Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught

Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught.

Published 30th April 2020 by Bluemoose Books.
Read April 2020.

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.

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.

Let's ask the question... "Who is mad here?".

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Saving Lucia is a powerful and heart-rending look at the lives of four women: the aristocratic Lady Violet Gibson (1876-1956), who attempted to assassinate Mussolini; Lucia Joyce (1907-1982), dancer and daughter of author James Joyce; Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936), known as 'Anna O', the first psychanalysis patient; and Blanche Williams (1859-1913), termed 'The Queen of Hysterics' by Dr Hean-Martin Charcot.  Here, Anna Vaught connects them as 'comrades' in the most intriguing of ways, through their shared experience of being labelled as 'lunatics' by the world of psychiatry - a world shaped by the rhetoric of men - and takes them on a literary adventure.

Vaught allows these women to tell their own stories, and recreate their own histories, led by the narrative of the fascinating Lady Violet Gibson, and recorded by her institutionalised companion Lucia Joyce. 

"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 absurd to our modern sensibilities, but there is nothing amusing about the treatment meted out to the women diagnosed as suffering from this condition.

Were these women really mad, or were they just deemed difficult by the patriarchal societies that shaped them, and locked away to prevent them 'causing trouble'? As Vaught takes us on a journey into their lives, weaving their stories together, this question becomes ever more pertinent, although she never asks this question directly  - and in some ways Violet, at least, does seem to take ownership of her own 'madness'. 

For me, it seems clear that defining these women as mad... hysterical... out of control... was more a way to silence rather than help them, and sometimes a vehicle to exploit them for the personal gain of those are were given the task of caring for them. Through Vaught's retelling these women are able to take back control and reshape 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?"

Vaught uses the theme of birds, specifically passerines, very cleverly throughout this book - inspired by Violet's habit of feeding her feathered friends in the grounds of St Andrew's Hospital where she was committed. This conjures up such a powerful image of longing for freedom from the bonds of forced incarceration, and starky represents these women as creatures to be studied, or viewed as an entertaining diversion, through the bars of a cage - and is 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 meandering sort of text and one which you have to immerse yourself in completely to get the most out of Vaught's words. This is not the kind of book to pick up and put down, but rather one which is best enjoyed in big indulgent gluts, 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, but this book is also fascinating, moving, and sometimes humorous. It did make me feel rather sad, especially after looking into the lives of these women myself, but there is no doubt that Vaught does a sterling job in giving voice to four incredible characters who deserve the right to tell their own complex stories. 

Saving Lucia is available to buy now, from your favourite book retailer.

Thank you to Bluemoose Books and Jordan Taylor-Jones for gifting me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Anna Vaught is a teacher and lives in Bradford upon Avon. This is her third novel.

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.