Book Review: Where Madness Lies by Sylvia True

Where Madness Lies is a slightly unusual choice for a book review because it is fiction. However, there are three reasons why this book is appropriate:

1. The story is based on a true story of the author’s own family. Sylvia describes it thus:

Where Madness Lies is both my grandmother’s story and mine. It is a story about hope and redemption, about what we pass on, both genetically and culturally. The names have been changed, and some of the details are how I imagined them, not exactly as they might have been. But the bones of the story, the insides, are true.

2. Much of the focus is on how the outside world relates to people with mental health issues, and how they are treated. Sylvia’s grandmother’s story is based around the Nazi stirrings of the Second World War. Her own story is late 20^th In many respects, little has changed as can be witnessed by the recent prosecution against the North Essex Partnership Trust by the Health and Safety Executive and report by the CQC (Care Quality Commission)
3. The first part of the story unfolds against the backdrop of the Holocaust. Both Sylvia’s parents came from Jewish families and had fled from Frankfurt before the start of World War 2. But that was not just because they were Jewish. There was a hidden history of mental illness in the family and in 1935 and in Nazi Germany, that was potentially an even worse ‘crime’ than Judaism!
4. When we look at the far-right movement in the world today and the institutionalised racism that still exists in many organisations, it is important we never forget that era and ensure there is no repetition of such events.

The story moves back and forth between two countries and two eras: Germany 1934-39 and Massachusetts 1985.

Sylvia has created interesting, complex characters with a dual timeline helping readers to better understand the relationship between Inga and her granddaughter Sabine who has committed herself into the MacLean Clinic. Sabine has struggled with mental health issues for years but, as with the rest of her family, has tried to cover up her problems. But the recent birth of her child has intensified the psychosis that she has been fighting for many years. The self-admission has horrific, unforeseen consequences and her future is only saved by the timely and somewhat unusual interventions of Inga.

Where Madness Lies is a sensitive, powerful, poignant novel, full of sadness for the individuals involved and the tens of thousands more who have been victims of inhumane treatment in what is comparatively recent history.