The Illness Lesson (2020) is Clare Beams‘ debut novel. It is set in the final quarter of the nineteenth century in small-town New England.
It’s a complex novel to summarize in typical Reading Well terms: at the most abstract, The Illness Lesson is about the role of women in early America. But that’s not a topic explicit in the plot or the characters themselves: instead, it is about a private school for women started by a free-thinker of the time. His daughter is a teacher at the school, and is ostensibly the protagonist of the tale.
There is also a bit of mystic symbolism at play: a flock of scarlet birds appear throughout the novel, and play a key role in several plot movements. The birds are–at least thematically–tied to a mysterious illness that afflicts the students, placing the entire enterprise in jeopardy, and pulling together a prior failed experiment along much the same lines.
It’s a very engaging book, and Beams’ descriptions are often stunning in their detail and impact. An aura of mystery surrounds the book at many levels, from the history of the characters to the manifestation and resolution of the illness, to the writing project itself: Beams is clearly saying something about feminism, about the constraints placed upon women by seemingly (somewhat?) well-intentioned men, and about the nature of agency itself.
The fact she offers no clear declaration on these question is, in my mind, a strength of her writing. Recommended.