Description
Simply the most consistently inventive, brilliant, curious and creative writer going' GILLIAN FLYNN''Delightfully disturbing'' iNEWS''A blood-soaked, gothic nightmare'' FINANCIAL TIMESFrom one of our most accomplished storytellers, an extraordinary and arresting novel about a women's asylum in the nineteenth century, and a terrifying doctor who wants to change the world.In this harrowing story based on authentic historical documents, we follow the career of Dr. Silas Weir, Father of Gyno-Psychiatry, as he ascends from professional anonymity to national renown. Humiliated by a procedure gone terribly wrong, Weir is forced to take a position at the New Jersey Asylum for Female Lunatics, where he reigns. There, he is allowed to continue his practice, unchecked for decades, making a name for himself by focusing on women who have been neglected by the statewomen he subjects to the most grotesque modes of experimentation. As he begins to establish himself as a pioneer of nineteenth-century s