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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

Hunger, madness and incarceration: Dark Water by Elizabeth Lowry

28/12/2018

13 Comments

 
Twenty-one-year-old Hiram Carver, assistant surgeon on the USS Orbis in 1833, senses something special about William Borden when he first sees him on board. The sailor exudes a quiet dignity that his upper-class superior officers seem to lack. So when he hears the story of Borden’s heroism in saving the lives of four men cast adrift for two months in an open boat following a mutiny, his admiration grows.
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Yet there’s a savagery underneath Borden’s placid surface, which suddenly erupts in his tearing an officer’s throat with his teeth. Disturbing as this is, it’s perhaps less unsettling to the crew, and to this reader, than the events that preceded it when Carver is required to participate in a flogging[1] by throwing salt water on the victim’s back between each lash.
 
Borden’s reputation, along with Carver’s insistence that he’s ill, absolves him of a similar punishment, or worse, although he is locked up for the remainder of the voyage. Ordered to care for him, Carver is glad of release from the madness of the naval routines although, spending his days in the dark with no-one but his patient, he soon becomes sick himself.
 
Returning home to his parents and sister in Boston, Carver’s sense of alienation continues until his father, a doctor with powerful connections, secures him a position at the nearby asylum. The regime, based on a paternalistic kindness reminiscent of moral treatment pioneered by William Tuke at York (England), seems healthier than that on board ship, although discipline and hierarchy is still maintained (p101):
 
We create a wholesome environment. We encourage order and regularity in whatever our patients undertake. We are kind and respectful. Where practicable, we avoid coercion and unnecessary physical restraint. We provide a judicious moral management of the problem. And we do not – we absolutely do not – engage with our residents’ disordered mental processes.
 
But Carver has his own ideas including, predating Freud, delving into the dark waters of what we must take for the unconscious, to uncover the traumatic memories he believes the patient has repressed. When William Borden is admitted to the institution, Dr Carver can’t resist dabbling, inspired by a mixture of curiosity, arrogance and empathy, and a desire to please Miss Macy, Borden’s fiancée, the Quaker heiress from Nantucket who is paying for his care.
 
Like Arthur Bourne in London a century later (see Jott), Hiram Carver has dark waters of his own. There’s a hollowness at the core of his personality, presumably due to maternal neglect, to which he responds in some years by overindulging, in others by substantially curtailing his calorific intake. This causes him both to empathise with Borden’s starvation on the lifeboat – and with his horror when, prior to his outburst of bestiality on the Orbis, the men are informed their rations are to be drastically reduced – and fail to follow the story to its logical conclusion.
 
He’s also in denial about his sexual appetite and, although the reader notes his attraction to Ruth Macy is little different to his attraction to her fiancé, about his jealousy of other couplings which, like that of the parents who made him, inevitably shut him out. While his narration manages to evoke our sympathy, despite his failings, for the most part, Carver’s jealousy leads him to treat his sister in a manner that’s hard to forgive.
 
Despite his blinkeredness in some respects, Carver’s musings on madness are enlightened both for his time and ours. He’s open to acknowledging the arbitrary distinction between sanity and insanity (such as when a religiously deluded patient observes that an attendant treats the floor she cleans obsessively as her God) and the fear of chaos common to both (p128):
 
I began to suspect that what we called madness was just this – terror, a very proper holy terror at the soiled and intractable nature of the world.
 
In conversation with Miss Macy, he shows insight into his own part in this (p214):
 
I sense terror in the everyday. And I don’t believe that we’ve solved the problem of how to live, that we’ve made that terror safe, merely by going along with the old ways and the old forms. We should be free to question, should be free to reinvent, should be free to feel that terror, the terrible freedom of being uncertain – but we aren’t; we cling to our false certainty and call it freedom, and we can’t see that what we’ve really created out of freedom is a prison.
 
Incarceration, along with hunger, and the location of madness, is this complex and multilayered novel’s third theme. It begins with the ship and, of course, is most evident in the asylum, but class, gender, marriage, love and labels (such as hero or doctor) also serve to constrain. Carver struggles against the rule that bars visitors from the asylum but, in this as with the other prisons, it’s never quite clear for whose protection this is meant. On the domestic front, he childishly denies his sister the use of their deceased father’s study as a retreat for pregnant women – a more positive interpretation of confinement he is unable to tolerate.
 
Elizabeth Lowry’s ambitious second novel dives into the dark waters of human psychology, and the social structures we build to attempt to contain it, to net pearls of both wisdom and language. Although deep, it wears its erudition lightly, with plenty of story to keep us turning the page. Thanks to Riverrun for my review copy; fortunately there’s still room on my favourites shelf for another book of the year.


[1] Although this barbaric punishment features in Snowflake, my current WIP, it was difficult to take, especially immediately after encountering it in The Walrus Mutterer

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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.
13 Comments
Norah Colvin link
1/1/2019 11:20:31 am

There are aspects to this story that I think I'd enjoy, Anne, and others that would make me shudder. I'm interested that you rate it highly and that it seems to meet your criteria for dealing with mental health issues. I also noted that some of Carver's issues may have resulted from maternal neglect (abandonment), a favourite topic of yours and the importance of which I agree with you. Thanks for your insightful review.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
1/1/2019 04:32:04 pm

Thanks, Norah, and happy New Year!
As I said in the review, the flogging scene is difficult to read – other abuses on board ship are only hinted at. But the stuff about memory and mental health was a lot easier for me, although the story being so complex as our perspective on what happens keeps evolving, it took some effort to review. Because of that, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to review it, but I’m glad I did as it helps me organise my thoughts. But it isn’t a book that feels complicated as a reader; for example you don’t have to keep going back to check who’s who.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
2/1/2019 01:13:07 pm

I do like books with recognisable characters. It's never fun having to go back to check on the details of a character or try to work out who's who. I'm grateful for the review too as I have learned a little more through your thoughts.

Anne Goodwin
4/1/2019 05:45:07 pm

It gets even more confusing cause when they go by different names, such as in Russian novels.

Elizabeth Lowry link
3/1/2019 05:30:57 pm

I can’t begin to tell you how delighted and moved I am by this brilliant and insightful review of Dark Water. You have identified all the key points, and you are the only reviewer so far to have spotted the crucial theme, in a novel concerned with love and suffering, of maternal neglect. Thank you a million times over.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
4/1/2019 05:42:44 pm

I’m delighted it worked for you and thanks for letting me know. It’s great to connect with a book and with the author too – and I know how much I appreciate it when it works the other around, ie when someone shows they’ve connected with my own fiction.
I’m not sure whether I’m surprised or not that other reviewers haven’t mentioned the maternal neglect and attachment issues. It’s quite subtly (and effectively) done and there are so many other themes reviewers can pick up on. But I also think there’s a collective unwillingness to acknowledge the long-term impact of those early years – it’s something I take for granted with my background as a psychologist but really helpful to have the reminder for my own writing that many others don’t.

D. Avery link
5/1/2019 02:21:58 pm

I may give this one a read, though the tbr pile is an unbalanced equation, even after holiday break. The theme of imprisonment is interesting, so many constraints, as you mention. Poor Miss Macy, living on an island thirty miles out to sea. She too must have felt trapped at times.
(Hee hee... guess where I live?)

Reply
Anne Goodwin
5/1/2019 05:40:18 pm

Glad you found this, D, because having recently discovered where you live I had in mind to flag it up with you, as I thought you might be interested. And if the portrayal, and my memory – well it was a couple of weeks ago I read it – is accurate, you have moorland? Yay!

Reply
D. Avery link
5/1/2019 08:08:42 pm

nantucketconservation

There's a link to the moors and more. They do a great job of showing this island without the ugly bits. But it is remarkable how much open land they have saved from getting ugly. I couldn't bear it here without this land. I know every bit of the moors (not so much there really), go there when others can only think to go to the beaches (dreadful places, sandy and wet) No matter, I still end up walking in circles. An island problem. I suppose globe trotters come up against the same issue, on a larger scale. 

You don't have to like either of the books I sent to your island from mine, because they were written to amuse myself. (Though it is a kick in the pants when someone does like them; and thank you for tweeting them) At first the chickens amused my fourth grade friends, whom I thought might be an audience. Then I abandoned the idea of writing for 9 year olds, (too constraining), and wrote childishly for my adult self. I continue to be amused by that book when I read books and reviews of books and realize that I have a poem for such and such a theme already in Chicken Shift. I have done and said it all with that book, but have continued to explore writing anyway.

Besides moors this place has a rich history. The setting, both time and place(s), and the ageless themes n Dark Waters are intriguing. Thanks for the recommendation. Of course would like to conclude some other readings before beginning another, including your books! I have been savoring the stories in Becoming Someone, enjoying the strength and range of your writing. I was enjoying Sugar and Snails then lost it in an avalanche of books. I shall unearth it and start again when I can read through. 

Reply
Anne Goodwin
6/1/2019 04:34:24 pm

It does indeed look stunning, and I envy you the coastline, even if you don’t like it. That’s something our moors lack. And I was interested to read about the cranberries – as far as I’m aware we don’t harvest any fruit on a commercial scale.
I’ll pick up your poems when the mood takes me and think of you wondering your moors. I actually don’t mind revisiting the same areas (I mean outside, not on the page) often being too lazy to plan. But it is good to have the choice.

Reply
Charli Mills
12/1/2019 03:59:55 am

For an author to take on so much complexity and yet weave it effortlessly into a riveting story is quite a feat. Interesting, Anne, that you caught the hollowness of the protagonist as it relates to a lack of maternal bonding early, something you express a keen interest in exploring. The themes feel dark and deep as the oceans, yet call to be read.

Reply
Elizabeth Lowry link
12/1/2019 11:05:08 am

What a wonderful comment on the book. Thank you. I’ve been very moved by the responses to this blog post. One very grateful author here.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
14/1/2019 05:20:04 pm

Totally agree, Charli, you sum it up beautifully in that last line.

Reply

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