Illness Lesson (Beams)

The Illness Lesson 
Clare Beams, 2020
Knopf Doubleday
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385544665


Summary
At their newly founded school, Samuel Hood and his daughter Caroline promise a groundbreaking education for young women.

But Caroline has grave misgivings. After all, her own unconventional education has left her unmarriageable and isolated, unsuited to the narrow roles afforded women in 19th century New England.

When a mysterious flock of red birds descends on the town, Caroline alone seems to find them unsettling.

But it's not long before the assembled students begin to manifest bizarre symptoms: Rashes, seizures, headaches, verbal tics, night wanderings. One by one, they sicken.

Fearing ruin for the school, Samuel overrules Caroline's pleas to inform the girls' parents and turns instead to a noted physician, a man whose sinister ministrations—based on a shocking historic treatment—horrify Caroline.

As the men around her continue to dictate, disastrously, all terms of the girls' experience, Caroline's body too begins to betray her. To save herself and her young charges, she will have to defy every rule that has governed her life, her mind, her body, and her world.

Precisely observed, hauntingly atmospheric, as fiercely defiant as it is triumphant, The Illness Lesson is a spellbinding piece of storytelling. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Clare Beams is the author of the story collection We Show What We Have Learned, which won the Bard Prize and was a Kirkus Best Debut of 2016, as well as a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award.

With her husband and two daughters, she lives in Pittsburgh, where she teaches creative writing, most recently at Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Think City Upon a Hill ideals and The Scarlet Letter-style misogyny, and you'll have a pretty good idea of this sly debut novel, which scarily hints that, since the 19th century, perhaps not a whole lot has changed.… Best of all is Beams's tone: ironic and arch when relaying the spirited optimism of Samuel's precious experiments, urgent and sinister when depicting their nightmarish outcomes. Astoundingly original, [an] impressive debut.
Siobhan Jones - New York Times Book Review


[U]nusual and transporting.This is Alcott meets Shirley Jackson, with a splash of Margaret Atwood. It’s dark, quirky and even titillating, in a somewhat appalling way… a series of creepy events and phenomena that balance on the edge between realism and ghost story.
Marion Winik - Washington Post


The past is a clever place from which to discuss modern preoccupations around ownership, identity and the body.… In the present-day narrative, a handful of young women choose to attend the elite boarding school. Initially well drawn and vibrant, most of these characters sadly fade to obscurity, which is a particular shame given the subject matter of the book. The problem is one of overloading—Caroline’s mother’s back story, and the mystery of her death, is given too much prominence.… Beams’ depiction of the treatment of women at the hands of men—even supposedly enlightened men—recalls The Fever by Megan Abbott. There are echoes of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, too. Beams keeps us guessing as to the girls’ culpability, though a rushed ending sweeps them off stage, choosing instead to focus on Caroline’s story.… The Illness Lesson is a colourful, memorable story about women’s minds and bodies, and the time-honoured tradition of doubting both.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


[P]art horror, part case study and—I mean this as a compliment—part feminist polemic.… Reading The Illness Lesson is like watching someone with superior intelligence work out a proof. If I felt a tinge of sorrow that its characters did not necessarily surprise me, the satisfaction in seeing a problem so flawlessly worked out was a worthy substitute. The fog literally gets under their skin, and by the end of the novel, it also got under mine.
San Francisco Chronicle


[P]rovocative.… Beams excels in the details of this prescription. The sections on symptoms and their causes expose archaic misinformation and enforced misogyny.… Despite its finely wrought prose and incisive dialogue, The Illness Lesson is often overburdened by its obvious message and its telegraphed plot. Nevertheless, it is a scathing indictment of early toxic masculinity, a measured diatrbe against male-dominated medical and educational institutions.… Ultimately, it is a blistering condemnation of a patriarchal society which would deter the empowerment of independent female thinking. It also suggests that sometimes a bird is just a bird. Except when it’s not.
Washington Independent Review of Books


This masterfully considered if uneven study of gender and society cramps readers into the quarters of a 19th-century New England school for girls.…Clare Beams’ cool, cutting prose hypnotically evokes the oppression of female bodies and minds, though her rushed conclusion feels less vivid than frenetic.
Entertainment Weekly


[D]aring.… Beams excels in her depiction of Caroline, an intriguingly complex character, and in her depiction of the school, which allows the reader a clear view of changing gender roles in the period, with parallels to today’s sexual abuse scandals..…  [P]owerful and resonant.
Publishers Weekly


Beams successfully shapes the characters who tell the story, capturing the mores of the times and delving deeply into the psychological aspects of the situation. The underlying secret creates a tension that is resolved only in the final pages. Readers of general fiction will enjoy.
Library Journal


(Starred review) [L]uminous.…  This suspenseful and vividly evocative tale expertly explores women’s oppression as well as their sexuality through the eyes of a heroine who is sometimes maddening, at other times sympathetic, and always wholly compelling and beautifully rendered.
Booklist


(Starred review) Beams takes risk after risk…, and they all seem to pay off.… [T]he friction between the unsettling thinking of the period and its 21st century resonances make for an electrifying read.…  A satisfyingly strange novel from the one-of-a-kind Beams.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
 1. Why do you think the author chose to begin the story with the red birds, or “trilling hearts”? How did they set the tone for the rest of the novel?

2. Each chapter begins with a quote from the novel-within-a-novel, The Darkening Glass, which represents a cultural touchstone for the characters. Can you think of a literary work that carries similar popularity and relevance in our current time?

3. Caroline observes that her father imagines the students as “a kind of beautiful clay: dense, rich, formless, and waiting for him.” What do you think this says about his intentions as a teacher? Have you ever had a teacher who wielded this kind of influence?

4. Eliza is the students’ ringleader and she is also the first to fall ill. How did your feelings towards Eliza change over the course of the novel?

5. The “treatment” that Dr. Hawkins administers is based on a real historical treatment for “hysteria.” What do you think his methods say about the 19th century understanding of women’s bodies?

6. How does the atmosphere of the school change after Sophia’s abrupt departure? What effect does being the only adult woman left at Trilling Heart have on Caroline?

7. What did you make of Caroline’s decision at the end of the novel? If you were in her position, do you think you would have made a different one?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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