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The Painted Bridge (2012)

by Wendy Wallace(Favorite Author)

3.51 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1451660820 (ISBN13: 9781451660821)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Scribner

review 1: This book tells the story of Anna, confined by her elderly husband in a Victorian lunatic asylum, and her attempts to escape. The treatments meted out to these (mainly sane) women were unbelievably cruel. The book also deals with infidelity and anorexia. It is well written, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The characters are a credible mixture of the kind, unkind, intelligent and not so bright, and all of them have their own demons.
review 2: The description on the book jacket drew me into this book, but once I started reading it, I found it difficult to stay interested. Somehow it seemed like there was not enough and too much going on at the same time. I wish the author would have focused her story more. Although everything in the narrative was related to t... morehe main character and her experiences, the pages spent on her husband back home, on the doctor experimenting with photography and on the odd family running the asylum took away from Anna's story. It would have been a better read if her relationships with the other women in the asylum and her experiences there were the book's focus. Maybe if the book had been longer and there had been more time for the author to flesh out the subplots it would have been better. Sometimes it felt like characters came into the story out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly, leaving me wondering if I had missed something or, if I hadn't missed anything, what purpose those characters served. It was still interesting to read a book that took place in a private 19th century asylum--terrifying times for those deemed "lunatics"--but the book was a letdown overall. less

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