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Madwoman: Nellie Bly

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Madwoman‘ has everything I look for in historical fiction and I flew through its pages like a woman possessed. By this time in the novel I was championing Nelly so strongly, I almost had a placard in my hands and felt like standing on a box in the middle of Roosevelt island to tell the world what she was doing and why.

It is the story of Nellie Bly who has a difficultchildhood after her beloved father dies leaving his second wife Nellie's mother bereft and almost penniless. Bound and determined to do whatever it takes, she pitches an idea that may be the craziest thing anyone has ever heard. In 1887 young Nellie Bly sets out for life anew to make a name for herself by becoming a journalist, determined to leave her old life behind and create a future she can be proud of and New York is where it will happen.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Treger provides a moving story, particularly powerful in its depiction of Bly’s desperate efforts to retain her sanity in the midst of institutional madness.

Once we got into the journalism and the plot to enter the madhouse, I was back on board because of the vivid prose that was reminiscent of actual Victorian novels. Everyone should know what Nellie Bly did for the women in Blackwell’s Asylum and should all take a leaf from her book when it comes to believing in yourself and standing up for what is right! It was not easy to read about the horrible living conditions, torture and emotional trauma the women faced.It takes her to slums where whole families do everything in one room, deprived of privacy and dignity. An extraordinary portrait of a woman ahead of her time, Madwoman is the story of a quest for the truth that changed the world. Here she was confined to writing columns of interest to women, such as social gossip and theatre reviews. I realise this is a fictional retelling but you can tell Nelly is one of those women in history that really does need her story to be told. I flew through the book it’s not an easy read due to the content but it’s an important read we owe it to all those poor unfortunates know just what hell they went through.

Madwoman captures a unique piece of history when Nellie Bly, born Elizabeth Cochran, spent 10 days posing as a madwoman to uncover the atrocities in a New York City asylum. I was left with a nice introduction to Nellie Bly, but the interior workings and emotions of each character didn’t shine through. This fictional account of her exposé of Blackwell's asylum in 1880s New York stays faithful to the biographical detail, harrowing and emotive without ever getting too sensationalist. In the process, revealing deplorable conditions, the mistreatment of patients by staff, the mental abuse that could drive sane person into insanity, hunger and cold causing distress. I’ve always been interested in the life of Nellie Bly, so I was really looking forward to reading this fictionalised (but very close to what actually happened) account of her 10-day incarceration in a lunatic asylum.Mental health reform and destigmatization is a huge passion for me, so I really should’ve already read up on this a while ago. Madwoman by Louisa Treger was a fascinating historical novel based on the life and trailblazing work of the woman who became known as Nellie Bly. Nellie decides she would like to pursue a career in journalism and has some success on a local paper. While the subject matter is worth reading, the presentation lacked for me, especially in the first half of the book. She starts writing more hard hitting pieces about things that really matter and rankles a few feathers along the way.

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