Published 30th April 2020 by Bluemoose Books.
Read April 2020.
Four women, some of the most interesting in the history of psychology, go on a fictional adventure, taking control of their own stories - stories that have been laid bare by men quick to label them as mad.
Who are these women?
Lady Violet Gibson (1876-1956), who attempted to assassinate Mussolini in 1926, imprisoned and then incarcerated at the institution St Andrew's Hospital for the rest of her life.
Lucia Joyce (1907-1982), dancer and daughter of the celebrated Irish author, James Joyce, sometime inpatient at St Andrew's, and finally admitted there in 1951, where she then remained for the rest of her days.
'Anna O', real name Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936), the first psychoanalysis patient, famous subject of Josef Breuer's Studies on Hysteria, written in collaboration with Sigmund Freud.
Blanche Wittman (1859-1913), termed the Queen of the Hysterics in 19th Century Paris, who was made famous by a series of photographs by Dr Jean-Martin Charcot.
Anna Vaught brings these for women together as lunatic comrades and takes them on a fantastic journey that fills in the gaps in their histories, bringing them to life on the page, and leading us to ask the question "Who is mad here?".
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Saving Lucia is a powerful and heartrending look at the lives of four women labelled as lunatics by the world of psychiatry - a world shaped by the rhetoric of men. In this book, Anna Vaught allows these women to tell their own stories, recreate their own histories, led by the narrative of the fascinating Lady Violet Gibson, and recorded by her institutional companion Lucia Joyce.
As the stories unfold, it becomes clear that labeling these women as mad, or hysterical, was simply a way of silencing them - and sometimes a vehicle to exploit them for the personal gain of those who were given the task of caring for them.
"My life was all mapped out for me.
I was to be what the patriarchy decreed..."
The word hysteria comes, via Latin, from the Greek hustera, meaning womb, and husterikos 'of the womb'. Hysteria was thought to be a disorder specific to women, with a wide array of symptoms, such as anxiety, shortness of breath, fainting, sexual desire, insomina, and best of all, a "tendency to cause trouble for others". This seems almost comical now, but there is nothing amusing about the treatment meted out to those poor women diagnosed as suffering from this condition.
Were these women really mad, or suffering from symptoms of a physical disorder or were they just women deemed difficult by the patriarchal societies in which they lived and locked away to prevent them causing trouble? As Anna Vaught takes us on a journey into the histories of these women, weaving their stories together, this question becomes ever more pertinent, although our author never asks this question directly - and in some ways Violet, at least, does seem to take ownership of her own "madness". So speculate as you wish! But in these pages, our women are most definitely taking back control and reshaping their pasts, and we come to understand that Violet's aim is to "save" Lucia from the fate that has become her own.
"I want to tell you: through prayer and through the imagination,
the most extraordinary things can be achieved.
I do believe that.
But do you?
Might I convince you?
Anna Vaught uses the theme of birds, specifically passerines, throughout this book in a most magical way - inspired by Violet's habit of feeding the birds in the grounds of St Andrew's Hospital. This is so evocative of a longing for freedom from the cages that our intelligent women found themselves confined to, as creatures who may be studied and viewed by others for their own amusement, and also wonderfully redolent of the idea of Violet herself having been trapped in a gilded cage as a child.
"You know, we women.
I sense we want to sing aloud of who
and what we are.
Like the birds...."
It's fair to say that this is a rambling sort of text and one which you have to immerse yourself in completely to get the most out of Anna Vaught's words. This is not the kind of book you can pick up and put down, but rather one which is best enjoyed in big wonderful gluts of prose, and this works particularly well with the subject matter.
There are some difficult and affecting parts to this story in connection with the barbarous history of psychiatric treatment, particularly for women, which grip you viscerally, and this book did make me feel rather sad - especially after looking into the stories of these women myself. But this book is also fascinating, moving, and, sometimes humorous, and I am grateful to Anna Vaught for bringing these amazing women to my attention.
For 2020, Bluemoose Books are only publishing novels by women and Saving Lucia is the first of these. I can't wait to see what comes next!
Saving Lucia is available to buy now, from your favourite book retailer!
Thank you to Anna Vaught, Bluemoose Books and Jordan Taylor-Jones for gifting me a copy of Saving Lucia in return for an honest review.
From the cover of the book:
How would it be if four lunatics went on a tremendous adventure,
reshaping their pasts and futures as they went, including killing Mussolini?
What if one of those people were a fascinating, forgotten aristocratic assassin and the others a fellow life co-patient, James Joyce's daughter Lucia, another the first psychoanalysis patient, known to history simply as 'Anna O,' and finally 19th Century Paris's Queen of the Hysterics, Blanche Wittmann?
That would be extraordinary, wouldn't it? How would it all be possible? Because, as the assassin Lady Violet Gibson would tell you, those who are confined have the very best imaginations.
About Bluemoose Books:
Bluemoose Books is an independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. Kevin and Hetha Duffy started Bluemoose in 2006 and as a ‘family’ of readers and writers we’re passionate about the written word and stories.
Stories are transformative and as publishers we delight in finding great new talent. We don’t have the heft of a London publishing house with the millions of pounds to promote our writers but we do manage through innovative marketing to get our books into high street bookstores and reviewed in the national press.
If you’re looking for orange headed celebrity books, you’ve probably come to the wrong place. But if you want brilliant stories that have travelled from Hebden Bridge, across the border into Lancashire, down to London across to Moscow, Sofia and Budapest and into the United States, Australia, India, Colombia and Greenland, Iceland and Bosnia Herzevogina then Bluemoose is the publisher for you.