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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

At home in the asylum: Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss

10/8/2016

6 Comments

 
Not long after their marriage, Tom and Ally must spend several months apart. He goes to Japan to oversee the building of earthquake-proof lighthouses and falls in love with the culture. She, a newly qualified doctor, an unusual profession for a woman in 1880s Britain, stays in Cornwall to volunteer at the asylum until, unable to bear the gap between her own ideals and the often brutal treatment of the inmates, she flees to Manchester and the madhouse of her childhood home. She runs from there to her aunt’s house in London and wonders, with her mother’s voice chiming in her head, whether she will ever be fit to work again. When the paper she publishes on the possible social causes of insanity is well received, she’s invited back to Cornwall to serve as medical director of a new convalescent home to support women to make the transition from the hospital back to their communities. It’s just when she seems to have found her feet that Tom returns from his travels. He’s also changed and, like Kirsten and Rabih in The Course of Love, it looks as if their different ways of turning away from hurt will bring their marriage to an end before it’s properly begun.

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Signs for Lost Children contains enough material for at least three books in the pair’s emotional journey, both separately and together. I must admit, however, that although I enjoyed reading about Tom’s time in Japan, and recognised the childlike dependency and terrible fear of making a faux pas one feels when staying with a family whose language and culture one doesn’t share, I didn’t see the parallel with his wife’s position (and was even a little irked at moving back and forth between the two strands) until pointed out towards the end how professional women at the time were equally hypervigilant “strangers in a strange land” (p348). Poignant as it was, neither did the story of the marriage have the impact it might have done without knowing what brought them together. (I understood belatedly that Signs for Lost Children is part of a series, so it’s possible that this was covered in the previous book.) Take that as my excuse for focusing primarily on the story of Dr Aletha Moberley Cavendish.

I’m gradually building a collection of novels set in institutions, which will hopefully feed into my much-neglected WIP. Set around the time of Let Me Tell You about a Man I Knew, what strikes me particularly about Sarah Moss’s novel is the continuity between her dilemmas and those we grappled with a hundred years later discharging people safely from long term psychiatric care. In the Truro asylum, Ally finds compassion battling with the sometimes repressed fear of the patients and their states of mind, and the perverted pride of some of the attendants in their confrontational attitudes that serve to escalate the disturbance (and provide them the opportunity to feel skilled and sane and its management). It’s no place for an idealist, especially one whose mother considers her training and choice of specialism an indulgence.

Ally’s character is the perfect example of the type of person drawn to the self-imposed impossible task. Brought up by an emotionally cold mother, full of self-denial and hard work on behalf of the poor but with no love left over for her daughters, and by a father who’s absented himself from family life by absorption in his art, and still grieving her sister’s death ten years before, the concept of good enough is a complete unknown. At a time when it’s “not primarily medical care that is lacking but the most basic elements of public health” (p142) and in an area in which needs are infinite, she can’t easily find satisfaction in a job well done. As a child, her anxieties were met with cruelty (p158) (WARNING: you might want to skip this bit if you’re feeling fragile):

Words and a candle flame offered on her tenth birthday. Show me how you can bear pain, Aletha. Show me how you can choose to endure.


Lying hands at her sides with her skirts lifted for Mamma and Dr Henry to apply blisters. The best cure for weak nerves, Aletha. Pray refrain from that hysterical gasping.


so it’s understandable that, having made the mistake of returning to the place of torment, she not only blames herself for not coping, but causes herself further harm. That fear of a mother that complicates the process of leaving home to become oneself is the subject of my short story "Had to Be You".

Along with Playthings, another historical novel on the asylum, Signs for Lost Children well deserved its place on the Wellcome book prize shortlist. Thanks to Granta books for my review copy.

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.
6 Comments
Norah Colvin link
11/8/2016 12:55:58 pm

Thanks for this review, Anne. It sounds like it may not stand so well alone, without the previous book to explain some of the events leading to those in this one. You are certainly building up a library of books set in psychiatric institutions. Interesting that one who was damaged in childhood has sought to support others in adulthood. I guess that might be often so, but I wonder why. I think part of my decision to be a teacher was to make the experience for others better than what it had been for me. While the book does seem to contain quite a bit that I would find interesting - building lighthouses in the 1880s! I don't think I'll add it to my list right now.

Reply
Annecdotist
11/8/2016 05:24:12 pm

I did enjoy it without having read the previous novel, Norah, and perhaps it’s testament to my involvement in the characters that I wanted to know more. Interestingly, several readers have asked me if I was doing a follow-up to Sugar and Snails. The first time, I was really surprised but it had never crossed my mind. The second time, I still dismissed it because I’m not particularly keen on series myself as a reader. Yet today, after attending a lively book group on Tuesday, I’ve been thinking about the characters and wondering for all of them, not just Diana, what’s next.
I think we go back to situations that evoke our childhood conflicts because the dynamics are familiar, even when they’re not particularly good for us. We can also, especially in the human services, try to put right, through helping others, what didn’t work for us. When we are aware of this, or have some other way of doing it with humility, it can be really healthy all round (which seems to me to be what you’re doing), but unresolved issues can lead to us going into it heavy-handedly, trying to make it perfect, damaging ourselves and/or the service recipients in the process. It was good for Ally that she finally found a way of rehabilitating both herself and the psychiatric patients.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
13/8/2016 08:47:16 am

A follow-up to Sugar and Snails. Now there's a thought. It could be very interesting to find out what happens after ... I'd certainly be interested in reading if you were to write it.
I have read some series - a few by Alexander McCall Smith - which I thoroughly enjoyed and couldn't wait to get the next one. I can't think of any other series at the moment. Children seem to get very excited about books in a series and have to read them all. Although I don't think all series are equal, it's a good thing to get kids reading.
I appreciate your explanation of reasons why some children hurt in childhood may go into service in adulthood. Thank you.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/8/2016 04:58:11 pm

Children and book series, my mind inevitably tends to Harry Potter. It’s funny how it just isn’t on my radar but apparently there’s a new something or other out right now which is commandeering booksellers’ complete attention.
There’s a fascinating (to me) literature on work as an attempt at reparation for childhood loss/lack but I don’t think it’s very accessible, mostly in psychoanalytic journals.

Reply
Sarah link
14/8/2016 05:01:48 pm

You find the most intriguing books, Anne. (Though I do wish I had heeded your warning and skipped that excerpt. Well-written but horrid.) As always, great review.

Reply
Annecdotist
15/8/2016 07:40:14 am

This one's been discussed a fair bit in the uk, Sarah, and most bloggers are on to her next one!
Sorry, about that extract, so much horror in those few lines. Yuck, but powerful writing.

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