooling any time soon.
Then there’s dementia. Remember Remember came out in 2010, but the ethical dilemmas it explores are as thorny today as they were then. What’s more, the number of families grappling with them is growing as the human lifespan increases; more and more individuals are exercised by the questions.
I’ve been working on an outline for the tenth and eleventh books recently and I’m staggered by the thickness of the folders on those two topics. I’m having to write notes of notes, and lists of lists, to sort out the wealth of facts and the evolution of thinking and knowledge, in order to establish what arguments and counter-arguments obtain today, and to start developing a coherent plot-line. When I first set out on my pathway to becoming a novelist, a very highly regarded agent advised me to leave my academic background behind me. I knew what he meant: the meticulous research mustn’t show through in the finished product. However, from my point of view, those decades as an university researcher stand me in good stead when it comes to delving deep, sifting and sorting facts, and understanding science.
Of course, I’m well aware that at some point I shall have to put away my writing pen, my days as an author done. But it certainly won’t be because I’ve run out of subject matter! Medical ethics is very much alive and thriving.
Festival time
So far we’ve had a humorous take on Shakespeare (a World War II version of the classic play, All’s Well that Ends Well); an intriguing and delightful performance around the Tudor queens (by an American troupe!); a clever skit where Sherlock Holmes and his associate Watson, vie with each other to solve a crime in which Holmes himself is the supposed killer; an exploration of the issues of entrapment and abuse through a dark re-imagining of the infamous Grimm’s fairytale Rapunzel. Our teenage granddaughters, with their own cascades of beautiful hair, proving themselves observant, insightful critics and excellent company. Still to come: a wartime tear-jerker, a drama (paying homage to CS Lewis) exploring life and death decisions, a contemporary musical storytelling about the life of John the apostle viewed from his prison, a costumed Austentatious, and an adaptation of Pilgrim’s Progress. Good times.
But for me personally the highlight of my week was a special session at the Book Festival under the banner: Staying Well, which incidentally also explored the concept of entrapment. Male suicide has increased significantly over the last twenty years and statistics for self harm in the UK are the highest in Europe. My current novel revolves around mental health issues, so this one: Stepping Away from the Edge, was a definite must.
Two of the three speakers have themselves suffered from severe depression. Debi Gliori is a writer-illustrator of children’s books and she has created a wonderful collection of pictures which portray how she feels while depressed – feelings which can’t be captured in words, she says. Her talk was illustrated with these magical drawings. Author Matt Haig has captured the horrors of severe mental illness in words. His book, Reasons to Stay Alive, is receiving widespread acclaim. In the Garden Theatre Tent, he also relied on words and his own palpable emotion to speak about his suicidal experiences. The third speaker was psychologist Rory O’Connor who heads a team at Glasgow University specialising in suicide, and his talk gave the stark statistics and facts and latest thinking about both self harm and suicide.
It was fantastic to see the importance given to mental illness at this international book event – an excellent line-up of speakers from both sides of the couch; an extra long slot (90 minutes instead of the usual 60); a large audience listening sympathetically and contributing sensitively; a team of specialists available afterwards in the Imagination Lab for anyone with specific issues or questions (a steady stream of people headed in that direction in spite of the late hour).
As I stood admiring the magnificence of Edinburgh at night I couldn’t help but be glad that it was this city that had been the setting for another step towards equality between physical and mental illness.
Tragic deaths
It’s hard for healthy busy contented people to understand the mind of a youngster who will go to any lengths to be extremely thin; almost impossible to comprehend the anguish of their parents, powerless to halt the deadly progress. But that’s what I’ve been trying to do for my latest novel, so perhaps it’s not surprising that news of youngsters who die as a result of this craving hits me foursquare.
Serious eating disorders have a profound and devastating effect on both patient and family, and it’s well known that the death rate among young people with anorexia is frighteningly high. So exploitation of such vulnerable people seems particularly heinous.
This week saw the inquest into the death of 21-year-old Eloise Parry who, after years of bulimia, sent away for diet pills online to hasten the slimming process by speeding up her metabolism. They contained an industrial chemical, DNP (dinitrophenol) a dangerous toxic substance which is commonly used in explosives and dyes and pesticides. Online marketing describes it innocuously as ‘fat-burning’; experts agree it is not fit for human consumption.
So what persuades an intelligent person to acquire this unlicensed ‘medication’ in the first place, and what drives them to even exceed the recommended dose? Real desperation, distorted thinking, and perhaps too a level of naivety about the dangers of unlicensed drugs acquired online from companies with no scruples as to legality, purity, cleanliness or even authenticity.
Things certainly went catastrophically wrong for Eloise when she took 4 pills at 4am in the morning of April 12, (2 represents a fatal dose) and a further 4 when she woke up later that same morning. Shortly afterwards she drove herself to hospital, aware that she was in big trouble. She even sent a text message to one of her college lecturers at 11.31 saying she was afraid she was going to die, apologising for her stupidity. Her prediction sadly came true at 3.25 that same afternoon. Eloise is the sixth Briton to die in this horrible way – the body’s metabolism speeds up so violently that they burn up inside; nothing can be done to reverse it. What an appalling tragedy.
Eloise’s mother has appealed to others not to buy anything containing DNP. The coroner says he will write to the Government to recommend such products are not accessible. The Department of Health put out an urgent warning to the public. Interpol has issued a global warning. And yet there is clear evidence that some companies are still fraudulently importing this deadly substance under various guises heedless of the consequences.
Bad enough when the mental state of the young person drives them to starve themselves slowly. To have their susceptibility and fragility exploited so shamelessly is nothing short of evil.
Playing God
As a writer in the field of medical ethics myself, it behoves me to know how others portray these issues in fiction, whether they be script writers or novelists, so I’ve been keeping a tally for many years now.
The authors and editor of Playing God: Talking about Ethics in Medicine and Technology have clearly travelled a similar path, and it was this little book recently that took me back to my lists and collection of DVDs.
The sheer number of films surprised me, so by way of a change I thought I’d give you a summary of those I’ve noted which contribute an angle on the topics that fascinate me – alphabetically rather than supposed order of importance. Where possible I’ll link to the official trailers to give you a glimpse of what they’re like.
abortion:
assisted conception:
Maybe Baby (link to trailer not permitted in the UK)
cloning:
decisions about treatment:
dementia:
disease control:
drug use/misuse:
euthanasia/assisted death:
human experimentation:
medical paternalism/informed consent:
mental illness:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
organ transplantation:
patient rights and medical malpractice:
research malpractice:
saviour siblings/designer babies:
Wow! I’d have really appreciated this steer when I started out! But there again, maybe I value them more because I’ve accumulated them slowly over the years. If you know of others please do let me know. Just add a comment to this post or contact me via my website. 
Motherhood lost and found
Shutterstock image
How did you feel, I wonder, when you heard this past week about the bodies of 800 children in a septic tank in Western Ireland, stumbled upon by a group of teenagers in 1995 and now suspected to be the tip of a much larger iceberg? The site was formerly that of a home for unwed mothers between 1925 and 1961; decades during which illegitimacy carried a serious stigma, abortion was illegal, and infant mortality rates were high.
I’m old enough to distinctly remember the effects of backstreet abortions: the terrible sepsis, the mutilation, the deaths of young women, abandoned babies … I was a practising midwife in Scotland in the 1960s and worked in areas of multiple deprivation as well as a large specialist hospital, so I saw these things firsthand. Even after the Abortion law came into effect here in 1967, Irish girls had no such provision, so they came across the sea secretly for a way out of their dilemma.
This latest news story of the 800 bodies brought back long-buried memories and emotions for me; it was a harsh era riddled with double standards and hypocrisy. But it also reminded me of a book I’ve read much more recently: A Small Part of Me.
The author is Nöelle Harrison who’s spent the last two decades living and working in Ireland, where part of this story is set. Briefly, the novel tells of a family hedged about by these same harsh realities and customs, at once offering protection and driving them apart. Christina’s mother, Greta, left home without warning when her daughter was just six years old. Her mother’s best friend, Angeline, took over the maternal role and eventually became her stepmother. Now in her early thirties, Christina has reached a crisis in her own marriage, and she goes on the run with her younger son, Cian, to find her lost mother and offer her forgiveness.
Her journey takes her to the west coast of Canada where she meets Luke, a native Canadian with his own sorry tale of family breakdown and guilt. They are instantly attracted to each other, and he helps Christina find the place where her mother now lives, although sadly they arrive one day too late. Angelina follows Christina and Cian from Ireland to Canada, and she reveals a very different story from the one Christina has believed all her life. (I’m deliberately omitting colourful detail so as not to spoil the story if you plan to read it.)
It’s not the easiest of reads. It flips about between both the main characters’ points of view and in time, and until I got to know the characters, I confess I found it a trifle confusing. Not surprisingly: both Greta and Christina have mental health issues; both apparently failed as mothers; both ‘lost’ their children; both had troubled childhoods. However Harrison subtly captures the constraints and customs and mores of an earlier time, the prejudice, the naivety, the punitive laws and judgements, which had a very powerful effect on women there – the same ‘decency rules’ which underpin the real life story of that macabre graveyard which is now the subject of a police investigation.
Shutterstock image
I, for one, would not want to go back to those dark days when life was cheap and appearances were everything … although, it could be argued that today’s permissive attitude to abortion itself cheapens life. What do you think?
Guest interview: Linda Gillard
This week I’m bringing you my very first author interview on this blog.
Linda Gillard has just published her seventh novel – the fourth one she’s produced independently, and she’s achieving considerable success going solo. She first contacted me after I’d reviewed one of her books (A Lifetime Burning) and I’ve since benefited greatly from her generously shared experience of independent publishing. She’s one of those people who uses hard experiences positively, and I’m a great admirer of her personal courage as well as her writing, which is why I’ve chosen her as my debut guest author. Here she is talking to me about various aspects of her life and writing.
HMcH. Linda, you’ve had a number of varied careers before becoming a full time novelist – actress, journalist, primary school teacher. You’ve also known personal difficulties – mental illness, cancer. All experiences are valuable to authors, but how have your previous lives influenced your writing, would you say?
LG. I think my previous lives taught me to communicate effectively, using the minimum number of words. As a columnist I knew my features would be cut from the bottom up by sub-editors, so I learned to thwart them by writing to a word count. As an actress I learned how much can be conveyed in good dialogue and how eloquent silence can be. As a teacher and journalist, I learned it was essential to grab people’s attention. I think my previous jobs also taught me not to judge. That’s useful for a writer.
My ill health has made me look – at times desperately – for the positives. Perhaps that’s why I’m able to tackle some tough subjects without losing my readers.
HMcH. I personally like the heft you give several of your books by tackling weighty issues like mental illness, loss, social isolation. But what steps do you take to stop them deterring your readers?
LG. I send my characters to some very dark places, but I give them a torch and I make sure there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.
HMcH. A remote bolthole to escape to? Sounds like a writer’s dream! But you’ve actually lived in desolate spots. Does isolation really help creativity?
LG. It did for me. Or perhaps I should say, it helped with productivity. I lived on Skye for six years – alone for two of them – and produced four novels in that period. Silence is very important to me. I need to be able to hear my imaginary friends talking! I now live in a village near Inverness which is even quieter than my old home on Skye, but I don’t get so much uninterrupted time. I think that’s the key thing: being able to daydream without thoughts being interrupted. To think up a book, I need to get into a meditative state where I can enter an imaginary world and keep asking ‘What if…?’
HMcH. One of the best accolades readers can give is that one’s books are unputdownable. Yours are. What elements in your writing do you think create this quality?
LG. Thank you, Hazel. I’d given a lot of thought to this, even before I started writing. I first asked the question when I read Margaret Forster’s novels in the ’80s and ’90s. I noticed that if I glanced at p1 of a Forster novel, I couldn’t stop reading. Somehow she made it impossible for me to stop. (If you want to see what I mean, start reading Shadow Baby.) Forster writes commercial literary fiction, so the hook wasn’t action or sensation. I realised it was all to do with style, not content. Forster never wrote a boring sentence, nor an inelegant one. She made her novels really easy to read – so easy, I didn’t think about putting the kettle on or emptying the washing machine, I just kept reading. That’s what makes a book ‘unputdownable’. It’s not just wanting to know what happens next. I edit and polish until my sentences flow. I cut every word that isn’t earning its keep.
But something else that might contribute to the ‘unputdownable’ quality of my books is the fact that I rarely know what’s going to happen when I’m writing and I never know how a book will end. Writing fiction for me is a process of investigation, excavation even. I really want to know what happens next and I’m writing to find out. Maybe some of that curiosity and urgency conveys itself to the reader.
HMcH. I wouldn’t describe your books as romances in the usual sense but, I think I’m right in saying, they all have a romantic element. Some reviewers get sniffy about this kind of tangential reliance on crowd-pleasers. How would you reply to them?
LG. As I would like to reply to readers who leave me 1-star reviews: ‘I wasn’t writing for you.’
HMcH. Some of your books include ghosts; several of them revolve around haunted (in a looser ‘troubled’ sense) characters. Are these aspects allegorical or simply a plot choice?
LG. Ghosts or the concept of imaginary people appear in all my books, but I think what’s happened over the years is my interest in the paranormal has moved to the forefront of the story. But the ghosts can also be allegorical. Cauldstane (my latest novel) is my fictional response to my experience of breast cancer – it’s about fear and conquering fear. The malevolent ghost who affects (and infects) an entire family is for me a personification of cancer. Using a ghost as a plot device allowed me to write about my own ghastly experience without scaring off the reader – and that’s important. My first duty is to entertain. Unless I entertain, I’ll have no opportunity to debate or educate.
HMcH. Publishing can be a rather fraught business. You’ve tried several avenues, including latterly, self-publishing. Now you’ve done it, would you stay independent?
LG. Yes. I can’t imagine any circumstances now where I’d accept a traditional publishing deal. As an indie I’m now earning a decent living from my writing (something I never did when I was traditionally published), but that’s because I keep most of what I earn. To be sure, I’m weary of doing all my own editing, marketing, sales monitoring, etc., but my aim is to earn enough to pay an assistant to do the bits I don’t want to do.
Traditional publishing was coming between my books and their readers. Editors said my novels were ‘unmarketable’. Well, maybe they are, but I don’t market my novels, I market myself. ‘Linda Gillard’ is a brand now. My readers are buying a voice. They expect believable characters and a good yarn. They know I’ll be dealing with something I care about passionately, but the genre – and a lot else besides – might come as a surprise. They don’t mind. They trust me now not to let them down. This is a great privilege for a writer. It means I have the opportunity to experiment in a way that wouldn’t be possible if I were traditionally published.
HMcH. Thank you so much, Linda. And I wish you every success with your new book, Cauldstane, and improved health from here on.
For more information about Linda and her novels visit her website or her Amazon page.
(NB. The links are mine to enable you to find out more about what she says if you feel so inclined; Linda doesn’t talk in weblinks!)
Art and mental illness
Friday evening and here I am in the transformed square of the beautiful old Medical School where I so often patrolled in days of yore. 
I’m here to watch The Fantasist by Theatre Témoin. I met the producer, director and principal actor at the symposium on Thursday – another young company who combine art and storytelling around themes questioning contemporary social issues; other artists beating a similar drum to my own. So I simply had to fit this one in. And they very generously gave me a complimentary ticket. What an honour.
Theatre Témoin brought this production to the Fringe last year to excellent reviews, so it’s saying something that they’re back again this year with the same show. Playing to full houses again too. As with Killing Roger, The Fantasist includes puppetry to excellent effect. (It’s been a revelation to me understanding the special role puppets can play in these dramas, and a pleasure to see them employed with such skill.)
I’m on the front row so don’t miss a thing.
The basic story? Louise has bipolar disorder. We first meet her tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep. Her mental anguish is captured by inanimate objects doing crazy things and, though many in the audience reacted with laughter, the build up of atmosphere touched a more raw nerve for me. It’s scary entering the world of the mentally ill, and I’ve long been aware of the fine dividing line between sanity and insanity. I’ve hovered perilously close myself at times!
For Louise, the boundaries between the real and the fanciful grow increasingly blurred, and she becomes entangled in a relationship with a seductive stranger who opens up a world of exhilaration and magic to her. When he’s around she feels alive and ‘good‘. But to the onlooker, the destructive elements of her fantasies are all too evident.
Throughout, the metaphor of speed is used most effectively. The changing rhythm of the thrumming heartbeat. The calm slow empathy of the community psychiatric nurse, Josie, (‘my jovial jailkeeper‘) is a perfect foil to Louise’s manic behaviour and speech. Julia Yevnine – who plays Louise – is herself French and her ability to gabble deliriously in both languages is impressive: a furious game of ping-pong played on an express train. When depression strikes, the pain is palpable, Louise is immobile; Josie, and Louise’s friend, Sophie, speed up.
The endless seesawing of moods, the exhausting demands, the threat to relationships, the constant dread of falling into a dark chasm, the stranglehold the illness exerts, all are captured most effectively. At once mesmerising and impressive. And authentic, because Julia is utterly convincing – helped perhaps by her own firsthand experience of the illness (her mother has it).
I have several friends who have bipolar disorder, and I know the devastation it can wreak on families, so I’m delighted to see this illness portrayed so sympathetically, and to know from review comments that audiences are moved by the messages. This is exactly what we need.
Books, lists and preparations
Yesss! I had no less than three good excuses for sitting down for hours with a book In December, when I really should have been busy ticking things off the to-do list glaring at me from my desk. Three cast iron excuses to boot. 1. I’d just had a wisdom tooth extracted, and was under instruction to take things easy for a couple of days. 2. The roads were treacherous with snow and ice making it inadvisable to venture out. 3. The author of the said book is Linda Gillard, and after the year she’s had, I was keen to review her book before Christmas. Which reminds me … 4. The book’s set at Christmas time so the mood was exactly right for reading it in December.
House of Silence is Linda’s fourth novel, and although it once again features mental illness and dysfunctional families, it’s otherwise very different from the three earlier ones I’ve read. Good start. As you know, I’m somewhat allergic to formulaic writing.
Gwen Rowland is a wardrobe assistant for film and television productions. She’s good at it too. But she’s alone in the world.
Aunt Sam did booze, Sasha did drugs, and my Uncle Frank did men – boys if he could get them. This unholy trinity went down like ninepins in the ’90s, martyrs to over-indulgence. All three died tragically young of, respectfully, cirrhosis of the liver, a drugs overdose and AIDS … My mother, fond as she was of cliches, would have said, “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” And Sasha did.
Since the death of her mother, Gwen has dreaded Christmas with its appalling memories, and essential loneliness. So she finds it hard to understand why actor-boyfriend Alfie Donovan is reluctant to take her to Norfolk for his family celebrations. He has no choice but to go; it’s his duty to visit his mother and sisters. But why isn’t he appreciative of the richness of his own privilege – not just relatives, but a stately Elizabethan-manor-house home, and celebrity? Why isn’t he keen to share it?
Eventually Gwen wangles an invitation, though Alfie predicts it’ll be her ‘second-worst Christmas‘ ever. She warms instantly to the practical but eccentric sister Viv, and the scatty but creative Hattie, who still live at Creake Hall, but she grows increasingly disturbed by the changes in Alfie. Where is the family affection? What has made Rachel Holbrook, renowned children’s author, and their mother, hide in her room, granting only occasional audiences to visitors? Who is the mysterious gardener, Marek Zbydniewski, who sees right into Gwen’s soul? And what exactly is Hattie trying to tell her?
The cold and cavernous house is full of photographs and portraits, but they aren’t what they purport to be either. The sisters offer explanations for some of the discrepancies, but Gwen is growing increasingly mistrustful of everything about this family. Things just don’t add up. Who are they? And what secrets are they concealing? As she works on one of Hattie’s unfinished patchwork quilts, Gwen unravels more confusion and mystery that take her into a labyrinth of such complexity that the reader has to keep readjusting his or her own compass.
We’ve come to expect richness and depth in her characters from this author, who combines a light touch with thorough attention to detail. This time the layers of authenticity come from psychology, quilting, gardening, writing, acting, music. And although the underlying tale takes us into dark places of the mind, there’s plenty of light and shade, with eccentricities and humour providing the contrast and lifting the spirits.
So, the verdict? I enjoyed the book greatly. No difficulty sitting tight for a day and a half. Although, to be ultra-pernickety, I confess I’d personally have preferred a less tidied-up ending, and far fewer exclamation marks …! Sorry, Linda, but your prose is strong enough not to need them.
OK, review posted, now I can get back to that to-do list.
Decorate the house …
Wrap parcels …
Bake cakes … mull wine … Relax! I’m not going to bore you with humdrum domesticity. No, only wish you all peace and happiness whatever the season means to you.