The Painted Bridge - Wendy Wallace - Review

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

Emily Dickinson

Rating:

3.5/5

Recommendation?

If you're interested in the view on/treatment of mental illnesses in the Victorian era, I would recommend this book but if underdeveloped main characters and gaps in the main story line annoys you then I wouldn't at all.

Warnings

This review contains spoilers

This book mentions/suggests suicide and anorexia

This story is set in the Victorian era and it's about a woman named Anna who got put in an asylum by her husband Vincent. As you follow Anna's story you will get a view for what it was like to be a "mentally ill" woman in this era and you learn a little bit about the kind of treatments that were used but that nowadays would be seen as extremely inhumane things to do. I found it very interesting and will definitely pick up more books about this subject in the future.

It is told in multiple pov which is usually either a hit or miss but this time it was a little bit in the middle for me. You got to experience Anna's behaviour through different eyes and a little bit of background information as to why the character reacted in a certain way. This also made the characters very grey, which is a thing I really like. It wasn't a clear evil vs good story for me. Yes, some characters hurt the main character but since you understood why they did so, you kinda felt sorry for them as well. Though I like to read the different perspective on things, I think it was done a bit to much in this story. I found that there was too much information about characters I didn't care for. I believe it would've been better if there was a lot of focus on Anna, a little bit of focus on the characters who had a closer relationship with her and the rest could've been left out.

Because of this there were also a couple of gaps in the main story line. For example, when Anna is going trough the inhumane treatments and hitting an all time low and then she's suddenly calm and collected again the next time you read from her pov. I would've liked to see her development through this. Just like a more detailed development of her relationship with Lucas St Clair and Lovely. You don't get to know much about her relationship with Lovely but she does in the end move to Liverpool together with her.

A thing that I did like about the writing is how detailed the description was of for example the development of the photographs and the mental illness treatments. It makes you feel more like you're actually there. You can tell Wendy did her research to make the details as accurate as possible which I think really adds to the story.

Throughout the story there was also a consistent theme: nothing is what it seems. The characters that seem to be good guys had done a couple of bad things in the past and the other way around. This theme also came back with Anna her vision. You were constantly wondering if what she was imaging it or not. So even though there were a couple of gaps in the main story line, the recurring theme did tie the loose pieces together.

So because of the 2 things I didn't like I ended up giving it a 3.5 out of 5 stars. I'm definitely interested to read more of the same writer and more about the same topic.

Thank you for reading and don't forget:

fallaces sunt rerum speciaes!

(The appearances of things are deceptive)

Hugs to all and much love!