Tag: madness

Books read in 2015 – 11. Shutter Island – Dennis Lehane (Contains Spoilers)

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Genre: Crime, Madness

Narrative Style: Third person51LCaxGm-UL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_

Rating: 5/5

Published: 2004

Format:Paperback

Synopsis: Teddy Daniels has arrived on Shutter Island with his partner to investigate the disappearance of one of the patients. From the very beginning, things don’t seem quite right to Teddy who already has suspicions about what goes on at the hospital. Things are definitely not as they seem but is it Teddy who is delusional or the hospital that is keeping secrets from him.

I had already seen the film of Shutter Island but it was so affecting that when I realised that it was based on a novel, I was excited to read it even though I knew what the ending was. I do wish that I could have read it blind but I suppose it would be similar to my feelings at the end of the film. Watching the film, I was completely taken in by Teddy and was absolutely shocked when it turns out that he is the lost patient. Reading the book, I was not taken in in the same way but there was a new delight to be had; spotting the clues that Lehane gives to the reader about the true nature of Teddy’s character.

The style of writing was almost typical crime writing with a certain detachment from the subject matter. And at first, Teddy seems like a typical crime fighter – all macho, having seen things in the war that no one should see. However, as the novel progresses, he becomes both more paranoid and more emotional. He starts to lose his grip on reality. If you were reading this without knowledge of the film then it would be perfectly easy to be led along by his decline – to believe that he has stumbled across some great conspiracy. Lehane makes us believe in Teddy that much. Having seen the film, I felt I was a bit less involved than I might have been but this is in no way Lehane’s fault.

The ending is just as affecting even though I knew what was coming. Teddy slowly comes to the realisation that he is the one who has killed his wife and his is the lost patient. The hospital have taken a huge risk – taking him off his medication – in order to try and force him to see the truth. If Teddy cannot face reality then he will be lobotomized – something his doctors do not want. The flicker of hope that the reader feels when Teddy acknowledges his crime is quickly extinguished when in the final chapter, he is back in his delusion and he can see the porters coming to take him away.

The ending of the novel raises the question of how to deal with patients like Teddy. Even though he killed his wife, I felt a great deal of sympathy for him. His elaborate fantasy was due to his inability to accept what he had done, not only to his wife but what he allowed to happen to his children as well. His sense of self was destroyed by the crime. So he could spend the rest of his life in his delusion or he could be lobotomised. Neither option offers much hope.

Books Read in 2015 – 4. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys

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Genre: Post-Colonial, Feminist, Classics

Narrative Structure: Various first person accounts

Rating: 3/5481558

Published: 1966

Format: Paperback

Synopsis: This tells the back story of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre. It starts with her childhood and her mother’s story and then moves to tell the story from Rochester’s point of view when he meets her and then she resumes the story when they are in England. 

Reading Challenges: TBR Challenge

Time on Shelf: This is one of those books that has been on my metaphorical shelf for a long time. Although I only bought this copy about three years ago, I first heard of Rhys’ novel about twenty years ago when I was doing my first degree. 

I enjoyed this less than I expected to. It wasn’t a bad story but I expected to love it and I just didn’t. Maybe that was the problem.

I didn’t really take to Antoinette as a narrator although she did not narrate the entire novel. The first part is from her point of view and again, certain parts are narrated  by her later in the novel. As a child, she watches her mother’s life ruined by her marriage and the hatred of fellow islanders. The family fall prey to violent attacks, one of which results in a fire that kills Antoinette’s brother and sends her mother into madness. Her husband is unable to understand and instead hides his wife away. This foreshadows Antoinette’s experience with Rochester (although he is never actually named).

Rochester narrates the next part and it is quickly clear that while he is sexually attracted to Antoinette, he does not love her and the marriage has been for money. He does not understand or even try to understand his new wife and she resorts to Obeah ( a sort of voodoo) to try and control him. He falls prey to the gossip of Daniel who claims to be Antoinette’s illegitimate brother who impugns Antoinette’s reputation and demands money to be kept quiet. There is a clear gulf between the two, caused mostly by the patriarchal society in which they live and the fact that Antoinette with her Creole heritage fits in with neither the black Jamaican nor the White Europeans.

At first, I felt a bit sorry for Rochester. He seemed as much a victim of the time as Antoinette but then he began to act more cruelly towards her – openly committing adultery, for example – I realised that while he had been used, he was still the one who was ultimately in control of the situation. He had all the power, Antoinette had to resort to black magic to try and gain some control.

Finally, they arrive in England and Antoinette has control of the narrative again. Now she is clearly unbalanced and her husband adds to this by keeping her locked in the attic. However, she manages to roam around the house at night like a dream reminder of Rochester’s casual cruelty. She dreams of setting fire to the house and the novel ends as she seems about to bring this dream into reality.

The final part was probably the most successful. I’m not sure that Rhys really captured Rochester’s voice or convinced me of his motivations. Antoinette’s narration was most successful when she was maddest and about to exact her revenge. Ultimately I didn’t feel much about the ending or all the way through really. There is no doubt that this is a clever novel but it left me feeling a little cold.

Books Read in 2014 – 29. Rabbits in the Garden by Jessica McHugh

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Genre: Horror, Madness

Narrative Style: Third person chronological10504227

Rating 1/5

Format: Kindle

Published 2011

Synopsis: Life is perfect for Avery – she is in love with her best friend, Paul, and he loves her too. They have just shared a first kiss. However, trouble starts
when Avery’s mother finds out about the liaison and is determined to stop her daughter from taking the wrong path.

It’s not often that I give a book 1 star. Usually because if something is that bad, I don’t finish it. I’ve always hated doing that and even more so now that I add books on Goodreads. I feel obliged to get to the end. Even if, like this novel, it is a real struggle.

I picked this book because I liked the sound of the story and because it has a lot of good reviews. And it did start well with the appearance of Avery’s mother’s madness being quite well executed.

However, it went downhill fast. Events are easy to spot and there were little in the way of surprises. For example, when Natalie meets a handsome stranger, it is obvious that it is Paul. When she mentions that they did not use a condom, it obvious that she will be pregnant. When Avery’s mother appears the next morning, just in time to tell them of their real identities, it all just seems like a bit too big a coincidence. The whole novel is like that. events and characters are bent to the plot with no care as to whether that seems likely or not.

There are pages of unlikely dialogue which slow the action down. The characters often sound like they are spouting platitudes rather than having a conversation. it was like reading a bad made for TV film.

Even the ending was not that satisfying. There was never any doubt that Avery would win in the end. The lack of narrative tension was one reason why I struggled to finish this. Everything moves in Avery’s favour. The police do not find her. She manages to escape. She will live happily ever after. Even though she does suffer setbacks – like the loss of Paul – it never daunts Avery and the reader knows exactly how things will come to pass.

 

 

 

Eclectic Reader Challenge – Memoir – Girl Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen

On By kepagewriterIn Eclectic Reader Challenge3 Comments

I have always been interested in reading about madness so when I signed up to do the Eclectic Reader Challenge, I decided to use Girl Interrupted for the memoir category as I had been meaning to read it for a bit. I had re-read The Bell Jar not so long ago and was interested to see what comparisons there would be in Kaysen’s memoir of the same hospital, in roughly the same era.

And there were some similarities. Both Plath and Kaysen seem distanced IMG_0045from life, unable to envisage the future or find joy in the things that were supposed to be joyful for girls their age. The difference came in the fact that Kaysen’s life outside of the asylum is not shown, simply the time she spent in hospital and, of course, in the fact that Kaysen survived to be able to look back on this period of her life.

Kaysen does not seem particularly insane. A lot of the time, her voice is reasonable with the odd descent into hysteria. Even then, like when she demands to know how long she has been unconscious during a tooth extraction and no one will tell her, there is something understandable about it. Maybe you or I wouldn’t continue to obsess about it but it was surely a reasonable request.

The ward is described in unrelenting detail and it is possible to imagine the horror of it. Every minute of their lives are accounted for. But what really comes across is the relationships between the women and the way they help each other. There are casualties along the way but there is no time to mourn and perhaps dwelling on it would be too difficult.

Towards the end of the book, Kaysen includes the description of her diagnosis – Borderline Personality – from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III and reflects on whether it was apt and whether she has recovered. For me, this was the most interesting part of the book. She is finally allowed to leave the hospital, not because she is cured, but because she has a marriage proposal. It does seem that a lot of the problem was to do with the narrow opportunities for women at that time. One of the symptoms of Borderline Personality is social contrariness which seems to point to social causes rather than medical ones. The fact that she is released in order to get married reinforces this fact.

Kaysen’s conclusions about her own madness reflect how I imagine a lot of people feel about themselves, a constant checking to make sure that we are not that crazy, an internal questioning and striving for normality that may evade us to a greater or lesser extent. She didn’t seem out and out crazy, more like there but for the grace of god type crazy. The sort of crazy you could imagine going.