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lucyp21 's review for:
Faces in the Water
by Janet Frame
I bought this from a charity shop about three years ago and I have been meaning to read it for even longer than that. Now, on a day that was so hot and humid I felt like I couldn't concentrate on anything complicated, I picked this up. That wasn't my best decision (it's not an easy book to read by any stretch of the imagination) but I did find this an enjoyable book to read. Maybe not enjoyable, maybe interesting.
This book is a fictional account of the author's life in mental institutions in New Zealand. It was published in the 1960s and tells the story of a woman in her twenties go in and out of two different mental institutions. She also suffers under treatments of the time, like Electric Shock Therapy and lobotomies.
This book reinforced my fear of historical mental institutions (I don't know enough about modern ones to say anything, only that I hope they are far better regulated). The constant lack of control over what was happening to you and where you were going (the main character was moved from ward to ward seemingly without reason), the fact that none of the doctors or nurses seemed to understand how big an effect environment and personal treatment can have such a big effect on someone's mental health and how Doctor Howell was notable as a doctor because he had the radical idea that the patients he was treating were humans.
Istina's view on how the nurses treated the 'hopeless' cases who no one saw as animals in a zoo rather than human beings echoed our views and I liked how Istina was brutally honest about how she saw these nurses, who had no more compassion for their patients, if they ever had. It was the fear of the treatments that Istina spent most of her time thinking of. First it was ESTs where most of her life in the first place revolved around avoiding these treatments and when you realise that nurses could recommend people for these treatments because they disobeyed orders or were 'difficult', you could see why she was so terrified.
And then there were lobotomies where people are told they are going to get a whole new personality (basically saying the one they have at the moment is no good) and Istina worries she is going to have one of them, especially when she sees the effects the operation has on people she knows. When you learn that the author was going to have the same treatment, apart from the fact that it turned out her novel won a prestigious literary prize, which was the only reason she didn't have the operation, you can see she is truly writing what she knows. Apart from the fear and the lack of control, it's the daily humiliations which Istina hates, like having nurses watch her use the toilet and being told to stop worrying about having no pants, there were no men around. I felt such sympathy for her, as even 'nice' nurses didn't see anything wrong with these actions and seemed to regard the patients objecting to such things as them being 'difficult'.
I've been putting this book off for a while because I felt like I needed to be the right mood for it. And I sort of regret that, but at the same time, reading this book when I was physically uncomfortable (thanks heatwave) seemed to fit very well with Istina's mental and physical discomfort.
The writing style was also very easy to devour half of the book in one sitting. I will say that sometimes the timeline, whether Istina was at home or at the mental institution, sometimes confused me.
Definitely recommend. 4.5 stars!
This book is a fictional account of the author's life in mental institutions in New Zealand. It was published in the 1960s and tells the story of a woman in her twenties go in and out of two different mental institutions. She also suffers under treatments of the time, like Electric Shock Therapy and lobotomies.
This book reinforced my fear of historical mental institutions (I don't know enough about modern ones to say anything, only that I hope they are far better regulated). The constant lack of control over what was happening to you and where you were going (the main character was moved from ward to ward seemingly without reason), the fact that none of the doctors or nurses seemed to understand how big an effect environment and personal treatment can have such a big effect on someone's mental health and how Doctor Howell was notable as a doctor because he had the radical idea that the patients he was treating were humans.
Istina's view on how the nurses treated the 'hopeless' cases who no one saw as animals in a zoo rather than human beings echoed our views and I liked how Istina was brutally honest about how she saw these nurses, who had no more compassion for their patients, if they ever had. It was the fear of the treatments that Istina spent most of her time thinking of. First it was ESTs where most of her life in the first place revolved around avoiding these treatments and when you realise that nurses could recommend people for these treatments because they disobeyed orders or were 'difficult', you could see why she was so terrified.
And then there were lobotomies where people are told they are going to get a whole new personality (basically saying the one they have at the moment is no good) and Istina worries she is going to have one of them, especially when she sees the effects the operation has on people she knows. When you learn that the author was going to have the same treatment, apart from the fact that it turned out her novel won a prestigious literary prize, which was the only reason she didn't have the operation, you can see she is truly writing what she knows. Apart from the fear and the lack of control, it's the daily humiliations which Istina hates, like having nurses watch her use the toilet and being told to stop worrying about having no pants, there were no men around. I felt such sympathy for her, as even 'nice' nurses didn't see anything wrong with these actions and seemed to regard the patients objecting to such things as them being 'difficult'.
I've been putting this book off for a while because I felt like I needed to be the right mood for it. And I sort of regret that, but at the same time, reading this book when I was physically uncomfortable (thanks heatwave) seemed to fit very well with Istina's mental and physical discomfort.
The writing style was also very easy to devour half of the book in one sitting. I will say that sometimes the timeline, whether Istina was at home or at the mental institution, sometimes confused me.
Definitely recommend. 4.5 stars!