I wonder what the inspiration for Linda Grant's Baileys Prize shortlisted novel, The Dark Circle was. It is not the first book that comes to mind that uses the setting of a sanatorium for a story, but it is perhaps the first that I have read. Who would have thought that a book about consumptives could be so interesting. For me the setting isn't what drives the story, but it's the characters that makes it so fascinating--in particular the treatments and how those with TB were treated. Certainly it was an eye opening read.
It's the two "Hebrews" at the heart of the story that move things along and provide the impetus for change at the sanatorium at the end of the story. Brother and sister of London's East End, Miriam and Lenny are not the sort of client-rather patient-that the Gwendo was built for. Not so long ago the only people who could even afford to take up residence at the Gwendolyn Downie Memorial Hospital for the Care of Chronic Cases of Tuberculosis were middle class or better. But it is 1949 and National Health means that when the pair are diagnosed with TB, it's down to the south of England and the Gwendo they go. The ambulance driver, used to a better class of patient thinks to himself that these two are common as muck.
Lenny is the one who has been rejected for Army service (and here his uncle had a plan to get him out of it but his worst nightmare comes true, since Lenny really is sick). He is the one with the serious case and it seems as though Miriam only has the sniffles but she'll be the one who flounders in the treatment. Inseparable are the two, but upon arrival they are split up (much to their chagrin) and thus does the story begin. The patients are an odd assortment from a very distinguished and titled lady to, arriving on scene much later, a colorful and very opinionated American serviceman caught and diagnosed on his way home after the war.
I found most engaging the character sketches (one woman described as: ". . .if it hadn't been for the war she would have become one of those unhappily married women who had read everything in the local lending library and drank too much sherry before her husband came home from work. Then war had given her something decisive and important to do."), and the character dynamics as well as what seems such frightening and (maybe?) antiquated treatments such as the collapsing of a lung to "let it rest" or the removal of ribs, which I still don't think I understand the purpose of.
Lenny and Miriam do cause quite a stir--class and religion aside--even their dress and behavior, but it's even more exacerbated by Arthur's American-jazzy-pop-culture arrival. Well, that and the possibility of a new drug that might well cure most of the Gwendo's TB cases. It's only a pity that there are a limited number doses available for trial and the doctor in charge must select a very few patients on whom to give the drug. Life at the sanitarium is thrown into an upheaval the likes of which will send it spinning out of control. This is what happens when the patients stage a subversive, clandestine revolt.
You wouldn't think that a story set in a sanatorium could have all that much of a narrative arc. I mean the patients are put on severe bed rest, but the lives of the core group of characters are followed through well into their middle ages taking the story into the Millennium. There is not so much of a climactic moment of revelation as an explanation of why they end up where and how they do and how their relationships with each other intermingle and ultimately play out.
I've long been curious about Linda Grant and this novel finally gave me the nudge to try her work. I have at least two more novels by her on my reading stack that I am even more eager now to try. I enjoyed The Dark Circle, but I have a feeling I might like her other novels a tad bit more.