Free shipping on orders over $99
The Illness Lesson

The Illness Lesson

A Novel

by Clare Beams
Paperback
Publication Date: 09/03/2021

Share This Book:

  $40.32
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE - FINALIST FOR THE 2023 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE - From the author of the award-winning debut story collection We Show What We Have Learned, an "atoundingly original" (The New York Times Book Review) work of historical fiction with shocking and eerie connections to our own time.

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 nineteenth-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 own body 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.

ISBN:
9780525565475
9780525565475
Category:
Historical Fiction
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
09-03-2021
Language:
English
Publisher:
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Country of origin:
United States
Dimensions (mm):
201.93x133.6x19.05mm
Weight:
0.24kg
Clare Beams

Clare Beams' short story collection was published in October 2016. It won the Kirkus Best Debut and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize.

Clare lives in Pittsburgh, where she teaches creative writing, most recently at Carnegie Mellon University and Pittsburgh Centre for the Arts. This is her first novel.

This title is in stock with our overseas supplier and should be sent from our Sydney warehouse within 3 - 4 weeks of you placing an order.    

Once received into our warehouse we will despatch it to you with a Shipping Notification which includes online tracking.

Please check the estimated delivery times below for your region, for after your order is despatched from our warehouse:

ACT Metro  2 working days

NSW Metro  2 working days

NSW Rural  2 - 3 working days

NSW Remote  2 - 5 working days

NT Metro  3 - 6 working days

NT Remote  4 - 10 working days

QLD Metro  2 - 4 working days

QLD Rural  2 - 5 working days

QLD Remote  2 - 7 working days

SA Metro  2 - 5 working days

SA Rural  3 - 6 working days

SA Remote  3 - 7 working days

TAS Metro  3 - 6 working days

TAS Rural  3 - 6 working days

VIC Metro  2 - 3 working days

VIC Rural  2 - 4 working days

VIC Remote  2 - 5 working days

WA Metro  3 - 6 working days

WA Rural  4 - 8 working days

WA Remote  4 - 12 working days

Reviews

Be the first to review The Illness Lesson.