In The End the Beginning

A stark and often harrowing account of one women's battle against poverty, stigma, betrayal and inevitably mental health. Set in Sheffield in the middle of the last century, the book serves as a reminder that the 'good old days' were often anything but!

I bought a copy of this title direct from the publisher before it was released. As a Sheffielder, I was intrigued by the story and wanted to find out more about the experiences of women suffering from mental health issues during the mid twentieth century.Mary Steele has written the book from the perspective of her own mother, Alice, who was born in 1911 and spent the best part of three decades committed to mental institutions where she was forced to undergo harrowing and sickening ‘treatments’ and experiments. The book is beautifully written, with a very poetic and evocative style that makes your feel as though you are there. I did notice a few grammatical and punctuation errors and sometimes felt that the text could have benefitted from further editing by the publishers, but this did not affect my enjoyment of the book in any way.This is not an easy read, and there were many times when I had to put the book down as it was simply too upsetting. The way in which Mary Steele describes the desperate situations in which her mother found herself, and the sense of utter helplessness she felt at the way society treated women clearly suffering from post-natal depression and other hormonal issues such as menopause, makes this one of the most compelling stories I have ever read about our society and its history in failing to recognise and treat these issues.I think that this book would make an incredible adaptation into film or television. Stories like this are rarely told, and there is a great need for them to be shared. This is a well-researched and beautifully written book that shows a great depth of research and consideration on the part of the author.