Saving Lucia

by Anna Vaught

How would it be if four lunatics went on a tremendous adventure, reshaping their pasts and futures as they went, including killing Mussolini? What if one of those people were a fascinating, forgotten aristocratic assassin and the others a fellow life co-patient, James Joyce’s daughter Lucia, another the first psychoanalysis patient, known to history simply as ‘Anna O,’ and finally 19th Century Paris’s Queen of the Hysterics, Blanche Wittmann?

That would be extraordinary, wouldn't it? How would it all be possible? Because, as the assassin Lady Violet Gibson would tell you, those who are confined have the very best imaginations.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Mental Health, Literary Fiction, Historical, 21st Century, Womens

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 24, 2020

About the author

September the 10th, Famished is out with Influx Press - but you can subscribe and read it a little early. xxxx

https://www.influxpress.com/subscript...



What's coming? In April, you can read my new novel, Saving Lucia. Here she is above. The book that started with a chance sighting of that photo above - the one where the elderly lady is feeding the birds, so very tenderly. She was the Honourable Violet Gibson and, in April 1926, she went to Rome and tried to kill Mussolini, She shot him in the nose. She got closer than anyone else. Lady Gibson was knocked to the ground, put in prison and, eventually, deported; thereafter, she was certified insane and spent the rest of her life in St Andrew's Hospital, Northampton. Later, a fellow patient was Lucia Joyce, daughter of James Joyce. What if...and do you see the other women above? That's Blanche, Queen of the Hysterics at the Salpetriere and that's Monsieur Charcot demonstrating what happens under hypnosis. She is most remarkably responsive. To her right is Bertha Pappenheim, a prominent Jewish social worker, whose institute was razed by the Nazis. It was not until twenty years after her death that she was also revealed to be 'Anna O', in Freud and Breuer's On Hysteria. These women have an extraordinary story to tell you, so stick around. The book is published on April the 24th, but Bluemoose Books is starting a subscription service, where it will be available to subscribers from (I gather) late February. Follow all news here: https://bluemoosebooks.com/ Saving Lucia is part of Bluemoose's all women catalogue for 2020.
Also in 2020, Famished, my first short story collection, with Influx press, assorted short fiction, two further books being read, one being written and the novel I have just done for my literary agency is about to go out of submission. OOOOH.

Reviews

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught gives a (fictional) voice to four historic women, each, at some point in her life, constrained by (male) doctors for supposed mental disorder.

The author gives more detail on the true stories behind these women here:
https://annavaughtwrites.com/the-wome...

It is important to me that we think carefully about the women in the book. Three were committed for life and one was periodically cared for in a sanatorium and under psychiatric supervision and also an important case study. But they were all from different walks of life and one is on a postage stamp (again, read on). So I thought, to avoid any notion of lumping these four women together, I would give you some biographies below. The book is, of course, not only about psychiatry, psychology and mental illness; it is about friendship, history, the possibility of a different history, families, happiness and the potency of the imagination.

They are:

- Lady Violet Gibson (1876-1956) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_... who in 1926, aged 50, attempted to assassinate the fascist leader Mussolini, wounding him with a gun shot. She was deported to the UK and there, for what might have been otherwise viewed as a heroic act, committed to a mental institution, St Andrew's Hospital ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Andr...) where she spent the remaining 30 years of her life despite her petitions to Winston Churchill (a family friend) amongst others that she should be released;

- Lucia Joyce (1907-1982), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_J... daughter of the author James, who was diagnosed as schizophrenic in the mid 30s and largely institutionalised from that point. From 1951 to her death in 1982 she was also in St Andrew's Hospital;

- ‘Blanche’ Wittman (1859-1913), known as "The Queen of the Hysterics" as the most famous patient exhibited by Jean-Marie Charcot at the Salpêtrière Hospital;

- Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_...). Under the pseudonym Anna O (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_O) she was a patient of Josef Breuer and his writings on her treatment with Freud are regarded as the beginning of psychoanalysis, particularly Bertha's own idea of free association in their sessions (she called it 'chimney sweeping'). Her identity as Bertha Pappenheim was only revealed years later. She was also a social pioneer, notably founding the Neu-Isenburg orphanage for Jewish girls (which was later closed by the Gestapo in 1942, the residents deported to concentration camps)

In practice their stories have often been told by others, typically male authors, both at the time and in literature since.

Bertha’s own life story was rather subordinated to Freud and Breuer’s account of ‘Anna’. And perhaps most notably The Story of Blanche and Marie by Per Olov Enquist, where the author's use of source material lead many to treat his invented narrative (e.g. that Blanche worked for Marie Curie) as entirely fact rather than part fiction (https://severinelit.com/2020/04/22/on...). See e.g. this New Scientist article https://www.newscientist.com/article/... or this from the Independent which has since been quoted on the internet as a 'source' for 'facts' about Blanche's life: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en.... To his credit the article in the same paper from the chair of the 2003 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, which the novel won, did recognise the flights of fictive fancy involved:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...

The Lucia in this novel also complains early on:

I’ve had it up to here with all the Joyce family analysis and their pity about Beckett, I must say. You know, I’m poor this and poor that. Daddy’s dead, Mother never visited me anywhere, Giorgio was frosty, Sam jilted me for his Frenchwoman and only had me because he was Daddy’s acolyte. And on and on. I’ll jabber it before you do!

Saving Lucia posits that, given their overlapping times in the institution, Lucia and Lady Gibson became close friends, Violet encouraging the younger woman to tell her own story and telling hers in turn.

Lucia, dear girl, dear silly girl, let us talk about you. I have heard whispers from the walls. I am not supposed to know. It’s said that you have been rubbed out. Your letters gone; records destroyed, gone to dust. Burnings. Everyone has forgotten, you poor thing. You had no gun. It is not right. I want to give something to you.

I wonder what. Who loves me really? I think she’s come to the same pass.

And then Violet says, Ah, but we will fly: I have a plan. A sort of trip for mad women like us. I want to save you.

Save you.

Saving Lucia. I like the sound of that.

Violet also introduces Lucia to the story of Bertha and Blanche and indeed, through her imagination and crossing barriers of time and space the four women meet, and set out to re-write not just their own stories but histories.

Violet had read and thought about other women, penned up and mistranslated, or just forgetten for what they might really have been. She saw them, she said, in her dreams, too, and at all times, heard their voices and mouthed them aloud; answered back, saving it all in her imagination which had grown expansive, luxuriant, in confinement.

Woven through the text are literally allusions to Beckett and Joyce (particularly Finnegans Wake) and much more besides, for example a recurrent bird motif featured in this excellent review: https://storgy.com/2020/03/12/saving-...

My own account barely sketches the surface of a wonderfully written and deep novel – one I hope to see featuring in literary prize lists.
Recommended – 4.5 stars

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enjoyable and impressive fantasy that brings together four real women who were diagnosed as mad by male doctors, and imagines an alternative life in which more of their ambitions are fulfilled. The Lucia of the title is Lucia Joyce, but the real star is Lady Dorothy Albina Gibson, the aristocrat who shot Mussolini in 1926 but failed to kill him. Highly recommended.

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I write this, 19 May 2020, it is, appropriately, Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK where I live. Saving Lucia is the story (this might not be the best word - read on) of four women, three of whom were committed to institutions for life and one of whom was in and out of a sanatorium and became an important case study. The four women are Lucia Joyce (daughter of James Joyce), Lady Violet Gibson (famous for an attempted assassination of Mussolini), Blanche Wittmann (known as the ‘Queen of the Hysterics’ and put on display by Charcot) and Bertha Pappenheim (better known as Anna O, a well known patient of Breuer and Freud).

The novel takes as a starting point the fact that Joyce and Gibson were, for a period, simultaneously at the same institution (St Andrew’s Hospital, Northampton) and imagines that the two women formed a close friendship. In Saving Lucia, Lucia listens to Lady Gibson’s story and writes it down whilst, at the same time, being encouraged to tell her own story. As part of Lady Gibson’s story, the other two women are introduced and the book takes a huge imaginative leap where barriers of space and time are dissolved and the four women meet and take part in an adventure where they set out to re-write their stories (and, along the way, history itself).

This is not an easy book to read. The voices of the four women are jumbled up. Other story lines work their way in: there are multiple allusions to James Joyce and his books, especially Finnegan’s Wake (which I have not read, so I probably missed a lot of these), a thread involving Samuel Beckett. As a keen bird watcher, I particularly enjoyed the bird (passerine) motif that runs through the whole of the book: they are often a source of comfort but also a form of identity for the women. (NB: A Twitter exchange with the author after posting this review revealed that the book's working title had been Passerines). I suspect that a more erudite reader than me would find references out to other works on almost every page.

It took me a lot longer than normal to read this book. I decided early on that I would not follow up every idea on Google, which is always a temptation with this kind of book. This means I missed a lot of references, but I don’t think it necessarily spoiled the book. But the reason it took a long time to read is that it really demands to be read at speaking pace, preferably out loud. I don’t typically like audiobooks, but I can imagine this book would work really well in that format. The stories of the four women are brought to life by the language in the book. Large parts of the book are told by Bertha who is famous for her part in the creation of the “talking cure” and the prose style here matches that kind of free associative talking, no restraints. This means the reader has to concentrate hard: if your mind wanders for a few minutes, you will come back to full attention and realise you have no idea how you got to where you are.

But full attention is something well worth giving to this book. It needs to be read more than once and these are just initial thoughts that barely scratch the surface. It is a book I will return to at some point.

It is also worth reading the author’s notes and comments about the book on her website: annavaughtwrites.com.

Those who know my taste in books will know that I particularly enjoy this kind of book where atmosphere and impression are far more important than plot, where there are times when you have to let go and flow with the language rather than try to make complete sense of it. It is reminiscent of Will Eaves’ Murmur, Kevin Davey’s Playing Possum and Deborah Levy’s Diary of a Steak (this latter especially as that book also concentrates on society’s (read “men’s”) treatment of “female hysterics”), all of which are books that I also loved.

[Jackie Law · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Don’t let me be remembered only as a madwoman, as a case.”

Saving Lucia, by Anna Vaught, is a fictionalised retelling of the lives of four women who, in their lifetimes, were regarded as mentally impaired. They were incarcerated and given treatments thought fitting at the time, often by renowned pioneers whose names readers may recognise. In looking at the women’s lives and the people they met and mixed with, the question is posited: how are they deemed mad and others sane?

The Lucia of the title is the daughter of James Joyce, the Irish writer best known for his wordy and challenging novels. Born in 1907, she was diagnosed as schizophrenic in the mid-1930s and institutionalized at the Burghölzli psychiatric clinic in Zurich. In 1951, she was transferred to St Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton. She died there in 1982.

“St Andrew’s is quite a select place if you have the money, because you get a well-appointed room of your own to be mad in.”

During Lucia’s first few years at St Andrew’s – according to this tale – she befriends another inmate, the Honourable Violet Gibson. In 1926, Violet shot Mussolini as he walked amongst a crowd in Rome. She wishes her story to be told and asks Lucia to be her scribe. As they share their stories, those of two other women also rise.

Marie ‘Blanche’ Wittman was a prominent patient of esteemed neurologist, Professor Jean-Martin Charcot. He would exhibit her in his clinical lessons at La Salpêtrière in Paris. Under hypnosis, this beautiful woman would be presented as a model example of hysteria. One such lesson was captured in a painting by André Brouillet. Charcot was a showman, Blanche his commodity. Under the guise of teaching he offered her up for men to ogle – a curiosity without agency.

“Neurology: such detail – and he swam in its glory and down its pathways; he thought hysteria had a logic of the body.
Hmmm.
I don’t recall that he studied it in men”

The fourth woman in this imagined friendship group (who lived in different times and places) is Anna O. She was a patient of Josef Breuer who published her case study in his book Studies on Hysteria, written in collaboration with Sigmund Freud. Her treatment is regarded as marking the beginning of psychoanalysis. Her real name was Bertha Pappenheim, an Austrian Jew and the founder of the League of Jewish Women.

What these four women have in common, as well as their purported mental conditions, is the power others had over them and how this was was misused.

“women of her time could find no outlet in ‘a cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere’ to satisfy their passion and intellect. They were not supposed to have ‘any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted'”

The book’s brilliantly written opening chapter pulls the reader in. From there the narrator’s voice is established – a somewhat frantic and illusory remembrance of various events from each of the character’s histories. Gradually the reasons for their incarcerations are revealed along with the direction their lives subsequently took. In giving them a voice, the author also asks what they would have done instead if given the choice.

Lucia Joyce’s letters, papers and medical records were destroyed at the behest of her surviving family – an attempt to expunge her existence. Violet Gibson was moved to a shared ward when her family wished to save themselves money towards the end of her life. Marie Wittman was taken on by Marie Curie as an assistant to work in the Paris laboratory where, in 1898, radium was discovered – she suffered debilitating health issues as a result of this work. Bertha Pappenheim recovered over time and led a productive life – the West German government issued a postage stamp in honour of her contributions to the field of social work.

These stories of vital, intelligent women whose lasting history is remembered largely through what they were to famous men make for fascinating reading. Mental health is still widely regarded as an embarrassing condition best kept hidden away – the author has given voice to those who, for fear of consequences, were forced to submit silently and kept in captivity. Readers are reminded that captivity does not always require rooms and keys.

There is much to consider in this poignant and impressive story. Although certain threads are not always the easiest to follow due to the fragmented structure, it is worth pursuing for all that comes together at the end. This leaves a powerful and lasting impression as well as a new lens to look through at some of the supposed titans of science. A layered, affecting and recommended read.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

“But now, you are not alone, you are no-one’s hysterical showpiece or study—and I promise we’ll discuss further company later; imagination has magic in its heart, don’t you know? And I promise: we tell your story and Lucia writes it down and it is saved so that you have a name and a life.”

This novel is an imagined interaction among four (real) women, two of whom were confined to the same mental institution. It starts with Lady Violet Gibson (who attempted to assassinate Mussolini) and Lucia Joyce (daughter of author James Joyce), portraying them as friends. Lucia begins writing Violet’s story and adds details from her own life. Two other women are introduced later in the narrative – Blanche Wittman (hysteria patients of Jean-Martin Charcot) and Bertha Pappenheim (patient of Josef Breuer whose case was documented as “Anna O” by Sigmund Freud).

The early parts of the book are fairly straightforward, but it gradually becomes fragmented. It contains many literary references, particularly to Joyce and Beckett. It feels like reading a lengthy dream sequence, as the women refashion their histories to what their lives could have been, if they had not been classified as “hystericals.”

It is not a quick or easy read. I prefer more straightforward storytelling, but I appreciated the commentary about issues that women had to face regarding mental health. It will appeal to those who enjoy innovative or experimental writing.

[peg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading through the Goodreads list of books eligible for the Goldsmith prize, I came upon this perfect answer to whether the conversations between Lucia Joyce and Violet Gibson (who shot Mussolini) really happened while they were both at a mental institution. The word “ambiguity” describes much of the action and conversation, even to the point of who the narrator is (which changes often without notice).

“If I ask you whether any of this really happened, later on, I mean, I don’t want you to be sure and, reader, I want your answer to rest on a generous ambiguity. Because I’d argue that life—and sanity—do, too.”
— Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught

I definitely want to read this book again and hope it makes the Goldsmiths list because of the many kinds of ambiguity it contains which seems quite innovative and daring. Giving it an 8 on my personal scale from 1 to 10 on possibility of being included on the upcoming list

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review is on my blog, if you wanna read it then click on the link, I would copy it here but there are pictures and links.

https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2020...

[Cathy]

Could not get on with narrative style

[Lel Budge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, where do I start ?

Lucia Joyce, daughter of the famous James Joyce, is in an asylum. It’s here she meets Lady Violet Gibson. Violet is here as she had shot Mussolini, intending to kill him, but just got his nose…(this is all true, I had to look her up after reading Saving Lucia). She tends to be ‘emotional’ and as Mussolini forgave her, she has been sent to the asylum, rather than prison or firing squad.

As these aging women become friends, Lucia is writing down Violet’s story….

We mustn’t forget the other women here too….Anna O and Blanche..

What follows is a trip through the imagination, of what is, was and could have been, as seen through the eyes of these incredible women. It reads like a written daydream, it flits about like Violet’s passerines telling their incredible stories.

It can feel a little jumbled, but this is how we think and once you are into the rhythm, you’ll fall in love with amazing book and the women within. A book to treasure.

Thank you so much to Jordan Taylor-Jones and Bluemoose Books for the opportunity to read Saving Lucia for free. This is my honest and unbiased review.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books)]

Interesting women from history whose story deserves to be told. I found the fictional narrative difficult to follow, and not particularly satisfying. I’d rather read a nonfiction account. Bailed early.

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit challenging at times due to narration choices, but ultimately an imaginative rewarding read. RTC.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book! But, for me, it is the perfect example of a great story being wasted by the way it is written. A straightforward narrative would have been so much better, in my opinion.

We are in the 1950’s, at Saint Andrew’s Psychiatric Hospital, where we meet two famous residents – Lucia Joyce, daughter of the famous writer, and Violet Gibson, the aristocratic who shot Mussolini. Lucia wants to record the life of her friend, but that becomes a bit difficult for Violet’s mind is always wandering… Wandering so much that she is able to conjure the spirits of two other famous mental cases – Blanche Wittmann and Anna O.

I really enjoyed getting to know a bit of the lives of these four women, who were different and misunderstood and, therefore, branded as mad. We get a glimpse of the evolution of psychiatric treatments (in the beginning they were terrible!) and the way the system mistreated women, sometimes nothing more that “actors” in a freak show. But I didn´t enjoy being inside the head of a rambling Violet Gibson, jumping from one idea to another and, quite often, not leading anywhere.

I’m very curious to read other books about these four women, but I’ll probably go for non-fiction this time.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book...difficult? I was torn between 3 and 4 stars because I couldn't say that I really enjoyed reading it, but I think at other points in my life I would have LOVED it, i.e. points where my brain was working better. I've plumped for four stars because, despite finding it tough going, the book raised so many interesting thoughts for me about feminism and mental health and insanity and fame and intellect... And the historical figures behind the fictional story were fascinating to learn about. Just not a book to read when you're struggling to stay awake or have a mind racing with real life.

[Karen Mace · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is book 6 of my 20 books of summer 2022.

I found this to be a really impressive, if slightly challenging, read which features 4 real women and a fictional reinterpretation of their lives, of which many years were spent inside mental institutions as they were deemed mentally unwell because of their actions. Through listening to their stories as they tell them to one another, you begin to question what is madness! Why are some people locked away for their actions, and others get away with far worse. Being female really impacted on the decision by men to lock them up, so it seems, and it was fascinating to see how they reacted to the world and the restrictions placed upon them.

The women involved were all quite prominent at the time, none more so than the daughter of James Joyce, alongside that of Lady Gibson who was locked up for shooting Mussolini, but failing to kill him. She saw the monster in him while others turned a blind eye or were taken in by him. But she saw her actions as a calling and the author mentions a few books at the end about the women and the times, and I'll definitely be picking up some of those to learn more about their stories.

The style of writing was often frantic and rambling as these women recalled their childhoods, or events during the past, and I did get a lost a bit trying to come to terms with that, but then it seemed to click and fit with the way their minds were shaped because of the places they were being kept. Feeding the birds was a great distraction for them, and allowed a feeling of 'normal' in a very crazy situation.

The line between madness and clarity was really well put together throughout this book and it really does make you think about the whole subject of insanity, and how by thinking different and going against the grain could worry others. It's an often surreal story but one that really makes you think and I'm looking forward to reading it again soon to discover more missed messages and hidden layers! Highly recommended!

[Marianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il titolo in italiano è BANG BANG MUSSOLINI edito da 8tto edizioni

Consigliato

Donne come me. Storia di un’amicizia tra le pareti di un manicomio: Violet Gibson, la donna che attentò alla vita del Duce e Lucia, la “figlia picchiatella” di Joyce. Un’interessante proposta della 8tto edizioni

Il romanzo si basa su una invenzione, una fiction: l’amicizia tra due donne che non si sono mai incontrate di persona: una è Violet Gibson detta Lady Gibson, per via del lignaggio aristocratico, l’altra è Lucia Joyce, figlia d’arte.
La scrittrice Anna Vaught, con il fondamentale ausilio dell’immaginazione, nel suo libro le fa diventare compagne di destino: entrambe sono confinate al St Andrew’s General Lunatic Asylum (così l’ospedale psichiatrico si chiamava all’epoca dei fatti).
Due donne, si è appena scritto, in realtà si parla di ben quattro donne nel libro. La voce narrante, Lucia Joyce - figlia del grande scrittore - racconta le sorti sue, quelle di Lady Violet compagna di ospedale, di Blanche Wittman e di Bertha Pappenheim, tutte accomunate dalla diagnosi di isteria, quindi portatrici sane -non dal punto di vista psichiatrico, evidentemente - di “utero errante”.

Continua su Critica Letteraria

https://www.criticaletteraria.org/202...

[Lady R · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a short novel at just over 180 pages but it has lovely big themes. It was fascinating to read about the lives of these four women and I found myself googling them as soon as I finished the book to learn more.
I’ve read several books about women in mental hospitals and it never continues to shock me about their conditions and treatment and how debasing much of it was.
The plot of this novel is brilliant and takes you on a wonderful journey without giving too much away.

I feel bad giving such a book 3 stars as the author is a talented writer and this is sure to get rave reviews.

However I personally struggled with the style of this book which - in an attempt to mirror the “madness” of the ladies and the flitting between past and present - has a very particular style which I found disruptive and confusing at times. This very much detracted from my overall enjoyment. I think it will very much appeal to other readers & I can see this book being a big literary success.

[Michelle Ryles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bluemoose Books have decided to mark 2020 by only publishing novels written by women and Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught is the first of these. What is so special about Saving Lucia is that the characters are based on real women from history, or rather forgotten from history until Anna Vaught became inspired by them.

I don't think I have ever read a book that has made me google so many things. I have become fascinated by Lady Violet Gibson, an Irish women who made an assassination attempt on Benito Mussolini in Rome in 1926. Instead of going to prison in Italy, she was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum in England along with Lucia Joyce, the daughter of Irish writer James Joyce.

Violet tells her story to Lucia and you feel like you're actually inside Violet's mind so it's quite hard to follow at times. With thoughts jumping from one thing to another, as they often do in our brains, the writing has an almost dreamlike quality. Anna Vaught's expressive and ethereal writing style gives her novel the feel of a literary classic. I felt like I should be making notes in the margins and I was surprised when this was actually mentioned towards the end of the book.

Saving Lucia certainly gives the reader a few things to think about, namely how easily problematic women were carted off to lunatic asylums in the past when there was probably nothing wrong with their mental health. I dread to even consider some of the 'treatments' they underwent and I feel quite angry on their behalf.

Based on real women and real events, Saving Lucia is an exemplary novel and one that has continued to fascinate me long after I turned the final page. It has the feel of a modern literary classic and should be carefully absorbed over time rather than devoured in one sitting.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

[Mairead Hearne (swirlandthread.com) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Those who are confined have the very best imaginations’

Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught was published with Bluemoose Books April 2020 and is a novel inspired by some of the most interesting women in the history of psychiatry. ‘Their identities have been denuded, shaped by the rhetoric’s of men, quick to deem these women ‘lunatics’, giving voice to individuals whose screams and whispers can no longer be heard.’

Having read and thoroughly enjoyed The Joyce Girl by Annabel Abbs and The Dead Ladies Project by Jessa Crispin, I was very excited when Saving Lucia arrived in my door. Saving Lucia is a very personal book to Anna Vaught. Openly honest about her own personal battles with mental health, Anna Vaught questions her own situation- “Had I been born earlier, I might well have been somewhere different and never got out. (Actually, I might, as is raised in the book, have been admitted purely because I was difficult or in the way!)” Thankfully, we have come a long way on this journey in supporting people with mental health issues but it is still very much a challenge.

Saving Lucia brings together four renowned psychiatric patients, all female, all with their own very personal demons to battle in life. St Andrew’s psychiatric hospital in Northampton is the setting where Lucia Joyce has been a patient since 1953. Lady Violet Gibson, the daughter of an Irish aristocrat, is also at St Andrews at the same time, albeit having already spent many years there before Lucia’s incarceration. Violet Gibson is known for her attempted assassination of Mussolini in Rome in 1926. Following her arrest in Italy, she eventually was sent to St. Andrew’s where she saw out her days. Her grave is to be found at Kingsthorpe Cemetery, where Anna Vaught visited over the course of her research for this book. Lucia Joyce is also buried there.

Anna Vaught decided to create a fictional, imagined account of a friendship between Violet and Lucia, giving them a never before heard voice. Both were abandoned by their families and Anna Vaught wanted to give them an alternative story, one where both women developed a strong relationship and where Violet Gibson decided to aid Lucia for a life beyond the walls of St Andrew’s.

“The book is, of course, not only about psychiatry, psychology and mental illness; it is about friendship, history, the possibility of a different history, families, happiness and the potency of the imagination.” – Anna Vaught

Through pure imagination Lucia and Violet are joined for a time in the story by two more historic figures, Blanche Wittman and ‘Anna O’. In the late 1800s Blanche Wittman was an in-house patient of the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris under the care of Charcot. It was here that he established what was to be recognised as the greatest neurological clinic of its time in Europe. Blanche Wittman was given the title of the Queen of the Hysterics and Charcot demonstrated much of his work with Blanche as ‘one of his ‘hysterics’ to demonstrate the effects of hypnosis. He would also apply magnets to her body and ovarian compression, both of which he believed would work on hysteria, which he believed to be a disease of the nerves.’

Anna O was the pseudonym given to a patient of Josef Breuer, a close associate of Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis was being explored at the time and it was Anna O who supposedly coined the term, ‘the talking cure’ based on the methods used to help her cope with her sometimes erratic mental state.

Using these four women, Anna Vaught creates an incredible and quite fascinating look at how little power they had over their own lives once they became part of the system. Mixing factual details with imagined scenarios, Anna Vaught takes her readers on a fantastical journey, giving these women opinions, voices and putting some shape to their personalities.

Written in a very unique style, Saving Lucia is a challenging read but yet, once started, it is very strangely hypnotising and compelling. Were these women victims of injustice? Were they all misused, emotionally abused, for the purposes of men? Were they ever allowed an opinion in their treatment or did they lose all personal control once they were handed over? In the book Lucia Joyce refers to this tale as ‘a strange story of women who lived and laughed and loved and left’ and it is more strange than unusual, possibly the strangest book I have read in recent times. Saving Lucia is a book that will send any reader down a rabbit-hole of research. These women deserve our attention and Anna Vaught, with pure imagination, brings them alive for a moment as they form an unlikely bond and each gets to tell their story.

Saving Lucia is a complex tale, one with many layers and a great depth. The style does take getting used to, as the writing can seem very erratic, but it makes sense as it is a conversation between four women who have known great mental struggles and pain. The underlying question being asked throughout is were these women, and many more like them, mad or just silenced in a society that did not know how to deal with them?

“The walls of the imagination are flexible. Violet knows what your imagination can do; the other women have grasped it because they had to, for survival, for their creative strains to be intact when they were presumed hysterics, thought insane.. Imagination is vast and protean. If you know nothing else from these pages, know that” – Lucia Joyce, Saving Lucia

Saving Lucia is a very affecting tale, one that lingers in the mind long after the final page is turned. The idea of trapped birds in cages is very evident throughout, which will become clear to the reader as the pages turn, for many reasons. A sadness permeates this book, an innocence stolen and left to fade away. These women made many men famous, men who have gone down in history as the forefathers of modern day psychiatrics but we should never be allowed to forget Violet Gibson, Lucia Joyce, Blanche Wittman and Anna O (later revealed as Bertha Pappenheim, an Austrian-Jewish feminist, social pioneer and founder of the Jewish Women’s Association) I will leave you with the words of Anna Vaught, author of a truly extraordinary novel.

‘I have repeatedly rebuilt my mind with books and the ideas therein. THAT is why reading, thinking and imagining are key themes in Saving Lucia: the potency of the imagination. That’s it.'

[Ellie Hawkes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t remember the last time a book made me feel so intellectually excited. The premise, as laid out in the blurb, is in itself enough to set my thoughts spinning:

“How would it be if four silenced women went on a tremendous adventure, reshaping their pasts and futures as they went?”

Well, let me tell you, it would be a literary rollercoaster, a delicious journey through some of the finest writing I have encountered for a long time. Vaught teeters gracefully on the boundary poetry and prose, building in motifs and refrains that bring to mind music, visual arts, and the very best of literary traditions. The book reads like a classical work, richly woven with references and wide-ranging knowledge, and yet it is also something entirely new. We do not so much follow the four women, psychiatric patients all, as enter into their consciousnesses, and it is a thrilling experience.

Lady Violet Gibson, who once attempted to assasinate Mussolini, is an engaging, funny, utterly unique character, and I was as eager as Lucia Joyce, forgotten daughter of James Joyce, to join her on her imaginative adventures. This is an intellectual book, but it is also brimming over with love, and the friendship between the two women at the heart of the book is beautifully depicted. The trust they place in each other as they, along with Bertha and Blanche, dash through time and space, seemed to me to absolutely capture the essence of the best of female friendship. We see each other’s flaws, but we love each other full-heartedly anyway – unlike with a lover, we do not have to internalise those flaws – they do not hurt us in the same way. (Oh, how I miss my female friends! V, A, M – I love you!)

There is also such a spirit of generosity in this book, built into its very structure. Violet asks Lucia to set down this story, trusting her implicitly to do right by these women who have been so wronged and silenced by society. And Lucia rises to the challenge: the first person voice used by all four protagonists blends into a beautiful harmony. At first, it requires intense concentration to follow who is speaking, but gradually the reader’s attention is rewarded by it becoming easier and easier to know whose voice we are in. This is a marvellous achievement by Vaught, and I am going to have to go back and puzzle out how she pulls it off.

This is a book that demands close reading, but that attention more than pays off. I had a couple of instances of feeling so deeply connected to the text that I felt it like a tug in my chest: the first was when I was doing my usual thing of trying to work out what the book reminded me of – it is highly original, but I had just begun to think that it called to mind The Waves, which I finally read last year, when on the next page I read the phrase “a room of one’s own” and then a few pages later Woolf herself was referred to. I honestly get so excited by these psychic coincidences when I am reading! And I had another one – I had been thinking all the time I was reading that I wanted to write an essay about this book, to make notes, to research the background which is so richly mined by Vaught, and then Lucia herself gave gentle permission for the scribbling of notes in the margin, and, I admit, I thanked her out loud. You get me, Lucia.

There is so much I haven’t even touched on here – the nuanced exploration of mental illness and the destructive objectifying of these women by their societies, the astounding depth of the historical research which lends Vaught’s book authority even as she subverts and plays with the official historical narrative, the recurring motif of the passerines whose wingbeats echo throughout the story…I could go on!

As you can no doubt tell, this book has left me buzzing. It hits that sweet spot for me that the work of Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood does – imaginative flights of fancy combined with so much profound truth and beauty that my mind and my heart feel full. This book is a gift.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saving Lucia is a powerful and heartrending look at the lives of four women labelled as lunatics by the world of psychiatry - a world shaped by the rhetoric of men. In this book, Anna Vaught allows these women to tell their own stories, recreate their own histories, led by the narrative of the fascinating Lady Violet Gibson, and recorded by her institutional companion Lucia Joyce.

As the stories unfold, it becomes clear that labeling these women as mad, or hysterical, was simply a way of silencing them - and sometimes a vehicle to exploit them for the personal gain of those who were given the task of caring for them.

The word hysteria comes, via Latin, from the Greek hustera, meaning womb, and husterikos 'of the womb'. Hysteria was thought to be a disorder specific to women, with a wide array of symptoms, such as anxiety, shortness of breath, fainting, sexual desire, insomina, and best of all, a "tendency to cause trouble for others". This seems almost comical now, but there is nothing amusing about the treatment meted out to those poor women diagnosed as suffering from this condition.

Were these women really mad, or suffering from symptoms of a physical disorder or were they just women deemed difficult by the patriarchal societies in which they lived and locked away to prevent them causing trouble? As Anna Vaught takes us on a journey into the histories of these women, weaving their stories together, this question becomes ever more pertinent, although our author never asks this question directly - and in some ways Violet, at least, does seem to take ownership of her own "madness". So speculate as you wish! But in these pages, our women are most definitely taking back control and reshaping their pasts, and we come to understand that Violet's aim is to "save" Lucia from the fate that has become her own.

Anna Vaught uses the theme of birds, specifically passerines, throughout this book in a most magical way - inspired by Violet's habit of feeding the birds in the grounds of St Andrew's Hospital. This is so evocative of a longing for freedom from the cages that our intelligent women found themselves confined to, as creatures who may be studied and viewed by others for their own amusement, and also wonderfully redolent of the idea of Violet herself having been trapped in a gilded cage as a child.

It's fair to say that this is a rambling sort of text and one which you have to immerse yourself in completely to get the most out of Anna Vaught's words. This is not the kind of book you can pick up and put down, but rather one which is best enjoyed in big wonderful gluts of prose, and this works particularly well with the subject matter.

There are some difficult and affecting parts to this story in connection with the barbarous history of psychiatric treatment, particularly for women, which grip you viscerally, and this book did make me feel rather sad - especially after looking into the stories of these women myself. But this book is also fascinating, moving, and, sometimes humorous, and I am grateful to Anna Vaught for bringing these amazing women to my attention.

For 2020, Bluemoose Books are only publishing novels by women and Saving Lucia is the first of these. I can't wait to see what comes next!

[Ruth Estevez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps it is because I am writing at the moment, and juggling a few projects, but I didn't at first settle to Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught. It is a novel but has the feel of fact. It is a work of imagination that we believe. I have spent the morning reading and I have finished the book.
It is full of delicious words and phrases to quote. Ideas to discuss.
If you make people prisoners, they go mad...and there are all sorts of prisons.
Basically, it is an exploration of madness, of insanity...Who is mad here?
Four women. Feebles. Different times and places, coming together through the voice of the assassin, Lady Violet Gibson and recorded by James Joyce's daughter, Lucia. Both imcarcerated at St. Andrew's assylum, Northampton. Mad because they 'had no outlet for their intelligence?' Drooling because a doctor waxed lyrical about a sumptuous feast while inmates are served bland slop?
These women's stories circle each other, intertwining, voices mixing so you are not always sure who is speaking. Information repeated, embelished, circling back. Who is mad? Mad because you dream too much? Blanche, Queen of the Hysterics, held in The Verseilles of Pain, Salpetriere, with over 8,000 inmates, has 'an insignificant splash of mad.'
Four passerines (birds) whose stories have been told by other people and by the end, they take back their truth, even after death.
As Lady Violet Gibson says, 'Those who are confined have the very best imaginations.'
By the end, they all choose what they want for their endings and they are witnesses to each other.
5 stars. Could be marmite, like Hilary Mantel. I came to love it, if not an easy read.
But, I am so grateful to our indie-publishers who are not afraid to grasp the unconventional and celebrate the beauty of books such as this. A thoughtful, thinking, imaginative, informative book. And it feels good in the hand as well as the mind thanks to printer,

[Book-Social · Rating 3 out of 5]

To talk about Saving Lucia you must first talk about the fascinating back story behind the tale. Lady Violet Gibson did actually shoot Mussolini in 1926. She was committed to the psychiatric hospital St Andrews (still Britain’s largest). Lucia Joyce, our narrator was the daughter of author James Joyce. She too was committed to St Andrews. Marie ‘Blanche’ Wittmann was known as the Queen of Hysterics. She was used to demonstrate the effects of hypnosis by Charcot, one of the most famous doctors in the World. Anna O (Bertha Pappenheim) was a patient of Breuer dubbed the ‘grandfather of psychoanalisis’. She featured in his book Studies in Hysteria that was co-written by none other than Sigmund Freud. These are real women. They lived fascinating lives amongst fascinating people. And in Saving Lucia, Vaught puts them all together with imaginative results.

Vaught takes us on a journey with these four women casting a fevered mind over what might have happened, what could have happened. The prose is erratic in nature, like that of a muddled mind which adds to the asylum setting. Whilst hard going at first, it does settle down somewhat at around page 50. The book is brief at 200 pages and I easily finished it in a few days. There are so many re-ocurring themes in the book: religion, birds (passerines), friendship and of course, women and madness. Alternative realities are offered, yet the reader is always reminded ‘did all of this really happen?’ Because who knows what really happens in the mind of a mad person? It was a delight to read about the real life characters and a book that you leave frantically researching who was who and what was what.

[Jackiesreadingcorner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of this book from the publishers Bluemoose Books. I picked it up not sure whether I would be able to get into it and give the book the Justice that it deserves.

What I really liked is that the story is based on real life characters, real life women, who had been forgotten until now.

Lady Violet Gibson had tried to assassinate Benito Mussolini in Rome 1926. But instead of being sent to prison, she was put in a Psychiatric hospital, St Andrews in England, where Lucia Joyce, the daughter of the Irish writer James Joyce, has also been committed. Marie ‘Blanche’ Wittman known as the Queen of hysterics. Anna O (Bertha Pappenheim). These are four real women, who lived fascinating lives, with some fascinating people. What is interesting is how would these women have been treated if it was present day, would they still have been committed for life in such a place. Any woman who was seen as slightly problematic in some way, could be just carted away and forgotten about.

The story of these four women, of what might have happened, is quite imaginative and clever, it’s a story that should be absorbed not rushed. The beautiful prose savoured.

Violet tells her story to Lucia, at times the story flits back and forth, but sometimes that’s how our brain works, it fits with the place the story is being told in. How muddled the brain can become.

Initially I did struggle, but as Violet was driven to St Andrews the thought that she had believed she was going home, but then ending up in this strange place, what would she have thought. Was she really mad for trying to kill Mussolini?

An interesting thought provoking read.

[Rue Baldry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is full of fascinating historical information about Violet Gibson (an Irish aristocrat who failed to assassinate Mussolini) and Lucia Joyce (daughter of James Joyce). It also gives a very good impression, in the way it is written, of the circling, imaginative,repetitive, swooping nature of thoughts during periods of mental ill health.

There is a lot of information and opinion about Mussolini included and it is frightening how many similarities there are between him and Trump, even down to the grazing assassination attempt.

I would have found the book easier to follow if it had used quotation marks, and a bit less repetition. It never felt quite grounded anyway, which is probably a deliberate presentation of the mindset of someone incarcerated in a mental institution and straining to be mentally free of it, but left me feeling a bit untethered. Also, strangely, and I don’t think deliberately, the novel ends with two chapters both numbered 15. In a work as experimental as this, though, you can probably get away with an error like that and claim it as intentional and deeply meaningful.

The book has a lot to say about sanity and insanity, especially if women, about who judges and defines the two states, the extent to which locking patients into mental hospitals is helpful or societally expedient. There are also some lovely turns of phrase, visual descriptions, and flights of fancy.

[Sarah Tinsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to find out more about how the writer achieved such a vivid style and what her hopes were for the book around issues of mental health. You can read the interview here: https://sarahtinsley.com/2021/01/16/o...

The novel focuses on four remarkable women. The first is Violet Gibson, who shot and wounded Mussolini in 1926 and ended up living out the rest of her days in a psychiatric hospital. The second is Lucia Joyce, daughter of James Joyce who also found herself at St. Andrew's psychiatric hospital, although her time alongside Violet wouldn't have been that long. Blanche Wittman was known as 'Queen of The Hysterics' and featured in a painting by André Brouillet in 1886 while she was a patient of Charcot. Bertha Pappenheim was credited with helping Freud develop his 'talking cure' and went on to do impressive work with disadvantaged women. Simply including these remarkable women would be interesting enough, but Vaught is not just writing a re-imagining of how these women lived. Instead, she takes us on a surreal journey with all of them, interlacing first-person musings, fluid passages which weave in and out of history and reality, alighting on gorgeous themes such as the birds that attend Violet in the garden of the hospital and return to signify the women's aspirations for freedom.

[Anthony Frobisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let Madness Take Flight

Who is mad?
I took my time reading Saving Lucia. The narrative style is personal and has a unique voice that draws you in, as if a confidante.
Who is mad? A question that is illustrated in generous, expansive erudition. The stories of four women; enclosed, imprisoned, confined within in a mental asylum - primarily focusing on Violet Gibson and Lucia Joyce. Gibson who attempted to assassinate Mussolini and was locked away in the asylum subsequently and Joyce, the daughter of James Joyce.
The book unravels slowly, the questions posed about madness, mental illness, the judgement of society towards those deemed 'mad', the convenience of the time (the first part of last century) to have someone 'burdensome' committed as mad are all treated with sensitivity and honesty. A rare and enlightening treatise on madness, voiced by the afflicted...are they really mad?
Who is mad? Is it the commited or those who commit?
A novel of fiction, though centred on real people and events, Anna Vaught writes with a beautiful turn of phrase.
Take your time and read each page, savour the prose and take flight, join the birds that visit the mad. Perch on their arms and shoulders and stay a while.
A book very different to any I have read, and all the better for it. Highly recommended.

[Lucy Vigar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story of adventure, love, loss, confinement, mental illness and the incredible power of the imagination, Anna Vaught’s Saving Lucia follows four remarkable women – Lady Violet Gibson, the woman who nearly assassinated Mussolini; Lucia Joyce, the daughter of James Joyce; Bertha Pappenheim, the first psychoanalysis patient and social worker who founded the Neu-Isenburg home for young Jewish women; and finally Blanche Whittman, a patient of Jean-Martin Charcot, ‘founder of neurology’, in 19th Century Paris. In this novel, these women are finally given a voice and the chance to reclaim their own stories after being silenced for so long. It is their shared experience of certain hardships, including being mistreated by a society that deems them insane, that makes their companionship so beautiful.

The story is told from Lucia’s perspective, a narrative that interweaves the stories of these four ‘songbirds’ as they embark on a journey of the imagination, depicted through an intricate prose style that brings to life all kinds of (historically fascinating) times and locations.

I very much enjoyed this book and would highly recommend giving it a read!

[Vasiliki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four women, four famous psychiatric patients whose stories have always been told through the gaze of the Male psychiatrists who treated them, finally get their own voice. “I have made it plain that the definitions of madness are shifting and sometimes prompted by convenience. Hell, by the patriarchy” says one of them and I couldn’t agree more. The narratives are a meditation on what happens to women who did not stay within the boundaries of their gender. A sentence which is repeated a few times in this book says that the confined have the best imaginations. It is this wild imagination that allows these women to meet and to take each other on journeys through their stories. The writing style may be a bit difficult for some readers. There is no plot, no chronological timeline but it is as if we are following a free association most of the time. I had to immerse myself in their reflections in order to enjoy it and to make sense of it. I definitely want to read more about these women.

[Zoe Radley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow this book needs to be savoured and just read for the pleasure of the writing. I loved all the little snippets of historical information of their lives and alternative lives too. I won’t spoil this beautiful, haunting and moving book. But I loved all the characters, though with some of the I guess men that were mentioned I felt disappointed with their not seeing the beauty in their “madness” which to me did not come across so, but as this was the 19th century they had no real idea of the term “mad” which is one of the questions that comes up again and again in this novel what is madness? And who are the mad? And who are the sane? can there not be both as in moods of depression or feelings of enthusiasm and ecstasy. Today we know this isn’t madness but back then... I loved the use of birds to symbolise freedom from their constraints and life at the asylum... or did they? Don’t worry. I spoilers. but you need this book in your life right now!!!

[Gemma W · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so excited about the plot of this book. These are people in history I know so little about, the themes were interesting, I loved the asylum setting.

The way it was narrated though was so confusing. I appreciate that the author was showing us the glimpse of the tormented minds, but did she have to do it whilst making me feel insane also. I spent long stretches reading parts thinking it was Lucia's point of view, then she would make a reference to being in Rome and I would realise that in fact the "I" in this scenario was Violet, so I had to go back and start that section again. It took me so long to get through that I lost interest on several occasions and it would take me so long to get back on top of it once I had put it down.

In the end it felt a little too much like a chore.