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A review by annmarie_in_november
The Secret of Nightingale Wood by Lucy Strange
5.0
Wow. Lucy Strange feels like an author who’ll be an instant-read for me now after reading this book. I was absolutely gripped and so keen to know what would happen that I finished it in less than a day. A brave, resilient and imaginative heroine, Henry, faces the seemingly impossible task of standing alone to save her mentally ill mother from the clutches of a pitiless, chauvinistic medical establishment. Post-WWI in the British upper middle-class, a society in which a girl is a nothing person – despite her very real concerns about how the local doctor is ‘caring’ for her mother, Henry is ignored, chivvied off by the nanny, kept away from the business of grownups and told almost nothing about what is happening to her own family.
I snapped this up when I saw reviews mention that it was evocative of classic children’s novels of the Victorian and Edwardian eras – The Secret Garden, The Railway Children, Alice in Wonderland, Little Women. It very much lives up to its reputation. In the same way that those books can be appreciated on many different levels by readers of all ages, children and adults alike, so too can The Secret of Nightingale Wood. There’s nothing whatsoever childish about it aside from the fact that its protagonist, Henry, is a 12-year-old girl. In fact, if I was reminded of any classic novels reading this, then the tense, suffocating atmosphere and the mounting mental stress Henry goes through put me in mind of Jane Eyre, with a touch of Rebecca.
Dr Hardy is a brilliant adversary who at no point does anything outlandish or evil. He simply works within the structure of society perfectly as he is permitted as a man of authority and as a doctor, which makes him all more frightening. Smug and utterly confident that he is right, he sneers at Henry’s attempts to help her mother by being gentle with her, reading to her, telling her stories. Instead, he doles out total confinement, sedation and enforced rest as a means of ‘curing’ her of entirely normal reactions to bereavement – which he and the era deem neuroses and hysteria.
Henry’s frustration with Dr Hardy puts her in a lose-lose cycle. The more power Dr Hardy exerts, the angrier Henry gets, the angrier she gets, the more she too is deemed ‘ill’ and exhibiting ‘symptoms’ just like her mother. This increasingly ramps up the tension and I felt borderline panicked in parts, as Henry’s anxiety, impotent rage, her doubts about her own sanity and her despair for her mother became so crushing.
It’s a rather Gothic mystery at times, opening up intrigue within intrigue, but there’s also a heartfelt core to the story that brought me to tears – that the key to treating people who diverge from ‘normal’, who’ve had breakdowns, lost their way, is gentle respect, dignity, and of course, time and talking.
I snapped this up when I saw reviews mention that it was evocative of classic children’s novels of the Victorian and Edwardian eras – The Secret Garden, The Railway Children, Alice in Wonderland, Little Women. It very much lives up to its reputation. In the same way that those books can be appreciated on many different levels by readers of all ages, children and adults alike, so too can The Secret of Nightingale Wood. There’s nothing whatsoever childish about it aside from the fact that its protagonist, Henry, is a 12-year-old girl. In fact, if I was reminded of any classic novels reading this, then the tense, suffocating atmosphere and the mounting mental stress Henry goes through put me in mind of Jane Eyre, with a touch of Rebecca.
Dr Hardy is a brilliant adversary who at no point does anything outlandish or evil. He simply works within the structure of society perfectly as he is permitted as a man of authority and as a doctor, which makes him all more frightening. Smug and utterly confident that he is right, he sneers at Henry’s attempts to help her mother by being gentle with her, reading to her, telling her stories. Instead, he doles out total confinement, sedation and enforced rest as a means of ‘curing’ her of entirely normal reactions to bereavement – which he and the era deem neuroses and hysteria.
Henry’s frustration with Dr Hardy puts her in a lose-lose cycle. The more power Dr Hardy exerts, the angrier Henry gets, the angrier she gets, the more she too is deemed ‘ill’ and exhibiting ‘symptoms’ just like her mother. This increasingly ramps up the tension and I felt borderline panicked in parts, as Henry’s anxiety, impotent rage, her doubts about her own sanity and her despair for her mother became so crushing.
It’s a rather Gothic mystery at times, opening up intrigue within intrigue, but there’s also a heartfelt core to the story that brought me to tears – that the key to treating people who diverge from ‘normal’, who’ve had breakdowns, lost their way, is gentle respect, dignity, and of course, time and talking.