The Illness Lesson

Astoundingly original, this impressive debut belongs on the shelf with your Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler collections. * New York Times *The Illness Lesson is a brilliant, suspenseful, beautifully-executed psychological thriller. With power, subtlety, and keen intelligence, Clare Beams has somehow crafted a tale that feels like both classical ghost story and like a modern (and very timely) scream of female outrage. I stayed up all night to finish reading it, and I can still feel its impact thrumming through my mind and body. A masterpiece. * Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love *‘Subtle, clever, suspenseful … builds to a shocking climax’ * Diane Setterfield *Alcott meets Shirley Jackson, with a splash of Margaret Atwood. It’s dark, quirky and even titillating … on the edge between realism and ghost story * The Washington Post *A top pick for the coming year … this haunting novel blends historical fiction with a timely comment on women’s bodies and minds, and those who think they can control them. Unmissable. * Stylist *A Sunday Times Books to Read in 2020: A classic ghost story for fans of Picnic at Hanging Rock, Deborah Levy, Jeffrey Eugenides * Sunday Times Style *The gripping novel meditates on how an all-male establishment can deny women’s pain, and how the consequences can shape a society. * Vanity Fair *Beams takes risk after risk in this, her first novel, and they all seem to pay off. Her ventriloquizing of the late 19th century, her delicate-as-lace sentences, and the 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 *‘Beams’ highly readable but unsettling debut novel has a 19th-century elegance and Gothic tone attuned perfectly to its themes of shadows from the past, omens, men’s control over women’s bodies and the hint of a malign force just beyond our ken’ * The Herald *The Illness Lesson truly shook me. In prose so sharp it cuts through the decades and arrives at the present day, Clare Beams takes a shocking moment out of true history, and brings it to life. You want to know how horrifying things happened while decent people looked on and did nothing? Read this novel. I believed every nuance of these characters’ thoughts, the conflicts waging war inside their own minds, their devastation, and their courage. I was immensely moved by this story, and the people who populate its pages. * Mary Beth Keane, author of ‘Ask Again, Yes’ *

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.

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