A review by zinni05
The Illness Lesson by Clare Beams
3.0
"An ill girl - it isn't so unusual. Everyone knows one."
An isolated school for girls, the ominous return of birds with blood-red feathers and mass 'hysteria', The Illness Lesson deals in slow, creeping horror that leaves you feeling deeply unsettled.
Beams' debut novel offers up an exploration of what it means to be a woman in a predominantly male environment, and how sickness affects her place in this. The book exposes how women have always been disbelieved regarding illness, and is an important reminder that we must challenge biases that still exist in modern healthcare. Upon researching how hysteria was historically 'treated', I was enraged (though sadly unsurprised) to find that women actually were subjected to the harrowing methods in the book, which really intensified its horror.
I despised the protagonist, Caroline. I valued parts of her story - her mother died of a seizure, and Caroline lives in constant fear that the same fate awaits her. I'd never truly considered the burden that must come from knowing that a heritable disease runs in your bloodline. Caroline's not a glowing heroine, nor did I desire her to be, but I would have appreciated her actions being slightly less deplorable.
Much more likeable and often more interesting were the teenage girls at the school (somewhat reminiscent of 1800s Mean Girls, sans comedy), whose simultaneous burgeoning womanhood and childish innocence put them in a particularly unique, but vulnerable, position.
The first 70% was slow. There were gripping moments, but they slipped away too soon back into mundanity. Bless Eliza Pearson (the Regina George of our tale) for keeping the story alive. But my oh my, the last 30% filled me with such visceral dread that I felt quite nauseous - and I love it when a book makes me feel. You know what's coming, and you're desperately willing it not to, and there's nothing you can do. You're made to feel as powerless as the women are. The ending certainly made me feel vindicated in pushing through the slower parts; it paid off.
You're ultimately left knowing that the true sickness lies in twisted abuses of power and, of course, the patriarchy.
An isolated school for girls, the ominous return of birds with blood-red feathers and mass 'hysteria', The Illness Lesson deals in slow, creeping horror that leaves you feeling deeply unsettled.
Beams' debut novel offers up an exploration of what it means to be a woman in a predominantly male environment, and how sickness affects her place in this. The book exposes how women have always been disbelieved regarding illness, and is an important reminder that we must challenge biases that still exist in modern healthcare. Upon researching how hysteria was historically 'treated', I was enraged (though sadly unsurprised) to find that women actually were subjected to the harrowing methods in the book, which really intensified its horror.
I despised the protagonist, Caroline. I valued parts of her story - her mother died of a seizure, and Caroline lives in constant fear that the same fate awaits her. I'd never truly considered the burden that must come from knowing that a heritable disease runs in your bloodline. Caroline's not a glowing heroine, nor did I desire her to be, but I would have appreciated her actions being slightly less deplorable.
Much more likeable and often more interesting were the teenage girls at the school (somewhat reminiscent of 1800s Mean Girls, sans comedy), whose simultaneous burgeoning womanhood and childish innocence put them in a particularly unique, but vulnerable, position.
The first 70% was slow. There were gripping moments, but they slipped away too soon back into mundanity. Bless Eliza Pearson (the Regina George of our tale) for keeping the story alive. But my oh my, the last 30% filled me with such visceral dread that I felt quite nauseous - and I love it when a book makes me feel. You know what's coming, and you're desperately willing it not to, and there's nothing you can do. You're made to feel as powerless as the women are. The ending certainly made me feel vindicated in pushing through the slower parts; it paid off.
You're ultimately left knowing that the true sickness lies in twisted abuses of power and, of course, the patriarchy.