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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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Breaking the cycle? The Bread the Devil Knead & Everything Calls for Salvation

5/11/2022

6 Comments

 
I was unsure how – or whether – I’d connect these two recent reads until I was pondering my response to this week’s flash fiction challenge. Although very different stories, both address how difficult it can be to find an escape route from repeating patterns of self-destructive behaviour. In the first, a woman approaching middle age faces up to her tendency to fall into abusive relationships. In the second, a young man admitted to a psychiatric ward wonders if his own future is written on the faces of his fellow patients, stuck in a cycle of relapse and remission. The wheels keep turning – will they manage to jump off?

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The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini

All Alethea got for Christmas was a load of licks from her boyfriend – and no, that's not a euphemism for sex. But she's sure Leo loves her – and he only hits her when he's angry, drunk or suspects she's seeing another man (she is). What more can she expect? She's been beaten by those close to her all her life.
 
But maybe this year, the year she turns forty, things are going to change. If only she can face the truth about her domestic situation. If only she can accept there are people around her who think she deserves more.
 
Yet it's tough. When her estranged brother re-enters her life he brings memories of her abusive childhood, memories she thought she'd escaped when she left home at seventeen.
 
Written in Alethea's rhythmic Trinidadian Creole, this is a painful yet optimistic story of a woman brought up in to think herself worthless, who finds the courage to discover her worth.

Everything Calls for Salvation by Daniele Mencarelli translated by Wendy Wheatley

Daniele is only twenty when the courts commit him to a week’s detention on a psychiatric ward. He’s had mental health problems for some time, but has never previously been hospitalised. He’s never previously seen his anxiety and anger get so out of hand, he’s traumatised his family.
 
Initially suspicious of the other men in the six-bedded dormitory, Daniele gradually makes friends. The other patients – the three who can communicate, that is – are much wiser, and more sympathetic than the nurses or doctors. When a crisis flares, the patients understand the reasons better than the staff.
 
I suppose this would be classed as auto fiction, since it’s so closely tied to the author’s personal experience that he gives his main character’s name. Having worked in mental health services, and having recently published novella in which a young woman of a similar age is also hospitalised against her will, I have a particular interest in this theme. That it was set in Italy was an added bonus: when I was involved in the asylum closures of the 1980s and 90s, the Italian system was considered particularly progressive. Daniele’s experience in 1994 suggests that things were not as rosy as the academic papers implied.
 
Nearly thirty years later, it seems that we still need to be shown that psychiatric patients are people and that medicine doesn’t have all – or even many of – the solutions to emotional distress. Perhaps that partly accounts for why this novel was awarded the 2020 Youth Strega Prize and has been serialised by Netflix.
 
Thanks to Europa editions for my review copy. Follow the link for more reviews of novels set in psychiatric hospitals.
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The first and second chapters of my new novella Stolen Summers, feature a revolving door at the entrance to my fictional asylum. For while, I considered Revolving Doors as a potential title for the book. Of course, it’s been used before, but so has Stolen Summers and I’d argue the concept is a good fit for a book about historical psychiatric treatment, or mistreatment. In the past, we even used the term ‘revolving door patients’ to refer to those who cycled through a dispiriting sequence of discharge and admission because they didn’t get the support they needed outside.

Stuck in the revolving door
 
When the vestibule is clear of people, Matty enters the space and nudges the metal bar. The compartment advances, and she with it, the brush-rimmed verticals making a satisfying shush. When open-air supplants curved walls, she stops and stands before the outside world. Five steps would take her to the rose bed but, although her nose would welcome a sniff of perfume, her feet refuse to leave the building unaccompanied. Another day, perhaps. Back through the revolving doors to the foyer. Back to the ward. Back to the empty life of the long-stay patient. Back to what she knows.

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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
6/11/2022 11:08:15 am

Hi Anne,
Your flash is very much Matty in Stolen Summers. Even when not in an 'asylum', we sometimes have to cycle through thoughts and experiences before we have the courage to move on and smell the new roses.
The way you get into the mind of your characters to give them such depth and authenticity never ceases to amaze me.
Anne, I'm pretty sure I am no longer receiving notifications of your posts and can't see anywhere to resubscribe. Have you changed your settings or is it a WP thing? I haven't meant to ignore your posts, I've just been so busy that I've concentrated on notifications I receive in my email, and fall terribly behind even there. Sorry.
I meant to say, too, how much I enjoyed Stolen Summers. Heartbreakingly brilliant, but hopeful.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
9/11/2022 10:23:17 am

Yeah, so easy to get stuck in those revolving doors.
Sorry you're not getting notifications. I'm not sure how these things work but the subscribe thing is still there in the sidebar although quite low down, just before the tweets.
Thanks for reading SS and so glad you enjoyed it.

Reply
Norah Colvin
20/11/2022 10:16:15 am

Sadly, I couldn't resubscribe, Anne. First I was told it wasn't secure but went ahead and filled in my information anyway. Then I got an error message to tell me that it was malformed and couldn't be repeated. So, I guess I just remember to visit each week so I can stay in touch. It's worth it! 💖

Anne Goodwin
20/11/2022 02:11:40 pm

Sorry about that, Norah, so frustrating. I guess another reason I ought to be on wordpress :(
I'm mostly posting once a week now, no fixed day, but it's with the FF prompt, so you could always wait for that to come out to find me.
Thanks for your persistence.

D. Avery link
13/11/2022 01:15:48 am

That flash is a poignant scene representing all the Matties who have been conditioned to play it safe and stay inside.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
14/11/2022 03:47:26 pm

Yeah, she's certainly not alone in her anxieties. Thanks.

Reply



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