BelEdit Book Reviews
A Victorian asylum for the insane is a great setting for any novel, let there be no doubt about that! Gloomy and violent and scary. Knowing that it was a dumping ground for any woman who did not obey and conform to family or social expectations, by default you must feel sympathy for the inmates. But each of these women had their own individual stories to tell. (For another excellent Victorian asylum novel, see also The Darlings of the Asylum.)
In No Women Were Harmed, inmate Lily has been selected to tell her story to Dr Pomona Fairchild, who is interested in the new science of psychiatry. She wants to get to know and understand Lily, and they agree to sessions wherein Lily will tell Pomona her story.
The story unfolds in a dual timeline, of Lily’s life in the asylum and sessions with Pomona, relating her past. But Lily is an unreliable narrator, motivated by the wish to escape the asylum, so how much can we believe?
No Women Were Harmed has been described as a novel that blurs the distinctions between victim and villain, and this describes it perfectly. It raises questions as valid today as in Victorian times: to what extent is crime justified when it is in self defence? Self defence in the moment, but also to fight injustice, to escape from a society that is inherently unfair, even criminal, in its fundamental workings.
Worth reading and thinking about.
Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for the ARC. All my reviews are 100% honest and unbiased, regardless of how I acquire the book.
You might also like: The Darlings of the Asylum | Noel O’Reilly