Description
- Author : Victoria Mas
- Publisher : Doubleday
- Language : English
- Paperback : 224 pages
- ISBN-13 : 9780857527035
- Bestselling debut of the year in France when published, over 180,000 copies sold; the paperback is about to be released with a first printing of 80,0000 copies
- Prizewinning: winner of The Prix Stanislas, the Prix Premiere Plume, the Prix Premier Roman, the Prix Patrimoine BPE and the Prix Renaudot des Lycéens. It was also on the longlist for the Prix Femina (France's equivalent of The Women's Prize), and the Prix France Culture.
- Film to come this summer, directed by Melanie Laurent (who starred in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Bastards) and released as Amazon Prime’s first ever French original film
ABOUT THE BOOK
The Salpetiere asylum, Paris, 1885. Dr Charcot holds all of Paris in thrall with his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad, hysterics, and been cast out from society. But the truth is much more complicated – these women are often unwanted wives, wayward daughters, women who have been abused, or who have lost everything. For Parisian society, the highlight of the year is The Madwomen’s Ball, when the great and good come to gawk at the patients dressed up in their finery for one night only. For the women themselves it is a rare moment of hope – of good clothes, music and dancing and perhaps just the spark of something close to normality.
Genevieve is a senior nurse – after the childhood death of her sister Blandine, she shunned religion and put her faith in Dr Charcot and science. She keeps the women of the asylum at a distance, has built a wall around her emotions, but each evening she goes home and writes a letter to her dead sister.
Eugenie is the 19 year old daughter of a bourgeois family. She is straining at the bonds on her gender, wanting to be out in Paris like her brother, going to the salons and listening to the latest ideas. But she too has a secret – she sees the spirits of the dead. When she reads the scandalous, banned work that all of Paris is talking about – The Book of Spirits – she realises she is not alone in her belief and that she has a gift. She confesses to her grandmother, the only member of the family who truly understands her. But her grandmother betrays her.
Eugenie is taken to La Salpetiere and abandoned there – to her father, she no longer exists. The doctors and nurses, even the other patients, can see that Eugenie is entirely normal apart from her confessed ability to see, and talk to spirits. And when she confesses to Genevieve that she can see her sister Blandine, everything begins to change. Genevieve finds her long treasured beliefs swaying, and begins to see the treatment of the women for what it is. Together with Eugenie, they hatch an escape plan that will take place on the evening of the ball…
