This has got a lot to keep you going. A Victorian institute, run on almost feudal lines, an asylum according to its description. Many of the patients conveniently despatched there. An unwanted wife, a child with mental defects. A wife suffering from what was so wrongly called as hysteria. Never visited by family but the present management, within boundaries doing the best they can.
Edith, her father recently passed away with stipulations for his triplet daughters. Carry out the assignation given to them or forfeit the family home. For Edith and her sisters, homeschooled and who have not known the outside world this was a punishment but there was no choice. Edith entered the asylum as Mrs Brewer, tge lawyers clerk fictitiously acting as her husband. She entered as a woman abused violently by her husband. Her task set by her father to find out how the former superintendent Hawkins died. Her father’s hobby of pursuing cold cases was his passion, and he felt that this case needed enquiry. Edith had her own special gift which was to see memory clips and hear events, especially violent events and her father felt that she would be able to solve this unsolved violent murder. That he put his daughter’s life at stake obviously did not cross his mind, because the murderer could very well be around still - a member of staff or a patient perhaps.
Edith gradually gets involved with the workings of the asylum, begins to have warmer feelings towards the present superintendent Lambert but of course as an inmate and a married woman there was nothing further to be done. Edith takes on more responsibilities and becomes aware of a secret confined to very few senior staff. A group called the Lantern Keepers who are a vigilante group, finding means to find the weaknesses and faults of those responsible to putting hapless people without a voice into the asylum. The blackmail and even their eventual deaths helps to keep Green Briars in funds and run in an efficient way with solid staff, very unlikely hospitals and asylums of tge time.
The story was full of a lifestyle of the day which made it almost a piece of history - the power of men over their wives and children was absolute. Rebellion of any kind was not permitted, women were restricted in every field and however clever one was, you were confined within clearly marked boundaries. The standards set for asylums and for the care of anyone in a mental institution was stark and brutal as seen in the past in this institution. Very few were of the calibre of staff found here, and this was in part because they carried their own trauma.
Apart from this the description of the Cornish countryside in different seasons was very good reading too. The characters were varied and added so many layers to the story. An excellent book.
Sent by Boldwood Books for an unbiased review, courtesy of Netgalley.
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