Tea Time Tuesday

Happy Tuesday my fellow Book Dragons! If you visited my Facebook page earlier you read the missive sent to us from Catherine Taylor and are already a bit familiar with tonight’s Gem, if not, I suggest you do so as it was very nice of her to send us a bit of a note.

This evening’s Gem is a brilliant, pearlish, luminescent white, like a full moon in summer. Feldspar or Moonstone they call it. That time of the night when the faeries dance, there are odd snatches of melody in the air and the oddest things are said to happen. This is “Beyond the Moon” by Gem Maker Catherine Taylor.

This is a tale of two lives connected by quite a thin, wispy line of time. A blip, if you will, that we often hear about, but few of us experience. I have experienced it only once, but that is a tale for another evening….The first life is Louisa Casson, recently of Sussex, in the year 2017. She is bright, smart, a medical student and most of alone. She is grieving the death of her beloved granny. Unfortunately, part of her bereavement included having one too many and due to a misstep, ends up at the bottom of a cliff. She is placed in Coldbrook Psychiatric Hospital because she remembers nothing about how she got there, and there is a justified fear that she may have attempted suicide and just can’t remember. Just as unfortunately, once in, it’s twice as hard to get out. Louisa isn’t leaving any time soon…meanwhile…

The second life is that of 1st Lieutenant Robert Lovett. Suffering from Shell Shock (akin to what we now call PTSD) which has caused him hysterical blindness (one has no actual physical reason for blindness, the eye is acting normally, etc), he just cannot see, he is in Coldbrook Hospital in Sussex as well.. only in 1916. And it’s WWI. And he’s been horribly injured. A sensitive artist, he will never paint again, it is said. He lies in his bed in the lowest floor of the hospital..waiting..for what? …meanwhile..

Louisa is getting tired of being in hospital. She’s tired of being pushed to therapy, individual and group, tired of the rules, tired of people thinking she has ‘shot her bolt’ when it’s obvious she has not. She sneaks off her ward and heads out to explore. She gets all the way to the basement. What does she see when she gets there? A handsome young man lying on a cot..only everything is old, the equipment, the beds, the uniforms….

I really liked this book. If you loved Outlander or Another You by Jane Cable (which I reviewed here back in July) then you will love this book as well. Set between 2017 and 1916 the two main characters are very well done. The WWI research as regards conversation and surroundings was spot on. I would have gone for 5 Flames but in my humble opinion I believe our dear Catherine tried to cover too many themes:

‘Beyond The Moon is more than just a love story, and deals with themes like war, art, mental illness, identity and feminism. At the same time it’s also meant as a critique of the appalling conditions that patients are too often subjected to in privately-run UK mental hospitals – a modern-day scandal that has been widely reported lately in recent months in newspapers like The Guardian and The Times.’ Catherine Taylor

When this happens the work itself can become a bit preachy at times. Sticking to the atrocities of war upon the men who fight it, the treatment of wounds, the caregivers, etc, would have done all that and more. And she does in her missive to us, dear Book Dragons, mentions some works on WWI that I would also suggest you read. Most especially Vera Brittain’s ‘Testament of Youth’.

I highly recommend ‘Beyond the Moon’ to the time travel lover on your list. If you know someone who loves WWI fiction or early 1900’s fiction as well. Until tomorrow I remain, your humble Book Dragon, Drakon T. Longwitten

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.