This is a complex, multilayered storytelling that goes back and forth in time by Emily Gunnis. It is a impressively researched tale of women in different time periods and the present. In 1960, 13 year old Rebecca Waterhouse is traumatised at the horror of seeing her beloved mother, Harriet, dying after being brutally beaten by her violent father, who then shot himself at Seaview Cottage in Whittering Bay. Further trauma is inflicted on Rebecca in the manner in which the police treat and interview her. She ends up living with her close childhood friend, Harvey Roberts, and his father at Seaview Farm. Rebecca had promised Harriet that she would focus on becoming a doctor, and never be dependent on a man to the extent that her mother had been. In the present, Rebecca is a retired senior paediatric doctor with two daughters, one from her first marriage to Harvey, Jessie, who to her despair she has barely seen, kept apart by Harvey and his now dead wife, Liz, and Iris, a journalist, from her second marriage to John.
An anxious and pregnant Jessie meets Rebecca wanting answers that Rebecca, a private person, has never been able to talk about in her entire life. Matters escalate with Jessie experiencing a difficult and painful birth to a poorly Elizabeth Rose, a baby in need of urgent medical attention. Convinced the medical staff are trying to kill Elizabeth, Jess escapes with her daughter into a bitterly cold night. A frantic search by the police to find Jessie, is the cue for Iris to try to find her, a quest that takes her into the past, to the lives of her grandmother Harriet, her time as a lady's maid to the vulnerable Cecilia at Northcote, her abusive grandfather who spent time at an asylum, Greenways Hospital, diagnosed with Chronic Battle Neurosis after his experiences as a soldier in WW2, and the past history and terrors of her mother, Rebecca. The narrative is from the key perspectives of Harriet, Rebecca, Jessie, Iris, Cecilia and Harvey, which expose complicated and traumatic lives, mental health issues, secrets, betrayal and lies.
This is an emotionally heartbreaking read of attitudes to women that ensured they were forced to remain in abusive marriages, of powerful husbands who could get away with having their wives certified insane, incarcerated in locked psychiatric wards so they could marry again, of the inherited condition of Postpartum Psychosis, and the problems and burdens that women faced with men after they returned home from WW2. Gunnis portrays the lives that women faced in our recent past, their courage and bravery in the face of terror inducing adversity, inherited mental health issues, and being taken to the edge and broken after being incarcerated unjustly in a asylum. I found this a thought provoking, brilliant, emotional and compulsive read, and admit it had me feeling such rage at what women were forced to endure in the past. Highly recommended! Many thanks to Headline for an ARC.