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The Outward Room
The Outward Room is a book about a young woman’s journey from madness to self-discovery. It created a sensation when it was first published in 1937, and has lost none of its immediacy or its power to move the reader.
Having suffered a nervous breakdown after her brother’s death in a car accident, Harriet Demuth is committed to a mental hospital, but her doctor’s Freudian nostrums do little to make her well. Convinced that she and she alone can refashion her life, Harriet makes a daring escape from the hospital—hopping a train by night and riding the rails into the vastness of New York City in the light of the rising sun. It is the middle of the Great Depression, and at first Harriet is lost among the city’s anonymous multitudes. She pawns her jewelry and lives an increasingly hand-to-mouth existence until she meets John, a machine-shop worker. Slowly Harriet begins to recover her sense of self; slowly she and John begin to fall in love. The story of that emerging love, told with the lyricism of Virginia Woolf and the realism of Theodore Dreiser, is the heart of Millen Brand’s remarkable book.
Having suffered a nervous breakdown after her brother’s death in a car accident, Harriet Demuth is committed to a mental hospital, but her doctor’s Freudian nostrums do little to make her well. Convinced that she and she alone can refashion her life, Harriet makes a daring escape from the hospital—hopping a train by night and riding the rails into the vastness of New York City in the light of the rising sun. It is the middle of the Great Depression, and at first Harriet is lost among the city’s anonymous multitudes. She pawns her jewelry and lives an increasingly hand-to-mouth existence until she meets John, a machine-shop worker. Slowly Harriet begins to recover her sense of self; slowly she and John begin to fall in love. The story of that emerging love, told with the lyricism of Virginia Woolf and the realism of Theodore Dreiser, is the heart of Millen Brand’s remarkable book.
309 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1937
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2127 people want to read
About the author
Millen Brand
23 books7 followersMillen Brand was a writer and poet. His novels Savage Sleep and The Outward Room, which addressed mental health institutions, were bestsellers in the 1960s and 1930s, respectively.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 70 reviews
July 29, 2016
I have often, in reviews, dismissed a novel as being cinematic. But there is bad cinematic and there is good cinematic. In bad cinematic, the protagonist's friend (or uncle/girlfriend/karate instructor) knows people in organized crime, what they call it, who come as a deus ex machina to the protagonist's rescue. Or, right before the protagonist dies he manages to have sex for the first and only time and thus has an heir to tie a nice bow on the story in an epilogue.
The Outward Room is great cinema, what we in the U.S. of A. would call a foreign film. It is a simple, minimalist story, but I loved the camera work. The only adjectives are colors.
It starts in a mental hospital, our female protagonist, a patient there, looking at her window, watching the morning emerge to fill her room, but the daylight spreads bars. It is a symbol that will appear again and again. She escapes, when Freud fails. And she is off.
How will she live, on her own, soon down to her last nickel, heading to New York, in the middle of the Depression? Perhaps Love will save her. She meets John, and he is kind.
Suddenly he said, "Harriet, I love you."
"I love you," she said.
"I want you to marry me."
Now she must tell him. "I can't," she said.
"Why not? Why can't you?"
"Because I'm insane."
Before she escaped, one nurse was especially kind to her, Miss Child. Oh, you know that has to mean something. And it does. For later on, a child appears, Mary. Harriet likes her best. But she is introduced and appears and reappears as if she is a clue more than a character. And she is. An echo, from First Corinthians, sounds in Harriet's memory: Be not children in understanding. By the end, that Bible fragment is turned upside down. Let the healing begin. Now she watches the morning sun. It touched the room with pale rays hardly strong enough for the shadow.
John cries, and she remembers:
Once when she had been a child, she had seen her father cry. She had heard the sound first and had gone to the door of his bedroom; he had been lying on the bed crying and her mother had been comforting him -- she felt ashamed to see him. Yet as she looked, she recognized something: that her mother had loved him. Love. Could it then be this? Why in so many years had she never remembered? It was so clear now. She could see the shadows of the bedroom, the blue squares on the quilt of the bed -- she was looking into the room again as though she were again a child.
Part of me wants to start at the very beginning again, this time looking more sharply for the symbols. But I have a date with Satan. Until then, I have the many scenes from this movie, where the evidences of winter were small, only to be seen, like the signs of spring, by the heart that feels small changes.
This book is highly recommended.
The Outward Room is great cinema, what we in the U.S. of A. would call a foreign film. It is a simple, minimalist story, but I loved the camera work. The only adjectives are colors.
It starts in a mental hospital, our female protagonist, a patient there, looking at her window, watching the morning emerge to fill her room, but the daylight spreads bars. It is a symbol that will appear again and again. She escapes, when Freud fails. And she is off.
How will she live, on her own, soon down to her last nickel, heading to New York, in the middle of the Depression? Perhaps Love will save her. She meets John, and he is kind.
Suddenly he said, "Harriet, I love you."
"I love you," she said.
"I want you to marry me."
Now she must tell him. "I can't," she said.
"Why not? Why can't you?"
"Because I'm insane."
Before she escaped, one nurse was especially kind to her, Miss Child. Oh, you know that has to mean something. And it does. For later on, a child appears, Mary. Harriet likes her best. But she is introduced and appears and reappears as if she is a clue more than a character. And she is. An echo, from First Corinthians, sounds in Harriet's memory: Be not children in understanding. By the end, that Bible fragment is turned upside down. Let the healing begin. Now she watches the morning sun. It touched the room with pale rays hardly strong enough for the shadow.
John cries, and she remembers:
Once when she had been a child, she had seen her father cry. She had heard the sound first and had gone to the door of his bedroom; he had been lying on the bed crying and her mother had been comforting him -- she felt ashamed to see him. Yet as she looked, she recognized something: that her mother had loved him. Love. Could it then be this? Why in so many years had she never remembered? It was so clear now. She could see the shadows of the bedroom, the blue squares on the quilt of the bed -- she was looking into the room again as though she were again a child.
Part of me wants to start at the very beginning again, this time looking more sharply for the symbols. But I have a date with Satan. Until then, I have the many scenes from this movie, where the evidences of winter were small, only to be seen, like the signs of spring, by the heart that feels small changes.
This book is highly recommended.
August 17, 2019
Shit, it's only March, but it's going to be tough to top this one as the best novel I'll read all year.
I don't know I'd go so far to recommend it to most since it's so counter-intuitively simple and deceptively quiet and lovely that most, weaned on a steady diet of explosions, pop culture references, superpowers, and assertions of identity, might find it hard to get lost in this uncomplicated and great love story.
That story is: a troubled young woman, institutionalized after the death of her brother, escapes from the frustrating, pointless mental hospital she's been living in for 7 years, jumps a train to New York City, and falls in love with a simple, gentle machinist.
That's about it. What else do you need?
I don't know I'd go so far to recommend it to most since it's so counter-intuitively simple and deceptively quiet and lovely that most, weaned on a steady diet of explosions, pop culture references, superpowers, and assertions of identity, might find it hard to get lost in this uncomplicated and great love story.
That story is: a troubled young woman, institutionalized after the death of her brother, escapes from the frustrating, pointless mental hospital she's been living in for 7 years, jumps a train to New York City, and falls in love with a simple, gentle machinist.
That's about it. What else do you need?
February 16, 2017
The four page description of spending a night homeless on the New York subway c.1935 is worth the price of admission alone. It dramatically changed my perception and appreciation of the novel and fills all that comes afterwards with so much more weight.
February 19, 2017
When I first heard about this book, I was excited to read it: who can deny the allure of the triumphant tale of a patient who escapes from an oppressive and ineffectual hospital, taking her destiny into her own hands? Initially I had doubts, though, that a sane man could write a truly convincing book from the perspective of a female psychiatric patient. Or rather, in light of the fact that mentally ill women are so frequently disenfranchised and stripped of their voices, I had qualms about the fact that a relatively privileged American man, not marked by the stigmata of mental illness, was trespassing on the turf of female-psychiatric-patients-cum-authors/memoirists like Sylvia Plath and Janet Frame. Such a brazen enterprise seemed discomfitingly similar to putting on blackface.
The quiet authority and plainspoken beauty of this delicately laid-out, carefully observed novel soon put my doubts to rest. As I read, I held my breath, waiting for Brand to make a misstep, but the anticipated misstep never came. Hyperbolic though this may sound, every little incident, every minute detail that Brand describes rings true, and it all leads up to a perfect ending, a final chapter that is simultaneously shocking and yet totally fitting. "The Outward Room" is the farthest thing from a sensationalist fantasy; rather, Brand creates a wholly believable little world, populating it with a cast of non-professional actors, each of whom is gradually revealed to have a pulsating inner life: the gruff neighbor Rocco and his pet dog who won't stop barking, the wistful neighbor girl Mary, the thwarted co-worker Anna, etc.
The fact that the mental hospitals described in early-twentieth-century novels bear a more-than-casual resemblance to modern psychiatric facilities used to unsettle me, but I'm getting used to it now. The uncanny resemblance between the Depression-era Manhattan that Brand depicts and the 21st-century Manhattan in which I live was what floored me: it's surprisingly easy to relate to these characters who are continually choking on the smoke of poverty, characters who are no strangers to the miseries of unemployment and job-hunting and living in tiny drab apartments, characters who covet the small sureties that union membership brings.
The quiet authority and plainspoken beauty of this delicately laid-out, carefully observed novel soon put my doubts to rest. As I read, I held my breath, waiting for Brand to make a misstep, but the anticipated misstep never came. Hyperbolic though this may sound, every little incident, every minute detail that Brand describes rings true, and it all leads up to a perfect ending, a final chapter that is simultaneously shocking and yet totally fitting. "The Outward Room" is the farthest thing from a sensationalist fantasy; rather, Brand creates a wholly believable little world, populating it with a cast of non-professional actors, each of whom is gradually revealed to have a pulsating inner life: the gruff neighbor Rocco and his pet dog who won't stop barking, the wistful neighbor girl Mary, the thwarted co-worker Anna, etc.
The fact that the mental hospitals described in early-twentieth-century novels bear a more-than-casual resemblance to modern psychiatric facilities used to unsettle me, but I'm getting used to it now. The uncanny resemblance between the Depression-era Manhattan that Brand depicts and the 21st-century Manhattan in which I live was what floored me: it's surprisingly easy to relate to these characters who are continually choking on the smoke of poverty, characters who are no strangers to the miseries of unemployment and job-hunting and living in tiny drab apartments, characters who covet the small sureties that union membership brings.
July 1, 2011
I happened upon The Outward Room by chance recently and added it to my reading list, near the top.
The story follows Harriet from her days at an institution where she was resigned in the aftermath of witnessing her older brother’s death. She escapes and, with almost no money, finds her way to New York, seeking normalcy for her life.
With barely enough money to survive a week, she seeks a job and fails. Forced to sell her only possession—a ring given to her by her brother—she manages for a few more days until a chance meeting with John, a young man who works a lathe in a machine shop.
Eventually John and Harriet become lovers and John asks her to marry him; but Harriet holds back, confessing to John only that she is insane but not the reason for her insanity.
Throughout The Outward Room Harriet battles bouts of great depression, convinced that her end is near. She gets a job for a time in a dress shop snipping loose threads from finished garments, and when she is let go for lack of work she becomes housekeeper for John, whom she insists, to herself, she loves. Yet, always haunted by the loss of her brother, she remains truly unconvinced. It is only at the very end, when John receives the worst news imaginable, that Harriet finds release for her own agony and gives in to loving John.
Sinclair Lewis called The Outward Room a “story as devoid of sentimentality as a blizzard.” And yet from it is born the simplest, most elegant love story.
Yet it is more. Written in the 1930s, author Millen Brand takes the reader into another era—one in which a cup of coffee costs a nickel, jobs are hard to come by, when evenings are spent not in front of a television set but on a sofa, talking or reading a newspaper, or taking a walk.
Because it was written the 1930s, Brand’s writing style is of that era; that is, it is heavy on narrative, which may put off readers of today’s modern fiction. Even so, The Outward Room comes with my highest recommendation.
The story follows Harriet from her days at an institution where she was resigned in the aftermath of witnessing her older brother’s death. She escapes and, with almost no money, finds her way to New York, seeking normalcy for her life.
With barely enough money to survive a week, she seeks a job and fails. Forced to sell her only possession—a ring given to her by her brother—she manages for a few more days until a chance meeting with John, a young man who works a lathe in a machine shop.
Eventually John and Harriet become lovers and John asks her to marry him; but Harriet holds back, confessing to John only that she is insane but not the reason for her insanity.
Throughout The Outward Room Harriet battles bouts of great depression, convinced that her end is near. She gets a job for a time in a dress shop snipping loose threads from finished garments, and when she is let go for lack of work she becomes housekeeper for John, whom she insists, to herself, she loves. Yet, always haunted by the loss of her brother, she remains truly unconvinced. It is only at the very end, when John receives the worst news imaginable, that Harriet finds release for her own agony and gives in to loving John.
Sinclair Lewis called The Outward Room a “story as devoid of sentimentality as a blizzard.” And yet from it is born the simplest, most elegant love story.
Yet it is more. Written in the 1930s, author Millen Brand takes the reader into another era—one in which a cup of coffee costs a nickel, jobs are hard to come by, when evenings are spent not in front of a television set but on a sofa, talking or reading a newspaper, or taking a walk.
Because it was written the 1930s, Brand’s writing style is of that era; that is, it is heavy on narrative, which may put off readers of today’s modern fiction. Even so, The Outward Room comes with my highest recommendation.
January 11, 2011
That I was expecting something depressingly awful to happen at any moment just shows how sensationalistic and overly dramatic most fiction is and how well it has shaped our expectations--and how removed from the lived daily life most of us lead. This novel has a quiet, understated decency, depicting the lives of a couple--particularly the woman--eking out a living during the Depression. Think William Maxwell, and you're on the right track. (Maxwell was also a contemporary of Brand's, but unlike Maxwell, Brand has only one book in print--this one, after decades of being unavailable.)
November 4, 2010
A sweet, odd novel originally published in 1937. Harriet is in a locked ward of an asylum since she had a nervous breakdown five years ago when her brother died in an accident. Her days are fenced in by the hospital routine, visits with her doctor, and interactions with other patients on the ward. Impulsively, she escapes and makes her way to New York.
The novel is about her return to life and how her heart opens with her return to the world. I felt a little cynical about the incredible luck with which she lands on her feet and is able to survive, then felt bad about that. It’s not an unrealistic miracle cure; it does feel real, though against the odds.
The author does a good job of describing her mental states of hopelessness, fear, desperation, and then patience and observation of her new life. It’s also a vivid picture of New York life in the depths of the Depression, which would depress anybody.
The novel is about her return to life and how her heart opens with her return to the world. I felt a little cynical about the incredible luck with which she lands on her feet and is able to survive, then felt bad about that. It’s not an unrealistic miracle cure; it does feel real, though against the odds.
The author does a good job of describing her mental states of hopelessness, fear, desperation, and then patience and observation of her new life. It’s also a vivid picture of New York life in the depths of the Depression, which would depress anybody.
December 1, 2021
Obsessed with the over-the-topness of the mass market editions for this from 1950, with the taglines, "Does an insane woman have the right to love?" and, “She fled the torment of a vile place to find savage and sudden desire in… THE OUTWARD ROOM.” The main character isn't "insane," she's bipolar, and this is definitely not the loud pulpy book those taglines should've been written for. Has a quiet, delicate Virginia Woolf-iness that I really loved, even if the uneventfulness of it after a certain point can be a little frustrating. Beautiful sensitive interior monologue writing you would never in a million years guess is from 1937! Feels so modern and alive, and still packs enough of a punch that it can break your heart in a page (the later chapter with the extremely Italian neighbor's dog did in fact hurt).
June 11, 2017
Madness. Wholeness. Healing through the tiny details of a life lived among others who care for us, and the terrible fragility we all navigate. This is a classic. So much larger than can be contained within its pages.
THE OUTWARD ROOM is the best kind of philosophical book: one rooted in story, in character, and one in which the word 'philosophical' never appears, and yet it asks all the important questions, and does so brilliantly, in a mere 230 pages.
Reward yourself. Read this book.
THE OUTWARD ROOM is the best kind of philosophical book: one rooted in story, in character, and one in which the word 'philosophical' never appears, and yet it asks all the important questions, and does so brilliantly, in a mere 230 pages.
Reward yourself. Read this book.
April 30, 2025
Some years ago, I read an NYRB Classics edition of a book titled Stoner; with the help of a few other books put out by the imprint, the rest was reading history. Or at least it was for a few years, during which I added 90% of the NYRBCs currently on my shelves and have made my way through about half of them since. You see, I do love the idea of underappreciated lit combined with gorgeous aesthetic, but NYRBC's definition of such and mine came into closest proximity with An African in Greenland and have been in ever increasingly elliptical trajectory from each other ever since. Case in point with this book, which touches on a number of dramatic issues that I've had experience with in one form another: female gender roles, neurotypical social behaviors, and capitalism. Reviewers wanted to have their cake and eat it too, calling the piece 'unsentimental' on the back cover and 'tender' in the postscript, which is certainly one way of saying that, so long as this character blithely walks into prescribed emotional beanbag roles, we (men) too can indulge in the forbidden arts of sympathy and compassion. It's not the worst thing when the character's putting up with involuntarily institutionalization or breaking through to an unknown world of opportunity, but the whole tale became increasingly 'Lie back and think of England' in terms of where the character discovered personal fulfillment (read: willingly shoved herself back into a confined space and repetitive labor) and, more unforgivably, accomplished healing (look up 'wandering womb' for an illustration of the most egregiously Freudian sequence of narrative events that occurred near the end). All in all, I wouldn't say it's impossible for someone who had been locked up from their late teens to their mid 20s to latch onto highly gendered domestic fulfillment and Protestant work ethics as their saving grace. However, a narrative that lackadaisically normalizes an extremely odious subsuming of a human soul and shoehorns a final tragedy into the last few pages to 'seal off the envelope', as it were, is just more substandard Americana schlock that ultimately decrees that those who are rendered most vulnerable by society need only submit even further to find true salvation. I gave a second star for the beauty and the insight that didn't rely on impressionist images of human breeding stock to whack readers over the head with a tear-spurting onion, but man am I glad this one's not made much of a comeback.
December 19, 2010
I loved being in 1930s New York--the dark apartments with their soggy stairs; the courtyards filled with Italian children; the sweatshop the narrator briefly works in, cutting the threads off beautiful dresses. I enjoyed the realism of the story, and I found Harriet's child-like way with the world--after being in the hospital for so long--quite riveting, and surprising each time it came up.
I didn't, however, like the more associative, stream of consciousness writing that was braided into the straightforward story. It just seemed like bad writing to me. Let me see if I can do a parody of it:
Freedom. Death. Darkness. Light. To live. To--oh!
Ha ha! It made me laugh, it made me skim. I couldn't get into it. I was glad for the drama of the story, and the quiet beauty of Harriet and John's love, which felt real and tender and delicious to me, and so of the era, and yet timeless, too. If not for that, I would have certainly stopped reading what is otherwise a strange and lovely book about independence, work, and recovery.
I didn't, however, like the more associative, stream of consciousness writing that was braided into the straightforward story. It just seemed like bad writing to me. Let me see if I can do a parody of it:
Freedom. Death. Darkness. Light. To live. To--oh!
Ha ha! It made me laugh, it made me skim. I couldn't get into it. I was glad for the drama of the story, and the quiet beauty of Harriet and John's love, which felt real and tender and delicious to me, and so of the era, and yet timeless, too. If not for that, I would have certainly stopped reading what is otherwise a strange and lovely book about independence, work, and recovery.
February 12, 2017
The NYRB continue to shock me and keep me in a constant state of awe. Millen Brand's outstanding The Outward Room asks of you nothing more than to reach inside your hearts and realize that no one is alone and each of us can find that something that excites us. Brand does an amazing job of putting us inside the mind of Harriet who is self proclaimed as insane. That and the incredibly vivid views of depression era New York City makes this one of the best that NYRB offers.
January 5, 2021
I found this book unloved and abandoned in a used bookstore.
The owner who is very familiar with great books and bestsellers, told me no one wanted it because it was written in 1936 and the Author was not popular. So I offered to buy it for 100 naira and he pushed my money back to me offering it for free.
After spending my breakfast and lunch reading this gently, I can beat my chest anywhere and say this is one fine beautiful Book. Infact, I read it to my son while we were breastfeeding and he smiled when I shouted some lines at him and asked ”Isnt this beautiful”
He knows that I am usually not so excited about books, so I guess he smiled because this one must be a big deal.
Just like I had found this book at a used bookstore, Peter Cameron who wrote the afterword had also seen it there, further searches proved it had gone out of print. Thankful that the NYRB brought this gem back.
What a wonderful way to end this tough year. This Book is a work of art, none of the dull ambiguities, ironies, and complexities, found in books written in the 30`s. It is entertaining, instructive and very alive with love, with lovely sentences and beautiful characters.
Gentle Reader, forget all the award-winning books that you are being told to read by lists made by buzzfeed. This is what you should read, this is it.
The owner who is very familiar with great books and bestsellers, told me no one wanted it because it was written in 1936 and the Author was not popular. So I offered to buy it for 100 naira and he pushed my money back to me offering it for free.
After spending my breakfast and lunch reading this gently, I can beat my chest anywhere and say this is one fine beautiful Book. Infact, I read it to my son while we were breastfeeding and he smiled when I shouted some lines at him and asked ”Isnt this beautiful”
He knows that I am usually not so excited about books, so I guess he smiled because this one must be a big deal.
Just like I had found this book at a used bookstore, Peter Cameron who wrote the afterword had also seen it there, further searches proved it had gone out of print. Thankful that the NYRB brought this gem back.
What a wonderful way to end this tough year. This Book is a work of art, none of the dull ambiguities, ironies, and complexities, found in books written in the 30`s. It is entertaining, instructive and very alive with love, with lovely sentences and beautiful characters.
Gentle Reader, forget all the award-winning books that you are being told to read by lists made by buzzfeed. This is what you should read, this is it.
December 3, 2018
I found this NYRB title on a Park Slope brownstone stoop - one of the things I miss about my old neighbourhood, where even walking up a block or two meant going through book offerings left for passers by; once I found a signed, crisp first edition of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried – sorrysorry, yes. The Outward Room.
Millard Brand’s depiction of Manhattan life during the Depression is reminiscent of an Edward Hopper painting, a New York snapshot at once dated and familiar. The opening, however, is less Hopper than Snakepit (the film’s screenplay was also written by Brand) taking place in a mental institution, where Harriet has long been a patient after the death of her brother. The scenes are necessary for the story to come, but it’s when Harriet re-enters the all too real world that the novel becomes something substantive and memorable. 14th Street swarming with people and traffic, the roar of the subway below, odors from cheap lunch counters, neon signs blinking as Harriet stands stock still beneath them wondering if she’s safe. Her search for a cheap furnished room and the hostile rebuff she receives from one building to the next reads like a passage out of The Grapes of Wrath, the meanness of poverty lifting off the page as Harriet is refused and then ignored, doors shut in her face. The one room she is offered has her starting up many steep flights of dirty stairs, ‘into the smell of decay.’ It’s exactly what one would expect, dingy, small, battered. But it’s hers. One feels that even in that sad little room, the air is hers for the first time in years.
Some might take exception to the quick ‘rescue’ that follows, but it’s a long, dark hallway away from anything like a fairy tale reprieve. The kind man who enters Harriet’s life is almost as destitute as she is, and as broken. Their endeavor to bring some hope and warmth into the relentlessly cold world they inhabit is never simplified or dusted in sugary prose. Where the writing doesn’t altogether succeed, it’s due to a combination of having been published in 1937 and showing its age, and a psych101-lecture quality that peppers our insight into Harriet’s experience. But The Outward Room is still very much a worthwhile read, a picture of an era, and a novel of quiet redemption after loss that never entirely casts off of the weight of sorrow. Millard Brand's apt title was inspired by John Donne’s The Second Anniversary:
“Forget this rotten world, and unto thee
Let thine own times as an old story be ….
Think then, my soul, that death is but a groom,
Which brings a taper to the outward room"
Millard Brand’s depiction of Manhattan life during the Depression is reminiscent of an Edward Hopper painting, a New York snapshot at once dated and familiar. The opening, however, is less Hopper than Snakepit (the film’s screenplay was also written by Brand) taking place in a mental institution, where Harriet has long been a patient after the death of her brother. The scenes are necessary for the story to come, but it’s when Harriet re-enters the all too real world that the novel becomes something substantive and memorable. 14th Street swarming with people and traffic, the roar of the subway below, odors from cheap lunch counters, neon signs blinking as Harriet stands stock still beneath them wondering if she’s safe. Her search for a cheap furnished room and the hostile rebuff she receives from one building to the next reads like a passage out of The Grapes of Wrath, the meanness of poverty lifting off the page as Harriet is refused and then ignored, doors shut in her face. The one room she is offered has her starting up many steep flights of dirty stairs, ‘into the smell of decay.’ It’s exactly what one would expect, dingy, small, battered. But it’s hers. One feels that even in that sad little room, the air is hers for the first time in years.
Some might take exception to the quick ‘rescue’ that follows, but it’s a long, dark hallway away from anything like a fairy tale reprieve. The kind man who enters Harriet’s life is almost as destitute as she is, and as broken. Their endeavor to bring some hope and warmth into the relentlessly cold world they inhabit is never simplified or dusted in sugary prose. Where the writing doesn’t altogether succeed, it’s due to a combination of having been published in 1937 and showing its age, and a psych101-lecture quality that peppers our insight into Harriet’s experience. But The Outward Room is still very much a worthwhile read, a picture of an era, and a novel of quiet redemption after loss that never entirely casts off of the weight of sorrow. Millard Brand's apt title was inspired by John Donne’s The Second Anniversary:
“Forget this rotten world, and unto thee
Let thine own times as an old story be ….
Think then, my soul, that death is but a groom,
Which brings a taper to the outward room"
March 15, 2016
It is surprising that Millen Brand’s novel has fallen into relative obscurity. When I first came across this title and read the novel’s synopsis on the back cover, I was immediately reminded of a film starring Carroll Baker, Something Wild. When comparing the two stories, it’s easy to note the similarities between Brand’s 1937 novel and the 1961 film: a girl who experiences a shocking tragedy suffers from a nervous breakdown; she later runs away lost and alone, and in a moment of utter despair is “saved” by a mechanic who takes her in despite not immediately knowing what had happened to her. This is where the similarities end; the tragedies both girls face are markedly different, as is the way the girls resolve their conflicts and reach a state of acceptance.
Brand’s novel is a sad, speculative tale that immediately engages the reader. The tone reflects the quiet confusion that is felt by the novel’s protagonist, Harriet. Circumstances have left her feeling cast adrift, overwhelming her with a sense of aloneness. She feels she has no real purpose in life or society; she lacks that important something that will ground her sense of place…a feeling of kinship, trust and home. Even though she does find a supportive partner, the novel quickly makes it apparent that her emotional quest is one that can only be made by herself, alone.
I particularly enjoyed how the author includes subtle details that inherently chip away at Harriet’s internal conflict. The setting details—the families living in and around the tenement, the children’s voices full of play and excitement, the merry-go-round mounted on the back of an automobile, the hurdy-gurdy music, the sounds of movement, laughter, anger and tears—all create a sense of place within a certain space. The place is busy and chaotic, yet it’s brimming with activity and life. The same holds true for the other places Harriet frequents from her work at the dressmakers, to Anna’s family apartment. Though it is apparent that these elements do lead to some changes in Harriet, she still faces a struggle that only comes to a head at the novel’s closing pages.
The ending might feel abrupt to some readers; however I think it’s fitting. The abruptness provides the reader with a tangible sense of Harriet’s moment of catharsis. It’s a study of contrasts…frustration and encouragement, despair and hope, worry and contentment. Ultimately, the conclusion provided here offers more to the story that a more conventional ending would have.
Brand’s novel is a sad, speculative tale that immediately engages the reader. The tone reflects the quiet confusion that is felt by the novel’s protagonist, Harriet. Circumstances have left her feeling cast adrift, overwhelming her with a sense of aloneness. She feels she has no real purpose in life or society; she lacks that important something that will ground her sense of place…a feeling of kinship, trust and home. Even though she does find a supportive partner, the novel quickly makes it apparent that her emotional quest is one that can only be made by herself, alone.
I particularly enjoyed how the author includes subtle details that inherently chip away at Harriet’s internal conflict. The setting details—the families living in and around the tenement, the children’s voices full of play and excitement, the merry-go-round mounted on the back of an automobile, the hurdy-gurdy music, the sounds of movement, laughter, anger and tears—all create a sense of place within a certain space. The place is busy and chaotic, yet it’s brimming with activity and life. The same holds true for the other places Harriet frequents from her work at the dressmakers, to Anna’s family apartment. Though it is apparent that these elements do lead to some changes in Harriet, she still faces a struggle that only comes to a head at the novel’s closing pages.
The ending might feel abrupt to some readers; however I think it’s fitting. The abruptness provides the reader with a tangible sense of Harriet’s moment of catharsis. It’s a study of contrasts…frustration and encouragement, despair and hope, worry and contentment. Ultimately, the conclusion provided here offers more to the story that a more conventional ending would have.
April 11, 2014
This is a beautifully told story that manages to wrap the reader up. The storyline is simple and sparing, as is the quality of the prose. Brand's style encouraged me to care deeply about the characters' plights - without barraging me with the thick descriptions that would make me feel it were all being shoved down my throat.
In some respects, though, this novel is a real curate's egg. It operates using a stream of consciousness that feels clunky when set against the attempts of (later) writers. The situation at the beginning of the book is interesting in itself, but is let down just a little by a sluggish start. That said, soon there is a touching scene in the hospital, a perilous journey, near destitution and then a fortuitous meeting with a stranger. As this unfolds, so too does the beauty and enjoyability of this largely now-forgotten novel.
As Peter Cameron points out in his brilliant afterward, a book of this quality simply does not deserve to be forgotten. I recommend The Outward Room highly.
(The electronic format of the book, though, is riddled with typesetting mistakes.)
In some respects, though, this novel is a real curate's egg. It operates using a stream of consciousness that feels clunky when set against the attempts of (later) writers. The situation at the beginning of the book is interesting in itself, but is let down just a little by a sluggish start. That said, soon there is a touching scene in the hospital, a perilous journey, near destitution and then a fortuitous meeting with a stranger. As this unfolds, so too does the beauty and enjoyability of this largely now-forgotten novel.
As Peter Cameron points out in his brilliant afterward, a book of this quality simply does not deserve to be forgotten. I recommend The Outward Room highly.
(The electronic format of the book, though, is riddled with typesetting mistakes.)
January 30, 2015
I picked this volume up on a lark, while browsing at one of my favorite bookstores. I always love the NYRB covers and after reading a bit of the back cover, I decided to buy it.
I think it hung out in my bookshelves for about a year until I decided to actually read it as part of a national Read-a-Thon in January of 2015. I read about half of it in one sitting and then couldn't wait to keep on reading it, although things like watching an almost 3-year-old did get in the way ;o)
It's an unusual little book about a young woman's incarceration in a mental asylum and the steps she takes to escape her situation.
The writing is chaotic at times, as we witness her train of thought, her stream of consciousness as she feels herself being dragged down into her madness, but it's real and true and just about the best thing you might read about a young girl running off to Manhattan in the 1930s.
Oh and definitely do read the Afterword as it provided me with a few insights I hadn't actually realized while reading the book but that were very obvious afterwards.
I think it hung out in my bookshelves for about a year until I decided to actually read it as part of a national Read-a-Thon in January of 2015. I read about half of it in one sitting and then couldn't wait to keep on reading it, although things like watching an almost 3-year-old did get in the way ;o)
It's an unusual little book about a young woman's incarceration in a mental asylum and the steps she takes to escape her situation.
The writing is chaotic at times, as we witness her train of thought, her stream of consciousness as she feels herself being dragged down into her madness, but it's real and true and just about the best thing you might read about a young girl running off to Manhattan in the 1930s.
Oh and definitely do read the Afterword as it provided me with a few insights I hadn't actually realized while reading the book but that were very obvious afterwards.
February 4, 2018
Think then, my soule, that death is but a Groome,
Which brings a Taper to the outward roome,
Whence thou spiest first a little glimmering light,
And after brings it nearer to thy sight:
For such approaches doth heaven make in death.
----John Donne
This poignant novel is about death, life; darkness, light; madness, health; isolation, community.
Millen Brand develops this counterpoint of ideas within the framework of a story about a young woman who escapes from a mental institution and hitchhikes her way to New York City. She is alone trying to find work during the Depression. She begins to recover once she connects back with normal people who have also suffered loss.
There is an atmospheric energy pulsing heavily through the story as the plot unfolds: 1) the mental hospital 2) the road 3) the city 4) the first room 5) the subway 6) the second room 7) the workplace 8) the home.
Obviously I find it difficult to describe this book. It is unconventional, affecting, and powerful. It is also forgotten. A best-seller in 1937, it is unknown today.
Which brings a Taper to the outward roome,
Whence thou spiest first a little glimmering light,
And after brings it nearer to thy sight:
For such approaches doth heaven make in death.
----John Donne
This poignant novel is about death, life; darkness, light; madness, health; isolation, community.
Millen Brand develops this counterpoint of ideas within the framework of a story about a young woman who escapes from a mental institution and hitchhikes her way to New York City. She is alone trying to find work during the Depression. She begins to recover once she connects back with normal people who have also suffered loss.
There is an atmospheric energy pulsing heavily through the story as the plot unfolds: 1) the mental hospital 2) the road 3) the city 4) the first room 5) the subway 6) the second room 7) the workplace 8) the home.
Obviously I find it difficult to describe this book. It is unconventional, affecting, and powerful. It is also forgotten. A best-seller in 1937, it is unknown today.
April 16, 2016
A very unique book both in style and in topic.
This is a quiet novel and one that moves along at a pace of internal struggle and development -- which is to say slowly. Watching the development and transitions that the main character goes through over the course of the year the novel takes place is fascinating -- and it was this aspect that got a 4 star rating. I have to admit that the writing style was hard for me at the beginning...to the point that I didn't know if I was going to make it through the book. I don't know if it was the cadence, the odd sentence structure, or the strange use of certain words but it was hard for me to read. After I got used to it and became more invested in the story (maybe 20% into the book), I didn't notice it as much. However, the last little bit of the book, when the story slowed way down again and my attention went from the plot and characters back to the writing, I struggled again.
This is a quiet novel and one that moves along at a pace of internal struggle and development -- which is to say slowly. Watching the development and transitions that the main character goes through over the course of the year the novel takes place is fascinating -- and it was this aspect that got a 4 star rating. I have to admit that the writing style was hard for me at the beginning...to the point that I didn't know if I was going to make it through the book. I don't know if it was the cadence, the odd sentence structure, or the strange use of certain words but it was hard for me to read. After I got used to it and became more invested in the story (maybe 20% into the book), I didn't notice it as much. However, the last little bit of the book, when the story slowed way down again and my attention went from the plot and characters back to the writing, I struggled again.
April 28, 2012
Somehow the idea of an asylum escapee trying to make it in The Big City is a lot more appealing than some rosy cheeked Career Girl trying to make a go of it. "The Outward Room" is all that and more, the literary equivalent to a sad Edward Hopper painting, i.e. "Automat" with the lonely girl in the cloche hat sitting all by herself in the diner, or his studies of the girl in night gown all by herself in her desolate afternoon tenement bedroom. Brand writes with a feminine touch, making the subject matter a lot easier to take.
September 6, 2014
I love when a book can be this plain and this quiet while still being highly emotionally evocative. It's masterful really. The book doesn't ride only off the emotional force tied to the underlying subject matter, though that is there. It doesn't pull cheap tricks either. The words are just set out there, plain. Somehow that all explodes inside the reader when the eyes run across those words. It might not be one of my most favorite books, but I was highly impressed.
May 14, 2017
This book has been sitting on my shelf for far too long, and I'm glad I finally read it. I confess, I loved this book before the entrance of John. After that, I still enjoyed it, but not as much as I had been. I wanted to see Harriet continuing to make her way alone. But perhaps she was not capable of that.
I've missed books like this. (I think what I mean by that is lyrical prose?) I need to find more...
I've missed books like this. (I think what I mean by that is lyrical prose?) I need to find more...
April 24, 2017
A beautiful, quiet, reflective novel that holds up moments in a chain, linking the heroine's incarceration in an institution to a path to life, and love, outside. This could have been even better were there not so many odd stream-of-consciousness diversions from the beautiful descriptions, but as it stands it's pretty damn good anyway.
Want to read
September 5, 2010Thanks to Daniel@Boswell Books for the recommend. He recommends "Skippy Dies" in the same newsletter (and I so want to read that) that I know he has great taste!
December 12, 2021
The Outward Room was an incredible love story.
I admired Harriet and how she refused to let mental illness constrain her life.
I admired Harriet and how she refused to let mental illness constrain her life.
July 19, 2021
A lovely quiet novel, first published in 1937, that moves through a year in a young woman’s life as she finds her way from illness and depression towards health and equilibrium. At the beginning, she’s in a mental hospital, where she’s been since she broke down after her brother’s accidental death. She thinks she died, too, when he did, and she irrationally blames her parents for his death. Although she is not wholly well yet, the hospital doesn’t seem to be helping her anymore, so she escapes and heads for New York, where she tries to make a space for herself in the midst of the depression. The prose shifts with her mental state, becoming more fragmented when she struggles and smoothing out as she finds her way and makes the human connections that she needs to be well.
August 16, 2022
Unique way of writing. I like the way the protagonist thinks about things she sees. It’s disjointed, yet makes a certain kind of sense. It’s a quiet book with powerful emotions running through it. What is going on in the world is going on within Harriet yet she finds rebirth.
August 19, 2022
7.9/10. I got this book at a used bookstore at the college campus near me. The cover art was cool and it caught my interest. The beginning started really strong. I found the story of the main character in the hospital and how she escaped. I loved the part where she hoped the train. All this was great and the part of the story where she enters NYC is very intriguing. I love how the writer writes about the setting and the main characters surroundings. I think the middle of the book was a little slow for me but it was still a peaceful read. The ending was so good. I feel like it’s a perfect melancholy way to end the book. I really liked this book you should read it.
March 11, 2023
*Re-read March 2023- this remains a strange and quite tragic little story that takes a long while to "get going". The story arc is slow and building. The characters seem quite flat and affectless (although the protagonist is supposed to be recovering from a mental health relapse). Some of the best scenes are the descriptions of riding a night train in the depths of exhaustion. Brand really seems to be able to get to the core of how it feels to be absolutely bone-weary in body and mind. Overall good but not one I'd necessarily return to and so it goes, off to the library for a new life chapter.
Original review: 3.5 stars. Quite a sad little story really. A fragile but resilient woman escapes from the institution where she is being "treated" for mental health issues, following the death of her brother. She travels to New York and takes refuge with a man who she slowly learns to love in her own guarded way. The writing style of this is a little staccato and erratic which can take some getting used to, but the story of human kindness is lovely in a world known to be hard and cruel.
Original review: 3.5 stars. Quite a sad little story really. A fragile but resilient woman escapes from the institution where she is being "treated" for mental health issues, following the death of her brother. She travels to New York and takes refuge with a man who she slowly learns to love in her own guarded way. The writing style of this is a little staccato and erratic which can take some getting used to, but the story of human kindness is lovely in a world known to be hard and cruel.
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