A review by brittknitsokc
Woman 99 by Greer Macallister

5.0

I’ve always been interested in firsthand accounts and histories of psychological treatment facilities and their history of mistreatment, so I felt especially drawn to this novel. Woman 99 by Greer Macallister is a story about a young woman who pretends to be afflicted in order to follow her sister into a mental institution so she can bring her home. She thinks she knows what she will find there, but she is surprised at every turn. The idea was inspired by an exposé by investigative journalist Elizabeth Cochran Seaman (a.k.a. Nellie Bly), Ten Days in a Mad-House, for which she went undercover in an institution on New York’s Blackwell’s Island (Roosevelt Island). (She was also famous for attempting to travel around the world in 80 days but making it in 72 instead.) I especially liked Woman 99 because it showed many different types of women who ended up in institutions — whether they were afflicted or just refused to submit and conform to social norms — and all possible levels of sanity and “treatment.” I would have liked to know a little more about some of the inmates and their keepers, but I enjoyed the story overall.