Review of 'The Glass House' by Anne Buist and Graeme Simsion

Review of 'The Glass House' by Anne Buist and Graeme Simsion

Release date: March 27th, 2024

Publisher: Hachette Australia

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What the story is about:

Welcome to The Menzies. Trainee psychiatrist Doctor Hannah Wright, a country girl with a chaotic history, thought she had seen it all in the emergency room. But that was nothing compared to the psychiatric ward at Menzies Hospital.
Amongst unrelenting hours, hospital politics, fraught relationships and new friendships, Hannah must learn on the job in a strained medical system, navigating the conflicting practice of her boss, Nash, who puts his faith in pharmaceuticals, and his boss, Professor Gordon, who takes the Freudian line. Meanwhile, the new manager thinks they're all part of the problem.

Hannah and her fellow trainees are dealing with the common and the bizarre, the hilarious and the tragic, the treatable and the confronting. Every day brings new patients: Chloe, who has life-threatening anorexia nervosa; Sian, suffering postpartum psychosis and fighting to keep her baby; and Xavier, the MP whose suicide attempt has an explosive story behind it. All the while, Hannah is trying to figure out herself.

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REVIEW

The Glass House is a comprehensive and bold delivery of the mental health care system from all angles. This literary character driven masterpiece made me cringe, nod, smile, cry, laugh and squirm. It is expertly written and obviously fuelled by the author’s years in clinical and research psychiatry. Suffice it to say, her understanding of this field is extensive and it is easy to see how she draws upon her experience to deliver a realistic portrayal of the characters and events created.

Although I have not personally been a patient of the mental health community, I have known persons who have and what they have shared with me, seems very similar to what I read on these pages. It is without question, a challenging field.

Hannah, our main character through whom we get a front row seat of the mental health world, begins as a registrar in the Mental Health Services’ Acute Unit at Menzies Hospital. What she sees and becomes a part of— gives her and us a lot to think about. The fragility, the denial, the politics, the fear, the stigma, the misunderstanding, the protocols, the regiment of quick fix solutions (such as medications and other therapy approaches) that may or may not help— are fleshed out in front of us. After reading all these scenarios, it is easy to see how an individual might react inappropriately. Hannah sometimes does not respond as compassionately as one would wish. But is it because of her own demons?

After three weeks of working in acute psychiatry at Menzies Hospital, what Hannah sees at her job both disturbs and intrigues her. As she explains: ‘acute psychiatry is the emergency medicine of mental health: for the stuff nobody saw coming.’ Since it is written in first person, we get a clear internal picture of this woman and her response to the patients and her colleagues. We know of her desire to be accepted into the psychiatry training program. Her thoughts paint an interesting picture of what she sees, feels and hides from her colleagues. She stumbles through her judgements and sometimes displays a lack of sensitivity. In the end, this is a journey of self-realisations for Hannah and what led her to psychiatry. Her parents’ struggles and a heartbreaking suicide created quite a negative effect on her. While she explores the crazy world that surrounds her, she realises that nobody is perfect and that often parents are sincerely doing their best with the knowledge they possess. But life is messy and complex and often there are no easy answers. Forgiveness and patience are essential, though, in order to make peace with herself before she can effectively help others. She needs to take time for her own therapy but struggles with this as it means ‘uncovering trauma (she’d) rather stay buried.’

The book is divided into thirteen chapters with an intriguing one word title for each. Such as Displacement, Compulsion. Power and Sabotage… just to name a few. The character portrayals are quite intriguing and the writing is crisp, intelligent and poetic at times. From the first page it was a pleasure to read with lines like: ‘a laugh – unnatural, fractured – escapes her.’ There are plenty of conversations, analyzations and dollops of humour to maintain a balance. As we get to know the patients, initially through bursts of conversation at the start of the chapters, we hear about diagnosis and courses of action needed. We realise the pressure that is on practitioners who must make the judgement call because there is no room for error. One mistake could end someone’s life.

When an individual is broken, there may not be any easy answers or none at all. The brain is a hugely complex structure that sometimes defies our reasoning. Frustration is inevitable for those trying to treat an individual in the throes of depression, etc. Not to mention the person seeking help may not understand why they feel the way they do. What is the right treatment? It must seem like trying to find one special grain of sand on a beach that is hundreds of miles long!

There are a lot of difficult topics covered in The Glass House like suicide, child abuse, self-harm and eating disorders— to name a few. This novel gives us an inside view of what it is like to work in the field of mental health and how challenging it can be. Plenty of tug of war experiences, mental battles, rivalry of wills and so forth as well as fighting structures, preset ideas, those in power and those needing help. This is an excellent delivery on a difficult system that must maintain some sense of humanity in its approach. 5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thanks to Hachette Australia for my review copy.