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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

Madness or reason? Ghosting by Jonathan Kemp

11/4/2015

14 Comments

 
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She knows it’s futile to try to explain what’s going on inside her – she can’t even explain it to herself – so she makes no more reference to it, focusing instead on giving the best impression of herself she can.

One of the most painful aspects of mental distress and disorder can be the inability of other people to acknowledge the lived experience, the need to cover up for their sake an additional strain on an already fragile psyche. So no wonder Grace is relieved when her husband, Gordon, leaves her alone on their narrow-boat home to go on a fishing trip with a friend. A couple of days earlier Grace saw what she took to be the ghost of her deceased first husband, Pete, her deepest and most disturbing love. Gordon, fearing a repeat of the breakdown that had her hospitalised following the death of her teenage daughter, Hannah, wants her to go to the doctor. Grace herself just wants time to revisit the memories of the handsome man who used to beat her, and the daughter who withdrew into the solace of illegal highs.

The young man Grace takes for a ghost turns out to be very real, a performance artist named Luke. As she gets to know him and his friend, Linden, a painter, she wanders for a while – like Alice through Wonderland – in a youth culture of drugs, gender-crossing and creativity, so different to her own late adolescence of marriage and children. This adventure proves the catalyst for her own awakening as, a few days short of her sixty-fifth birthday, Grace finally comes of age:

Have you ever daydreamed about just packing up and sodding off somewhere? Not telling anyone where you’re going? Escaping your life. Starting again. That’s how I feel. Like being someone else for a change. (p173)

Despite a couple of niggles – I was surprised at the use of a straitjacket in a psychiatric hospital in the 1980s – I found in this novel a convincing and poignant account of the reason underlying madness, as well as inspiring portrait of an older woman reclaiming her life. This is my first review for Myriad Editions and, if Ghosting is typical of their output, I look forward to doing many more. Thanks to them for my copy.

I so love the notion of that later-life coming-of-age. And what do you know, it happens to chime perfectly with the latest flash fiction challenge from Charli Mills, to write a 99-word renewal story that proclaims, “This isn’t the end; I will go on.” Mired right now in the struggle to capture the essence of my forthcoming novel, Sugar and Snails, in an enticing 150-word blurb, I thought first of my character, Diana, as she adds the lemons life serves her to a refreshing gin and tonic. But although hers is undoubtedly the story of a woman rising from the ashes of her bruised former self, Grace’s experience of the mental hospital pointed me to my current WIP, itself in need of renewal having been neglected since I completed the fast first draft almost three months ago.

The programme of resettling longstay psychiatric patients into the community that peaked in Britain in the 1990s has had a bad press, undeservedly in my opinion, and, while in my embryo novel on the subject things don’t run smoothly, I wanted to acknowledge how liberating it has been for some people in this week’s flash:

“Ooh, it’s a dinky house!”

Janice had learnt to expect the unexpected in social work. “You mean a Wendy house?”

Matty fixed her gaze on the ceiling rose. Was it the voice that insisted she was a princess, the voice only she could hear?

“I know it’s small, but could you imagine living here?”

Matty giggled. Janice sighed. Perhaps the psychiatrists were right, perhaps Matty was too old, too institutionalised to move on.

“It’ll feel more homely with a few ornaments and pictures,” Janice persisted.

Matty’s eyes brimmed with tears. “You mean it? I could have my own home?”

Thanks for reading. I look forward to your feedback whether you feel this works or not.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
14 Comments
Charli Mills
11/4/2015 04:51:50 pm

Fascinating book review. I love the idea of renewing oneself later in life -- that renewal knows no age! I was thinking what a perfect story in light of the prompt at Carrot Ranch, then read you already headed that same direction.

Your story makes my heart twinge. I wonder if Matty listens to the voice that tells her she's a princess because it's too difficult to face the ongoing boredom and imprisonment of institutionalization. In the US, there is a disturbing history of eugenics and the creation of the label "moron" which institutionalized vulnerable children and adults. Have you ever read, "The State Boys Rebellion"? I got interested through historical research when I lived in MN because there had been so many state hospitals for the "feeble minded," which were eventually dismantled. Yet, thousands are buried in overgrown fields where these institutions once stood, marked by only a number.

When I read your flash, I see that mental clarity come out of the fog on the hope it might be a true -- a place of one's own.

Alas, you remind me of my own first draft, hibernating at the moment.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/4/2015 04:18:25 am

Thanks for these comments, helps revive my interest in my WIP. Yes, Matty's story is extremely tragic, and what the psychiatrists see as delusions are her way of protecting herself from the knowledge of what's happened to her.
The institutionalisation of children with learning disabilities is in some ways even more tragic – the children with the greatest need for close attention given the least! I haven't read that book but there were one or two published here (the names of which I used to know but aren't in my head right now) that sound similar, pushing public opinion to press for change. It also sounds like Peyton Marshall's novel, Goodhouse.
I'm sure you'll pick up your own WIP again soon enough, Charli, and think of all you've achieved when you haven't been working on it!

Reply
Norah Colvin link
11/4/2015 11:11:13 pm

A perfect book review to support your flash; and always your asides and interpretations of the situations to which they allude make for good reading. I'm not sure if I would read this one. Sometimes the issues in novels like this are too close to life to be read with enough dispassion.
But your flash is great. Sad, but very well written. You have captured the ambivalence of both characters. Matty who is not quite sure if she is to have a home of her own, could she/would she be able to pull it off. Janice shares her fears, aware of Matty's limitations and vulnerability. But those with the power set the rules and expectations with little regard for the needs of the individuals or the opinions of the experienced professionals - a situation that is all too true in fields such as yours and mine. You have told much in these few words. Well done.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/4/2015 04:23:38 am

Glad you enjoyed it, Norah. Actually, despite The very real anxieties about the deinstitutionalisation movement, it was one area where the objectives of politicians and the professionals coincided, albeit for different reasons, It was a good time to work in mental health, there was a lot of creativity and interesting research, as well as optimism (sometimes too much optimism) for the future. However, the patients and their families, although consulted and treated with compassion through the process, didn't have a real choice – the institutions were closing and that was that.

Reply
sarah link
12/4/2015 07:36:20 am

Holy wow. I'm struck by this: "She knows it’s futile to try to explain what’s going on inside her – she can’t even explain it to herself – so she makes no more reference to it, focusing instead on giving the best impression of herself she can."

This sounds disturbing but utterly intriguing. I agree--the later in life coming of age is interesting. I like it.

Great flash. I echo Charli's comment on this.

Hibernating WIPs... I know that feeling, too. It must be a theme around the ranch. :-(

Reply
Annecdotist
13/4/2015 04:26:20 am

Thank you, Sarah, glad you liked that quote. I really think it's major contributor to mental illness when people lack the language, and the support to find the language, to articulate their distress.
I think my WIP's always tend to wake up in the winter and hibernating the summer, and a break is always a good thing I feel.

Reply
Luccia Gray link
12/4/2015 08:56:39 am

Great review and lovely flash. It's simple. It only takes a new room to start a new life, as long as you're comfortable.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/4/2015 04:27:33 am

Thank you, Lucy. I agree, a new place is an opportunity for a new start, but I think for Matty she needs not just the room but the support to make it hers.

Reply
geoff link
12/4/2015 03:32:44 pm

First the flash and how good is this one. It is so sad at the end but the best bit are the two women, not realising they actually want the same thing and how close they are to failing to achieve the solution that s hanging there. It's tat narrow escape that hit you so hard for it is so easy to imagine how that might have gone the other way.
The review itself puts me in mind of a lot, actually. There's a scene in Graham Swift's Last Orders that takes place in a home and for some reason resonates. Two yeas ago, in Edinburgh, there were a number of challenging plays, some set I Broadmoor and one about a long term patient who famously had his hippocampi removed in the 1950s to treat his severe epilepsy and thereafter remembered nothing the moment after it happened but remembered everything before the op - he was about 30 when it happened. After he died, his brain was dissected live on the internet I think.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/4/2015 04:31:56 am

Thank you, Geoff, it seems to have sparked some interesting associations. That Broadmoor play sounds scary, but I did know some people who'd had their brains played around with in such a way. Epilepsy is difficult though – if someone was almost continually fitting I think they'd try anything. But to lose the capacity to make new memories – it's a lot to give up. Reminds me of SJ Watson's first novel Before I Go to Sleep.

Reply
Jeanne
14/4/2015 05:30:40 pm

Beautiful flash--the poignancy of HOUSE and HOME! For me this definitely "works."
And interesting comments. Just finished a book by a neurosurgeon called When the Air Hits Your Brain, in which he describes the case of a "pretzel woman" contorted, assumed to have succumbed to dementia, and locked in a nursing home for two years. On a whim, the doctor does an MRI and discovers a large mass pressing into the left side of her brain. Once removed, the woman's limbs relax and she resumes the intellectually active life she had led previously. So many problems with mental illness, not the least of what to do with those who suffer from it. Institutionalization seems a remedy least likely to promote mental health.

Annecdotist
16/4/2015 04:48:12 am

Thank you, Jeanne. Gosh, that story is amazing. Just shows we should never give up on people. How wonderful for her to the finally set free!

Jeanne Lombardo link
16/4/2015 09:25:30 am

There was so much more to respond to in your review Anne. Realized I went off on my own little story :-) But the themes Ghosting explores are certainly ones all women--and not just we women of a certain age--will resonate with. (Some men, too I expect!) Women seem to be coming into their own, and that includes older women formerly rendered invisible (as a 70ish friend once complained) by the retirement of the ovaries from active duty. Wrapping this around the element of madness and reason--great. The pain we suffer through life should make everyone lose their reason from time to time. (BTW, everyone remembers Nietzsche's claim that "there is always some reason in madness." The first part of that quote is "There is always some madness in love.") As for your WIP, loved adding "the lemons to her refreshing gin and tonic." That's the spirit!

Reply
Annecdotist
17/4/2015 05:25:41 am

Ah, Jeanne, but I just love it when my posts spark unexpected associations that take us to new places. I really appreciate you sharing.
I think they'll be always people who want to deny the personhood of the older woman but I think we have more opportunities to carve a niche for ourselves these days. Nevertheless, there can be a tendency to make people feel mad for wanting more which, as you say, is captured so well in this novel.
As for my character, Diana's pretty low when she has that gin and tonic but she finds her own path in the end.

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