The Painted Bridge

May 7, 2012
Journalist Wallace’s first foray into book-length fiction (after the nonfiction Oranges and Lemons: Life in an Inner City Primary School) is a haunting look at women’s asylums in 1850s England. Inciting her new husband’s wrath by departing unannounced to help the survivors of a shipwreck, Anna Palmer has been sent to Lake House, within whose shabby confines she cycles through disbelief, denial, and anger. Home to a spectrum of women ranging from the truly deranged to the sane, the asylum subjects Anna to a horrendous array of treatments for her “hysteria,” including torture, diuretics, and emetics. As Anna’s mental state is toyed with by the staff, both the reader and Anna must question the boundaries of sanity. Filling out the story are Dr. Lucas St. Clair, who believes that the ability to see patients in two dimensions (a phenomenon afforded by the recent advent of photography) might hold the key to diagnoses, and Querios Abse, owner of Lake House, whose daughter may also suffer from mental illness. Wallace masterfully creates an atmosphere of utter claustrophobia and dread, intermingled with the ever-present horror of the reality of women’s minimal rights in the 19th century. Agent: Ivan Mulcahy, Mulcahy Conway Associates.