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A review by kleonard
The Illness Lesson by Clare Beams
3.0
With the shadows and ghosts of the Alcotts and Louisa May Alcott's Little Women in particular populating its pages, this novel captures a brief span in a young woman's life during which her father, having been part of a failed self-sufficient utopia, decides to open a school. Recruiting a handful of girls for an experimental education, Caroline, her father Samuel, and teacher David embark on an adventure that turns sour as David's pious wife arrives, spoiling Caroline's hopes for a romance with David; and as one of the students, the daughter of Caroline's long-deceased mother's lover--begins to dictate the social order of the pupils. Finally, having fallen in to a mass hysteria, the girls are treated by one of Samuel's former utopian colleagues, a doctor who decides that the students all just need to release their tension through "paroxysms"--or orgasms, manually stimulated by the doctor. In the end, Caroline decides that this is wrong, and leaves her father for city life.
The book is well-written and often beautiful and evocative, but the plot was too predictable for me, and the remove with which the author's manner prose separates the reader and characters is too distant, and the characters too thin, for me to have gotten very invested in the outcome.
The book is well-written and often beautiful and evocative, but the plot was too predictable for me, and the remove with which the author's manner prose separates the reader and characters is too distant, and the characters too thin, for me to have gotten very invested in the outcome.