The Mad Women's Ball by Victoria Mas

 

The Mad Women's Ball by Victoria Mas.

Translated by Frank Wynne.

Published 17th June 2021 by Doubleday.

From the cover of the book:

The Salpêtrière asylum, 1885. All of Paris is in thrall to Doctor Charcot and his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad or hysterical, outcasts from society. But the truth is much more complicated - for these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives or strong-willed daughters. 

Once a year a grand ball is held at the hospital. For the Parisian elite, the Mad Women's Ball is the highlight of the social season; for the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope.

Geneviève is a senior nurse. After the childhood death of her sister, she has shunned religion and placed her faith in Doctor Charcot and his new science. But everything begins to change when she meets Eugénie, the 19-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family. Because Eugénie has a secret, and she needs Geneviève's help. 

Their fates will collide on the night of the Mad Women's Ball...

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The Mad Women's Ball is, perhaps quite fittingly, a book that you will have you questioning your own sanity when you realise that it is based around a real ball that was held annually inside the walls of the Parisian Salpêtrière asylum - made famous by the work of the French neurologist Doctor Jean-Martin Charcot. Charcot, often called the founder of modern neurology, is best known for his work on hypnosis and hysteria, and the experiments he carried out on the unfortunate female inmates of the Salpêtrière, including his extraordinary, but by modern standards distasteful, public lectures during which members of the public could see him perform his 'treatments' on his female patients.

Victoria Mas carries us right into the heart of the Salpêtrière in this compelling novel by introducing us to some of the inmates and staff of the asylum as they are preparing for the spectacle of the annual ball, during which the Parisian elite are invited to mingle with the 'mad women'. Our female patients span a wide range of ages, and there is a fair sprinkling of outcasts and unwanted women among those suffering from trauma and real mental illness - each of them with their own tragic story to tell. But most intriguingly, Mas shows us that the staff within these walls also have issues of their own, such as the complex senior nurse Geneviève, who follows the religion of Charcot's treatments, having long ago lost her religious faith with the death of her younger sister.

When nineteen-year-old Eugénie arrives on Geneviève's ward, having been consigned to the asylum by her cruel father after misguidedly confessing her secret gift to her grandmother, events take an interesting turn. Eugénie's gift allows her to see Geneviève's secret pain that she has kept hidden for so long, and she is persuaded to help Eugénie gain her freedom. This year, the ball will become a fateful night for more than just the inmates of the Salpêtrière.

There is such a wonderful Gothic feel to this novel and Mas weaves a thrilling tale incorporating the separate stories of several intriguing female characters together to give us a glimpse of life both within and outside of the walls of the Salpêtrière. Not only do we see what life is like for women of different social classes in Paris and her environs, but we also learn a lot about the variety of reasons the female inmates have found themselves within the walls of the asylum and most interestingly, how they feel about being there - although many of the patients long to be free of their incarceration, there are also those that have found refuge here from a harsh world dominated by the whims of men, and for the most part they look forward to the annual ball with unabashed joy. 

There are many scenes that are difficult to read within these pages, with distressing episodes around how the patients are treated, and the complete absence of respect for them as individuals, but there is nothing described here that is out of place in a book intended to create an authentic feel of the period, however upsetting they may be to our modern sensibilities. 

For a book of just a shade over 200 pages, in addition to a hard look at the history of neurological treatments, Mas also touches on some rich and deeply thought-provoking themes around women's rights, the abuse of power, family, female friendship, unresolved grief, religion, and spiritualism, that really give substance to the book as a whole. I also have to add that the translator Frank Wynne has done a great job here to produce an in translation piece that retains so much mysticism and emotion, whilst maintaining pace among the more gritty moments. Highly recommended!

The Mad Women's Ball is available to buy now in hard cover, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Tabitha Pelly from Doubleday for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review,

About the author:

Victoria Mas is thirty-two. The Mad Women's Ball, her first novel, has won several prizes in France (including the Prix Stanislas and Prix Renaudot des Lycéens) and been hailed as the bestselling debut of the season. She has worked in film in the United States, where she lived for eight years. She graduated from the Sorbonne University in Contemporary Literature.