Erin reviewed The Illness Lesson by Clare Beams
Review of 'The Illness Lesson' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I get why the average rating for this one is low, but it did work for me. It’s very slow and quiet, and the ending is pretty anticlimactic. You don’t really get an explanation for the fits. But overall I enjoyed the quiet moodiness.
I loved the way Caroline grew and the way her father fell off his pedestal. The subtlety of the relationship dynamics between multiple characters was really well drawn. I enjoy stories where most people are trying to keep things polite, but one or two other people are screwing it up. That awkwardness says so much with so little.
Beyond Eliza, the girls are not easy to distinguish. It doesn’t really matter, so I almost wish Beams didn’t try to distinguish them at all. Just embrace them as a cult of Eliza, an outgrowth of her.
The “treatment” from Hawkins was sooo painful to read through, and …
I get why the average rating for this one is low, but it did work for me. It’s very slow and quiet, and the ending is pretty anticlimactic. You don’t really get an explanation for the fits. But overall I enjoyed the quiet moodiness.
I loved the way Caroline grew and the way her father fell off his pedestal. The subtlety of the relationship dynamics between multiple characters was really well drawn. I enjoy stories where most people are trying to keep things polite, but one or two other people are screwing it up. That awkwardness says so much with so little.
Beyond Eliza, the girls are not easy to distinguish. It doesn’t really matter, so I almost wish Beams didn’t try to distinguish them at all. Just embrace them as a cult of Eliza, an outgrowth of her.
The “treatment” from Hawkins was sooo painful to read through, and I thought it was fantastic when Eliza declared Samuel to be the worse man of the two. That’s really saying something.
My main complaint is that the birds don’t come to much besides a metaphor for little understood women and girls. They have more significance in the story than I feel like they warrant in the end.
I recommend this for folks who like a quiet character study.