"Brilliant, suspenseful...
A masterpiece."--Elizabeth Gilbert, author of City of Girls"A brainy page-turner that\'s gorgeous and frightening in equal measure."--Leni Zumas, author of Red ClocksA searing novel which probes the world\'s approach to women\'s bodies and women\'s minds, and the time-honored tradition of doubting both.
At their newly founded school, Samuel Hood and his daughter Caroline promise a groundbreaking education for young women.
Precisely observed, hauntingly atmospheric, as fiercely defiant as it is triumphant, The Illness Lesson is a spellbinding piece of storytelling..
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.
Clare Beams\'s extraordinary debut story collection We Show What We Have Learned earned comparisons to Shirley Jackson, Karen Russell and Aimee Bender, and established Beams as a writer who "creates magical-realist pieces that often calculate the high cost of being a woman" (The Rumpus).
As the men around her continue to dictate, disastrously, all terms of the girls\' experience, Caroline\'s body too begins to betray her.
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.
One by one, they sicken.
But it\'s not long before the assembled students begin to manifest bizarre symptoms: Rashes, seizures, headaches, verbal tics, night wanderings.
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 Caroline has grave misgivings. "Brilliant, suspenseful...
A masterpiece."--Elizabeth Gilbert, author of City of Girls"A brainy page-turner that\'s gorgeous and frightening in equal measure."--Leni Zumas, author of Red ClocksA searing novel which probes the world\'s approach to women\'s bodies and women\'s minds, and the time-honored tradition of doubting both.
At their newly founded school, Samuel Hood and his daughter Caroline promise a groundbreaking education for young women
