Is madness contagious?

By dint of being a 'mad doctor', a precursor,one imagines,to the more respected field of psychoanalysis which was in its very fetal stages at the time this book is set,Nathaniel Kerner's decision to move to a Yorkshire set asylum, inhabited by women placed there by their husbands, seems certifiable.

In the grounds of Crakethorne is the Crow Garden, a graveyard of the patients who have died there and that motif is so well used, Nathaniel sees these wretched souls as having been failed by their doctors and here he may succeed rather than add to the sorry lot of inhabitants.

His ideas of what we now consider talking therapy were fighting the more traditional explanations of basically being a woman with your own mind.

The reasons for placing a person in an asylum were mostly based on their sex and if you care to look it up, there are some very tenuous diagnoses such as reading too much.....

The 'treatments' are barbaric, including water torture and basically beating the personality out of the person until you are left with a shambling mess.

These people were taken out of polite society so that no one could see them which also means anything could be done to them in the name of 'research', with little to no objection.

Who would listen to the reasonings of those committed to an asylum?

The fine line between madness and sanity wrestles through the novel in Nathan's mind as he becomes infatuated with a woman, Vita, committed by her husband.

Her claims are wild and unsettling,especially that she hears voices and given the Victorian interest in spiritualism versus burgeoning science, Nathan listens to her and sees a potential way to cure her.

But when he begins to hear voices himself,is that the power of suggestion or something more sinister trying to work through him?

And if he does manage to cure Vita, will it bring him some respite from his wretched guilt over his father's suicide?

A fascinating and deeply chilling novel on how we perceive and treat -or rather hide away-the mentally challenged , it really made me reflect in how far we have come in the field of mental health. Or rather, we have not in so many ways.

This book touched me on a personal level , the stories which are told through my family reflect resilience in the face of public opinion at a time when locking away the obviously mentally afflicted was the thing to do.

There were so many instances of chances missed and legacies handed down because of the poor treatment of those with depression, or brain damage, that even so far after the Victorian age, we still have such a long long way to go.

There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get into the story. It was a little too slow, and as much as I wanted to connect with it, it just didn't happen

I wanted to love this one. I just didn't unfortunately. I could see what the author was going for, it just didn't hit the mark. I wasn't really invested in any of the characters - even the MC - and the plot was just... meh. I loved the idea but it sadly didn't match my expectations.

*thank you to Netgalley, Quercus Books and Jo Fletcher Books for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*

2 stars.

Why!? This book had a promise of everything that I love! Historical, Victorian era, Asylums, Gothic, Horror. Utterly perfect for me! Yet this book made my mind drift from it far too many times to count. I just could not get into it and struggled. Clearly not for me but that's not to say others wont enjoy it.

2.75 stars

I really liked the premise of "The Crow Garden" because I generally like reading about madness and its treatment in the Victorian era but this novel got convoluted and confusing quickly.

The protagonist isn't really all that likable and none of the characters were all that well-developed. The supernatural elements were rather confusing and the diary entries by the protagonist were somewhat weird because the story is told in first-person narration so the diary aspect felt superfluous.

The last part of the novel had some interesting twists but I saw most of them coming and the ending felt somehow off to me.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this novel because it was just really confusing.

Crakethorne Asylum a victorian gothic mental hospital set in victorian times. Sounds like a recipe for success!
Sadly that wasn't the case for me, I wanted to love this book, i really did but it just wasn't a fit for me. For now this will be down as a DNF for now but I will come back and give it another go soon.
I haven't written this book off completely!

In short: I didn't like this book. It took me 4 months to finish it, and I even lost interest in reading in general because of it. The plot was not only boring, but nonexistent. The writing was okay, but the lower class dialect was overused and horrible. I hated the main characters, especially Dr. Kerner, as the whole book revolves around his pining for his married patient. The ending was especially bad, I never read a "plot twist" as insane and bad as this one. I won't be reading anything else by Alison Littlewood.

In 1856, the young doctor Nathaniel Kerner makes his way north to Crakethorne Manor in Yorkshire: his first placement as an alienist or mad-doctor. He hopes to find an asylum full of progressive ideas and enlightened leadership, but it soon transpires that the enlightened spa treatments and extensive gardens described in the brochures are fictions. Instead Crakethorne is governed by the unstable Dr Chettle, who eschews modern notions of treatment in favour of the questionable science of phrenology. His new home isn't all that Nathaniel would have wished. And yet there is one aspect which captures his imagination: Victoria Adelina Harleston, his beguiling patient.

Littlewood's last novel, The Hidden People, dealt with popular superstitions of changelings and fairy powers, likewise set in Yorkshire in the mid-19th century. Here she turns her pen to another, though more common aspect of weird Victorian belief. Young and idealistic, Nathaniel hopes to find a more compassionate form of treatment than the cold-water baths, constraints and electric shocks inflicted upon the Crakethorne patients. Haunted by his father's suicide, he hopes to redeem himself by helping others. He dreams (rather presciently) of a talking cure, and when he receives a letter from the mesmerist Professor Lumner, he thinks he may have found the answer. Certainly, he is sceptical - and he becomes increasingly so, as Lumner seems to become a rival for the attentions of the beautiful Mrs Harleston - but it seems worth trying. Little does Nathaniel realise that he's about to open a Pandora's box which could cost him his patient, his career and even his sanity.

Moving between Yorkshire and London, the novel takes us into the eerie worlds of mesmerism and spiritualists, 'entertainments' which seem to have had a great crossover appeal. Littlewood draws us in more deeply than other authors might: as the novel progresses, you can never be sure what's real, what's fictional and what seems to be real: Nathaniel becomes an increasingly unreliable narrator, captivated by his obsession with Mrs Harleston. The difficulty with this is that the reader seems to be expected to buy in to the power of the supernatural, or at least to accept that certain people are susceptible to certain 'powers'. There are certainly points when the story veers into melodramatic ghost-story territory, rather than straight historical fiction: that's fine for the long, dark winter nights when one's looking for a bit of a chill down the spine, but at the same time it means that the story is a tiny bit unsatisfactory in parts.

When discussing The Hidden People, I admired Littlewood's scene-setting and the same is true here: there is a great deal of period colour and the language feels spot-on. And yet the book sprawls just a little: I felt it could have been trimmed down slightly, and there were just too many coincidences for me to feel entirely convinced by it all. For those who enjoy the growing genre of dark Victorian Gothic fiction, this will prove a welcome addition, wrapped about with fogs and spirits and dangerous beauty; but it probably won't be everyone's cup of tea. I think perhaps I'm just going through a phase where I prefer slightly more rational explanations in novels, but that's a personal preference. 

To see the review online, please visit my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2018/02/16/the-crow-garden-alison-littlewood/

A satisfyingly chilling reimagining of the gothic novel, nodding to familiar tropes and locations but ubtly twiting the well beaten track. Beautifully written and compelling this is not to be missed.

This was a good read. Ideal for a train journey - not too difficult to follow or understand the plot twists.

This is an effective thriller with some unexpected twists.

I received this book from Netgalley free of charge in exchange for an honest and fair review. I was very intrigued with the summary and cover of the book. I love me a good Victorian era creepy asylum/supernatural read! And this book didn’t fail to deliver that.
Littlewood easily keeps the language and atmosphere in her writing to transport you right to the misty location and time of Crakethorne. You can feel the imposing stones and foggy countryside around you as you explore the asylum with our narrator Nathaniel Kerner. I feel that Nathaniel’s character was well developed throughout the story starting as a bright and eager new “mad doctor” ready to try his new age treatments to altruistically help his patients and ending with disillusionment in those around him. I enjoyed the “slow burn” development of Nathaniel as it made you feel that your opinions were changing WITH him rather than ABOUT him.
Then enter the mysterious and beautiful damsel in distress. In the initial introduction of Mrs Victoria Harleston, she was intriguing and plausible. But as she was further developed I grew tired of the interactions between Nathaniel and Victoria. These interactions always made me feel like they were repetitive, Nathaniel always treating her like a fragile flower and Victoria using the men in her life to get out from under her lot in life. I would say that these interactions needed to be better formulated to get the whole picture, not just Nathaniel’s love sick perspective.
I would give the beginning of the book a 4 for the atmosphere that Littlewood created, the introduction of mesmerism, the opposing and evolving views of treating the mentally ill, the hint of a mysterious death, the initial stories of the assorted patients at Crakethorne, the change of scenery from the asylum to London’s spiritual scene........ but about 2/3’s of the way through the book kind of lost me.
I would give the last third of the book a 3 for several reasons. The beginning of the book started to develop side stories (the death of Mr Harleston’s first wife and child, the ghost scene, the other patients stories from Crakethorne, the seances in London) that I felt were left unfinished. And though I do love it when an author doesn’t spoon feed you the story and leaves the ending a bit open to your own interpretation, I found the ending too loose.
So my final rating would be a 3.5. I would recommend this book to someone who enjoys a good Victorian gothic read that moves slowly and leaves a bit of the story to your imagination.

1cover120428-mediumMad-doctor Nathaniel is obsessed with the beautiful Mrs Harleston – but is she truly delusional? Or is she hiding secrets that should never be uncovered . . . ?

Overshadowed by his father’s suicide, Nathaniel Kerner finds it hard to find work in his chosen field of ailments of the mind. Reluctantly he takes up a position at Crakethorne Asylum, only to find the proprietor is more interested in his growing collection of skulls than helping his patients – fame seems unlikely to find Nathaniel here. His only interesting case is Mrs Victoria Adelina – Vita – Harleston: she is interesting because she doesn’t really seem mad at all – her husband accuses her of hysteria and delusions – but she accuses him of hiding secrets far more terrible.

Nathaniel becomes increasingly obsessed with Vita, and when an opportunity presents itself to have her mesmerised he leaps at it, imagining seeing papers in journals with his name attached.

But the session doesn’t go well and the next morning Vita has vanished and it seems Nathaniel may have been tricked into aiding her escape.

Increasingly besotted, Nathaniel finds himself caught up in a world of séances and stage mesmerism in his bid to find Vita and save her.

But constantly hanging over him is this warning: that doctors are apt to catch the diseases with which they are surrounded – whether of the body or the mind . . .

I really enjoyed Alison Littlewood’s The Hidden People last year so was thrilled to see another new release from her. Although set in the same era this is quite a different book, this is freezing fog in winter at 4pm as opposed to a hot lazy 4pm in August. Although both are mysterious, this is one where you can’t really see what’s going on four paces in front of you. And although both are a little creepy – this is skin shivering creepy whereas the other is beguilingly creepy. I’m starting to think that Alison Littlewood is the modern day successor to Wilkie Collins, The Hidden People feels similar to The Moonstone and this feels like the Woman in White – the stories are different, there’s no plagiarism, they are not re-writings in any way. But if you like Wilkie Collins my guess is you’ll like Alison Littlewood.

5 Bites

NB I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley in return for an honest review. The BookEaters always write honest reviews.

This is the first book I’ve read by Alison Littlewood, although I do remember hearing about The Hidden People a year or two ago and thinking it sounded interesting. I was attracted to The Crow Garden by its striking cover, but it sounded appealing too, with its Victorian setting and comparisons to Wilkie Collins and Susan Hill, so I thought I would give it a try.

Our narrator, Nathaniel Kerner, is a newly qualified ‘mad-doctor’ on his way to Yorkshire to take up his first position at Crakethorne Manor, an asylum for those ‘troubled in mind’. The tone of the novel is set immediately, with descriptions of dark skies, desolate heaths and remote villages on the journey north and Nathaniel’s first sight of his new place of work, a bleak grey stone building with iron bars on the windows. The asylum is run by Doctor Chettle, a man whose preferred methods of treatment – cold baths, electric shocks and phrenology – are very different from Nathaniel’s. Nathaniel will have the opportunity to try out some of his own ideas when he is assigned his first patient, the beautiful Victoria Adelina Harleston.

Mrs Harleston has been brought to Crakethorne by her husband following an incident on a London omnibus. Accusing her of hysteria, he demands that Nathaniel and Chettle stop at nothing to find a cure for his wife. Believing that the best way to get to the bottom of a patient’s problems is by talking and listening, Nathaniel gradually begins to uncover Mrs Harleston’s story. Far from making things clearer, however, the situation only becomes more confusing. Is Mrs Harleston really insane or is there more to her hysteria than meets the eye? Nathaniel knows he is becoming too deeply involved in the life of his patient but he has vowed to help her and now there’s no going back.

This is the sort of story and setting I usually enjoy, but I think there’s a limit to how many novels about Victorian asylums you can read and I am now close to reaching that limit! I was pleased when, in the middle of the book, the action moved away from Crakethorne for a while and into the streets of London. Here Nathaniel is swept up in the world of mesmerists, spiritualists and séances and although these are also common elements in Victorian historical fiction, I found that the book became much more interesting from this point onwards. Nathaniel’s narration also starts to become increasingly less reliable (although I won’t tell you why as I want to leave you to discover some of the novel’s surprises for yourself) and it is difficult to tell exactly what is real and what isn’t, which gives the rest of the novel a disturbingly hypnotic and unsettling feel.

I appreciated the effort Alison Littlewood makes to tell Nathaniel’s story in language appropriate to the 19th century. It’s something that is always important to me in historical fiction, but even more so in books of this type in which the atmosphere and the setting play such a big part. A few poorly chosen words and phrases can so easily pull you out of the time period, but thankfully Littlewood gets it just about right.

The Crow Garden was an interesting read but, as I’ve said, I think I’ve read too many books with similar settings and themes to really get anything new out of this one. The Asylum by John Harwood, Affinity by Sarah Waters, The Girl Who Couldn’t Read by John Harding and, of course, Wilkie Collins’ classic The Woman in White all came to mind while I was reading, and I would recommend all of those ahead of this book. It didn’t help that I disliked the character of Mrs Harleston so didn’t have the sympathy for her that I would usually have with a woman at her husband’s mercy and committed to an asylum against her will.

Despite not really loving this book, though, I did find it entertaining – and with its atmosphere, Gothic undertones and subtle touches of the supernatural, it’s an ideal autumn or winter read.

It took me quiet a while to review this book, because i can't really make up my mind. I really appreciated the settings of this novel, i am all for classical Victorian atmosphere and some thick industrial London. Plus, i think the story and the dark/psychology/supernatural elements were immensely interesting but at the end, i really struggled to finish it. The writing style was a huge problem to me and it made it difficult to stay focused. I loved the mesmerizing atmosphere and it could really become a great victorian gothic melodrama but something is missing.

Nathaniel Kerner takes up a position advertised for the Crakethorne Asylum, drawn to it through the way it was portrayed in the paper: a seemingly pleasant ‘mad-house’ with picturesque views and promising treatments for patients suffering from one form or another of mental illness. Except, upon his arrival, Crakethorne Asylum is anything but. The place is brooding, chilling and bleak and instead of the dozens of roses which should have been present, crows seem to make a home out of the asylum’s grounds. The birds, ominous and dark, simply add to the wonderfully created gothic atmosphere of the novel; a cliché to some perhaps, but I’d say you can never go wrong with making extensive use of the birds which are viewed as a bad omen of sorts.

Kerner is a character which inspires hope and a vision towards a better future, especially towards treatments used to cure or at least, alleviate a troubled mind in comparison to his mentor, Dr Chettle. Almost immediately, the man come across as a quack doctor and this is further enhanced by the methods he aims for and though I’d dare to say they’re absolutely medieval and brutal, the character only adds to the Victorian gothic atmosphere.

Quite early on in the book, Kerner displays curiosity towards the ever mysterious Victoria Harlestone who is brought in by her husband; frantic and demanding, he wishes his wife to be cured as soon as possible from whatever ‘lunacy’ she suffers from and that Dr Chettle should use any means necessary to restore her. Little of what has happened to her or how she is as a person is given away, further enhancing the mystery, but regardless of how closed of a book she may be, Kerner is set on figuring her out.

Littlewood takes elements of horror and gothic literature, expertly blending them together and she successfully delivers. She explores the darkness of the human mind, madness and obsession, bone-chilling moments where wives are at the mercy of their husbands but also society. In retrospect, perhaps it is this particular topic which I found to be the most frightening of all and the exploration of this issue is one I did not get bored of while encountering it several times throughout the book.

“The Crow Garden” is a perfect book for the season as the clocks turned back and nights become longer, colder. Fans of gothic novels and Victorian England will easily be hooked on Littlewood’s novel and with that said, she is an author whose writing I will closely follow thanks to this book.

A darkly entertaining read. Fantastic storytelling.

https://lynns-books.com/2017/10/23/the-crow-garden-by-alison-littlewood/
The Crow Garden is a wonderfully evocative novel that brings to us a gothic story set in Victorian England. The story is positively bursting at the scenes with the trappings of a novel set in this era, asylums, mad doctors, mesmerists, ghosts and pea soup fog, and yet the author manages to inject new life into those tropes by introducing such an unusual story and at the same time giving, to my mind, a nod to maybe a couple of the classics. Wilkie Collins certainly sprang to mind whilst reading this – although I’m not suggesting that the story is the same in any way – more the style of writing somehow, not to mention the theme of women being closeted into asylums when they became problematic to their husbands.

At the start of the story we meet Nathaniel Kerner as he takes up his position at Crakethorne Asylum, a remote institution based in the wilds of Yorkshire. Perhaps Nathaniel was naive in taking this position, if first impressions are anything to go by that is. Crakethorne bares little resemblance to the material Nathaniel read prior to taking up his new role and his initial description puts you in mind of the foreboding Thornfield House from Jane Eyre. Crakethorne is a dark and ominous building, built with grey stone with no embellishments to soften it’s demeanour, set in unkempt grounds that play home to the many crows that the book is named for it’s a place of howling winds and harsh treatments. Small wonder that most of the inmates speak of ghosts.

Nathaniel is a man with his very own skeleton cupboard. He blames himself for the death of his father and is determined to try and redeem himself by helping those in need. His new ideas don’t sit too well with the asylum’s proprietor. Dr Chettle is more interested in phrenology (study of skulls) and is more inclined to old fashioned methods for his inmates. Chettle comes across initially as a bit preoccupied, maybe a bit crazy himself but as the book progresses his character definitely takes on a more sinister tone. But, I get ahead of myself.

Nathaniel immediately takes on his roster of patients and we learn more from his journals. One of his patients is a young woman called Mrs Harleston, a well to do young lady of society who seems to have become hysterical/delusional after experiencing an ‘episode’. Her husband wants her ‘fixing’ and able to perform her wifely duties as soon as possible (he’s a real charmer for sure). The young doctor finds himself becoming increasingly obsessed with his new patient, he of course tells himself that she is a respectable woman, intelligent, fragile and of a standing that should dictate respectful treatment – lets just be honest though, she’s a very attractive woman and he is besotted. His attempts to help Mrs Harleston become ever more desperate as he seeks to prevent Dr Chettle from using more drastic treatments and eventually he resorts to engaging a mesmerist, after which things go horribly wrong.

The writing is really strong. I read this and could easily have thought I was reading a much older book – that’s how well the author captures the style and feel of Victorian England. The story itself is a mystery, it has hints of the supernatural, although these could be easily explained as delusions, but, more than that it takes a good look at the treatment of women in a society where they were little more than belongings. Quite shocking really, as was the treatment of those suffering from mental health issues.

In terms of the characters. Well, they’re all a bit difficult to like to be brutally honest. Nathaniel, well, I don’t suppose he’s a bad character as such but I wanted to slap him, more often than not. He’s from the school of thought that ‘women don’t know what’s best for them’ and lets just be blunt, he’s not really being very professional now is he – it’s as clear as the nose on your face that he has feelings for Mrs Harleson and added to that is the feeling that, to my mind, he wasn’t really intent on helping her. Deep down I think he wanted to keep her where she was. Mrs Harleson, well, at first I’m going to say I didn’t like her. Even after finishing and thinking about the novel some more I would say she’s manipulative, but then, on reflection, she lives in a society where she has no say, her husband can have her committed to an asylum at the drop of a hat and she’s basically at the whim of men who are determined to call her insane whether she is or not. With that in mind, well, I find her actions a lot more easy to understand. Sorry to be a bit mysterious but I’m trying to avoid spoilers.

Settings. Well, we start off with the asylum which is wonderfully conjured and as events progress we move to London where the streets are thick with fog. Victorian London has become enamoured with illusionists and Nathaniel finds himself drawn into the spiritualist circles and ultimately led to a new performer at the Egyptian Hall.

In terms of criticisms. Well, I found myself quite engrossed with this book and it definitely worked it’s charm on me but, I felt like the two different settings were a little disjointed. That’s probably not very well explained, All I can say is that the change from one setting to the other felt hastily drawn and not as well thought out as the proceeding or following chapters. I also felt like the ending was a little bit rushed when compared to the pacing for the rest of the story and this just made me feel as though I’d missed something or that maybe something had been cut from the story. I would also mention that if you have a penchant for fast moving action stories then this doesn’t really fall into that bracket.

Overall though I really enjoyed this. A story of deception, secrets, lies and the slow descent into madness. As I mentioned it has a tone reminiscent of the classics. Collins, Dickens and from amongst more contemporary authors Hill and Waters. Beautifully written and wonderfully evocative. A real thought provoker that calls to mind the old saying ‘be careful what you wish for’.



I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

Newly qualified Nathaniel Kerner leaves his widowed mother behind in London to work in windswept Yorkshire. His father’s suicide seems to have made it hard for him to find work but the director of Crakethorne Asylum is willing to take a chance on him. All seems positive until he meets Vita, Mrs Victoria Harleston, a beautiful young woman whose husband wants her cured. Her insanity appears to Kerner to be that she doesn’t wish to perform her ‘wifely duties’ and he plans to cure her with new-fangled talking therapies. Against a backdrop of superstition and dubious mental health care (all, sadly, ones used up until scarily recently…) he falls in love with his patient and, it seems, under her spell. They find themselves back in London, living with Kerner’s mother, and caught up in the world of psychics, mesmerists and other fraudsters. Or, in the case of Vita Harleston, could these mysterious powers be true?

This is a superbly researched historical novel which brings to life the Victorian era but also a wonderfully creepy tale of the uncanny. A perfect read for Halloween – unless you live on a moor. In Yorkshire. Surrounded by crows…