I was rather traumatized by this book, as my grandmother was institutionalized and her 4 children taken away from her, because she was bipolar (as we know it now, but not diagnosed in the 1940's).

I have taken a long time to review this book because of my personal memories.

It is so incredibly frustrating that the state, and some unscrupulous individuals, have so much say over a person's life, to the extent that a normal young woman, whose only 'sin' was to become pregnant, is institutionalized and starts going crazy because of enforced medications.

There were some really profound moments in the book, but everything is left hanging at the end... to be continued in a next book. This is not the kind of book that should have a sequel - I feel it should have been resolved in the same book, to give people hope that things can change (do they??) ( )

A sad story, and rather frightening when you consider that it could and was still happening only a few short years ago.
Young girls, finding themselves conceiving out of wedlock, were ostracised by friends and family and classed as immoral. They, like Matty in this book, were hidden away in mental institutions to avoid any ‘family embarrassment’ and slowly but surely walked the path of insanity due to medications and various other treatments so as to be better ‘controlled’.
Caught ‘talking’ to people who were not physically present, they were labelled as mentally incompetent and not suitable to be allowed to mix in society. Scary when you think about it, most of us talk to ourselves; I know I do!
A very well written book which was definitely worth the read. ( )

This is one heartbreaking but very real, sincere and emotional read. Author delves into how mental health was viewed in the beginning and mid XXth century and at the same time explores the human side of friendship, need to belong, personal freedom. Told in two timeliness it is easy to see how main character's perspective to a lot of things, including her life, changes with many years spent in mental institution. It's scary.
Thank you LibraryThing and the author for the copy and chance to read it in exchange for the honest review.
I'm involved now - will be trying to get hold of the next part of this story! ( )

This novella is the first of this author’s books which I have read and, sharing a similar professional background to her, I was impressed by how she used her professional experience to such good effect in highlighting how brutally unmarried mothers were treated in the relatively recent past. So many young women had their babies forcibly removed immediately after birth and were deemed ‘morally defective’, a label which enabled their families (and/or the authorities) to have them admitted to a mental asylum, a ‘sentence’ which all too often carried a lifetime tariff. I spent some time working in a large psychiatric hospital (originally a Victorian asylum) in the 1970s when, although the process of moving long-term patients to ‘care in the community’ was well underway, it was becoming increasingly apparent that, humane as the idea was, many had become so institutionalised that adjusting to life in the outside world, a world which had changed beyond recognition from when they had last been free to enjoy it, was fraught with anxiety. From my experience I know that seldom was enough done to effectively prepare and support people who’d had so little experience of independent living.
In this moving and thought-provoking novella I think that the author captured very vividly, and movingly, how Matilda had been affected by the twenty-five years she had spent incarcerated. By moving between past and present she built up a convincing portrayal of someone who struggled to retain a sense of self, and to hold onto hope in the face of brutal treatments which, even if intended to be ‘therapeutic’, were all too often used as an abuse of power and a means of control. However, in describing Matilda’s and Doris’s different reactions to the ‘cold pack’ treatment (being tightly-swaddled in cold, wet sheets and left tied to the bed for hours), with Matilda feeling terrified and Doris finding it comforting to feel so securely held, I think the author did try to be even-handed in her representation of a treatment which was widely prescribed at the time.
With one focus of the story being on the friendship between middle-class Matilda and rough and ready, working-class Doris, people who, without the shared experience of being incarcerated, were unlikely to have met, let alone become friends, the author was able to reflect on the power of such a mutually-supportive bond as a means of surviving experiences which could otherwise feel intolerable. Her portrayal of the interactions between these two women brought them vividly to life in a convincing way, capturing very evocatively how the decades of being incarcerated had affected each of them, engendering a strong sense of empathy with them … as well as a sense of outrage about a system which treated them so badly!
I won a copy of this book through LibraryThing’s ‘Early Reviewers’ scheme.

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I was asked to review this book, and I absolutely loved it. The attention to detail and the portrayal of the characters was splendid. To think this actually happened is atrocious.the fact that the main character "matty" actually started of sane, and it was the place that made her insane was tragic. I loved her best friend "dorris"and how she was very down to earth. I would if liked to know more about her baby that she had that put her in the asylum in the first place.a big Thank you for such a thought provoking read. I loved every minute. ( )