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Bright Morning Stars
It's 1923 and Annie O'Leary has made a rational and even beautiful life for herself on the back ward of a state asylum, where she's confined for a terrible crime she doesn't remember committing. She writes poetry, helps the nurses, and sings old hymns off the back porch. Then a new patient arrives to change all the equations. Lucy Valenta, a young art student, needs to get back in her right mind and bring her enormous gift into the world. The bond between the two women is deep and quick with of making family, of making art, and forming a pact of transformation. The enigmatic psychiatrist, Dr. David Grafton, wants to help Annie retrieve her history, invoking the new techniques of psychoanalysis--but he himself is a wounded healer, traumatized by his recent experience of trench warfare. Each must hold in tension the power of memory to liberate and destroy. Each must dare the millrace of-- call it-- love.
286 pages, Paperback
Published December 31, 2018
19 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 28, 2021
Bright Morning Stars by Mary Rose O’Reilley
I felt overwhelmed when I finished reading this superb first novel I sat in silence, unable to put words to an experience like this. One doesn’t often encounter an asylum for the insane, either in fiction or life, and find it a place where miracles happen.
Dr. David Grafton, the asylum director, traumatized during the first world war, has advanced ideas for the treatment of the residents.
“Whatever guilty knowledge hung in the heart, it was appropriate—and healthy—to be kind,” he told himself. The compassion and respect he brought to his care of the residents pervades the book. Yes, there were bars but there was decency and a measure of freedom.
Two women residents, Annie Leary and Lucy Allen are among the incarcerated in the Minnesota “State Asylum For The Criminally Insane, Crippled, Feeble Minded and Indigent.” Annie,
accused of a heinous crime that she can’t remember, and Lucy, a young gifted artist “put away” by her husband as so often happened to women in the 19th and early 20th century who did not comply or had become inconvenient.
O’Reilley does a wondrous job tracing the development of Annie and Lucy’s healing relationship. A diverse cast of characters complete the scenario: nurses and aides; a severely retarded and deformed teenager thought deaf and dumb; a circus performer, turned asylum caretaker; and others inside and out.
I had no idea what to expect when I began to read, save that the author was a poet and used words like a musician. I’d barely finished the first chapter when the book had hooked me. I highly recommend this book.
I felt overwhelmed when I finished reading this superb first novel I sat in silence, unable to put words to an experience like this. One doesn’t often encounter an asylum for the insane, either in fiction or life, and find it a place where miracles happen.
Dr. David Grafton, the asylum director, traumatized during the first world war, has advanced ideas for the treatment of the residents.
“Whatever guilty knowledge hung in the heart, it was appropriate—and healthy—to be kind,” he told himself. The compassion and respect he brought to his care of the residents pervades the book. Yes, there were bars but there was decency and a measure of freedom.
Two women residents, Annie Leary and Lucy Allen are among the incarcerated in the Minnesota “State Asylum For The Criminally Insane, Crippled, Feeble Minded and Indigent.” Annie,
accused of a heinous crime that she can’t remember, and Lucy, a young gifted artist “put away” by her husband as so often happened to women in the 19th and early 20th century who did not comply or had become inconvenient.
O’Reilley does a wondrous job tracing the development of Annie and Lucy’s healing relationship. A diverse cast of characters complete the scenario: nurses and aides; a severely retarded and deformed teenager thought deaf and dumb; a circus performer, turned asylum caretaker; and others inside and out.
I had no idea what to expect when I began to read, save that the author was a poet and used words like a musician. I’d barely finished the first chapter when the book had hooked me. I highly recommend this book.
June 18, 2019
Bright Morning Stars is a fascinating look at a fictional mental asylum in Minnesota during the 1920s, focused on the intersecting stories of two women who have been committed for reasons neither can really remember.
In part, the book is chilling - a glimpse of all the reasons women might be locked up in an asylum at the beginning of the 20th century is just plain frightening. In part, it's a love story - a love story between the two women that survives despite incredible obstacles. In party, it's about madness - what constitutes being insane? How is trauma part of madness, and yet in all kinds of ways, not? All of this against the backdrop of a host of people - patients and staff alike - recovering from WWI.
I was incredibly absorbed by the book. The mental dancing both women go through is so well captured that I had to keep putting the book down lest I start to feel like I was leaving my senses. My only complaint would be that the climax of the book comes seemingly out of nowhere - perhaps because such things do come out of nowhere, but I would have preferred a little run up to the event in question rather than being dropped into it so suddenly, and everything changing.
In part, the book is chilling - a glimpse of all the reasons women might be locked up in an asylum at the beginning of the 20th century is just plain frightening. In part, it's a love story - a love story between the two women that survives despite incredible obstacles. In party, it's about madness - what constitutes being insane? How is trauma part of madness, and yet in all kinds of ways, not? All of this against the backdrop of a host of people - patients and staff alike - recovering from WWI.
I was incredibly absorbed by the book. The mental dancing both women go through is so well captured that I had to keep putting the book down lest I start to feel like I was leaving my senses. My only complaint would be that the climax of the book comes seemingly out of nowhere - perhaps because such things do come out of nowhere, but I would have preferred a little run up to the event in question rather than being dropped into it so suddenly, and everything changing.
April 7, 2021
It is a fascinating look into how the mentally ill were treated in the early 1900’s. It is set in a Northfield, MN hospital. It is also a love story for Lucy & Annie the main characters.
We see into the minds of the patients and doctors as they begin to learn what is truly a mental disease and what is not. Epilepsy, Down Syndrome, PTSD, manic depressive; all confined in this hospital after the First World War.
We see into the minds of the patients and doctors as they begin to learn what is truly a mental disease and what is not. Epilepsy, Down Syndrome, PTSD, manic depressive; all confined in this hospital after the First World War.
December 5, 2020
Oh dear, it’s been so long since I have read a book that captured my imagination, held it in thrall, and promised to surprise me at every turn of the page. Put this book on your book club’s must read list. Everyone will thank you!
April 21, 2020
Minnesota, an asylum, women who are not all crazy, singing.
August 31, 2022
I read this for book club. Most club members did not care for the book. They found the book disjointed, difficult to follow and not engaging.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews