C D Major - The Other Girl

They thought she was insane. But what if she was telling the truth? 1942, New Zealand. Edith’s been locked away for a long time. She was just five years old when she was sent to Seacliff Lunatic Asylum. Fifteen years later, she has few memories of her life before the asylum, but longs for one beyond it. When she survives a devastating fire that destroys her ward, Edith is questioned by the police and a young doctor, Declan Harris. Intrigued by his beautiful patient, Declan begins to doubt the official reasons for her incarceration. Is she truly mad―or could the impossible stories she told as a child actually be true? Time is running out. With Edie awaiting a new and permanent treatment, soon there will be little of her left to save. Meanwhile intrigue has tipped into obsession―Declan needs to uncover the truth, but in doing so he will risk losing everything. As he sets out to save her mind, will he lose his own?

Comment: This book caught my attention while I was in a slight rabbit hole looking for books with similar plots, namely the setting at an institute/asylum. No specific reason why I added this one, mere curiosity.

In this story, set in 1942 in New Zealand, we meet Edith, a young woman who has been institutionalized since she was a child because she spoke of things that made no sense. Edith kept speaking about her identity as a different person and doctors believed her to have schizophrenia of some kind. Apart from this, Edith's life has been lonesome and even dangerous, especially when other girls kept harassing her and others weaker than them. Now, Declan Harris, the new hired doctor, has shown interest in her case because he can't see the behavior others claim Edith has and when a devastating fire happens, leaving only Edith and another girl as the survivors, he believes she might be in danger, and not only from the possible procedure which will erase her personality... but will he prove Edith has been truthful all these years?

This story is labeled as historical fiction, thriller and mystery and I was certainly looking for to it. I had never read anything by this author either and was quite eager to see such a potentially captivating plot come to life, even more so when it became obvious Edith, as a child, was recollecting a past life memory and past lives have been the subject of several non fiction books I've read and liked for the most part. I was really curious to see what would happen but, sadly, the writing wasn't very appealing to me.

The book is told in third person, focusing on the POVs of Edith and doctor Declan, and divided into three time lines, so to speak, the present situation at the asylum when the fire happens, Edith's memories of when she went to the asylum and her childhood while sometimes remembering her "past life". I suppose the author chose this tactic so that we, the reader, could follow the characters' choices with previous knowledge but I'll have to confess this didn't really work out because the sequence between the time lines wasn't smooth nor offered consistency to the protagonist's current behavior. It would have been better to remove the scenes from when Edith joined the asylum or, perhaps, focus only on the past life theme or the asylum one. To have several elements to add and confuse the plot was not a good decision.

The main plot was actually interesting, and we are led to believe that Edith is this innocent, misunderstood woman, sadly belonging to a time where medicine wasn't yet as advanced to help her as it should and that means she suffers unnecessarily. At least, this is the main idea developed, but I'd say that to me, the interesting layers of this novel are on how woman's rights were non existing, or perhaps to be fair, in a broader sense, how mental illness patients simply weren't considered to be normal nor worthy of more attention than that of a doctor who wanted to study them and profit from their illnesses.

All would have been great if this had been it, or if instead of the supposed thriller part, the plot would have focused on the themes I've mentioned above. Instead, the author added a mystery about what happened for the fire to have happened when it did, who started it and why only two women were saved. Along with this poorly developed plot line, we have a very distanced type of writing, with a lack of development to make the protagonists' more captivating - or more secretive it the aim was for a mystery -  which means I struggled to maintain my interest while turning the pages.

The author includes a note at the end saying she based this story on a real event at an asylum, in the same year, so the premise is based on real facts, which is interesting but the fictional part was not delivered in a way i would say is consistently written. I was also a little sad that we didn't have more about the whole past lives issue, although some things regarding this do get explained a little. When the story ends, the author decides to offer this twist to the plot, which is meant to be shocking but I'll confess I wasn't really surprised. Not that it wasn't a surprise or that it couldn't have been so; rather, I was so disappointed with the writing style that any surprise was lost for me.

All things considered, this book had a good base, the themes were certainly something I was curious about and one or two elements were interesting (the mental illness patients and how they were/are treated by society; the past lives idea) but the execution was a let down. 

Grade: 6/10