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Loading... Grace Williams Says it Loud (2010)by Emma Henderson
1   buriedinprint | Apr 8, 2013 |  Semi-autobiographical. What lifted this book above a four star read was the knowledge that the author's older sister had been consigned to an asylum at a similar age and the experiences described for Grace were based on Ms Henderson's memories of her sister. On the other hand, I did feel the complicated descriptions of Grace's feelings and thoughts, in all their detail, were a bit unbelievable as having come from someone who was "not just not perfect, but damaged. deficient, mangled in body and mind" (P 11). We meet Grace in 1947, as a baby with developmental problems. She is loved by her parents, older sister and brother, but was born into a time when the support for such a child was not available and the only advice given was to institutionalise her. This was a traumatic time for the whole family as they drove her to The Briar and left her behind. Fortunately for Grace, she meets Daniel on her first day at The Briar. Daniel has lost both arms and is epileptic but he sees in Grace something that others have missed and their blossoming friendship is beautifully described. The institution is as ugly as we would expect and rife with abuse and neglect. We sense the despair of the inmates and the filth and degredation they must endure. But Grace gives a positive spin too, as she makes a life within the walls of The Briar. Although not an easy read emotionally, this was a gripping book. It reminded me of Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen (4 stars), a memoir telling of similar treatment for depression in the same era. Highly recommended. (  ) DubaiReader | Nov 28, 2012 | Grace Williams was born with mental and physical deformities, which were compounded when she was stricken with polio at the age of six. By the time she's 11, her doctors convinced her parents to turn Grace over to a mental institution, and it's there that Grace meets the love of her life, Daniel, who sees through her disabilities. Their story is at the center of Emma Henderson's Grace Williams Says It Loud. Grace proves to be a delightful narrator - cunning, observant and witty. Through her words, we learn how institutions treated their patients during the 1950's. In fact, the scenes that depict the name-calling, condescension and physical abuse were hard to read, even with talented Grace at the helm. These horrific scenes were juxtaposed with Grace and Daniel's friendship and love - a beacon of light in the storm. You could tell the two found solace through each other. While the characters were complex and interesting, I was not as enamored with Grace Williams Says It Loud as many other readers. However, I can't pinpoint why. Somewhere in the middle of this story, it lost steam for me, and I skimmed some of the remaining pages. Not enough action? Tired of the institutionalized treatments? I am not sure. In any case, I still recommend Grace Williams Says It Loud and encourage you to read other reviews to get a feel for the book. Grace deserves a large audience, indeed. (  )1 mrstreme | Jul 10, 2012 | Grace Williams was born with unspecified developmental disabilities and then had polio aged six. We follow her story from a loving home, into an institution, and beyond. She is assumed to be ineducable, her attempts at speech dismissed as echolalia. But Daniel sees beyond the exterior, and so do we. Grace is eloquent and honest, stoical despite the appalling treatment she is subjected to. This is a tragic, often disturbing novel; all the more heartbreaking because you know the experiences described were a reality for countless institutionalised people. And yet there is hope. A new era has dawned where disabled people are treated with dignity and respect, supported to live full lives. Sexually explicit in places. (  )1 eclecticdodo | Feb 16, 2012 | Grace Williams is mentally challenged at birth, deformed by polio at aged six, and committed to Briar Mental Institute at age eleven in the late 1950s. On her first day at Briar, Grace meets Daniel Smith, a debonair epileptic who wins her heart with his Parisian French, his stories of the world outside, and his unlikely and uncanny talents of shoe cobbling and piano playing. Theirs becomes a love which will endure beyond the sordid existence that is Briar. The novel is a disturbing and heartbreaking read. Heartbreaking because Henderson’s portrayal of Grace, her victories, defeats, and great love are so achingly real. And disturbing because she, and some two thousand other Briar patients, are treated with such shameful disgust and loathing: “Subnormal, deficient, retarded, impaired.” (129) Briar’s routine consists of ongoing abuse, physical, emotional, and sexual; debilitating medications; and painful, often unnecessary, medical procedures. “Daniel said it wasn’t too bad, ECT. But I knew he was lying. his egg-shaped head always appeared longer, and his eyes scrambled like a bust kaleidoscope, after his own occasional shocks. Few of us ever had regular electrics. Increasingly, we were treated with colourful cocktails of pills. The only patients who still received regular ECT were the adult skitters, the lady catatonics and a group of curled, withdrawn, lost-looking men called DPCs. Daniel said they came from abroad, from camps. If they spoke at all, they spoke in a mysterious mix.” (127) For all its seriousness, Grace Williams is not without victory. Grace lives on well beyond the closure of Briar in the late 1980s; and by then, thankfully, education has, at least to considerable degree, precipitated humane and compassionate attitudes towards those less fortunate. I think Henderson’s achievement in Grace Williams is her ability to educate, to remind, to disturb, and to celebrate. (  )3 lit_chick | Oct 15, 2011 |
 Grace Williams is a spastic and a mental defective – that's what they called her at the Briar Mental Institute, where she was sent to live when she was 11. Emma Henderson's first novel is Grace's story, suggested by the life in care of Henderson's own sister. Grace's disability is from birth, exacerbated by polio when she was six. At 10 she was still tiny enough to be put in a baby swing. She dangled in it miserably, though her family were convinced she loved it: "It makes her feel a part of things." As the novel unfolds, we get used to this radical mismatch between Grace's inner life, which we are privy to, and her effect in the world outside. It's as if a wall is built around her, preventing her from reaching out. The wall is language. Emma Henderson's novel hangs on the conceit that behind the wall of Grace's near-silence, her language is whole and eloquent. The novel is written in the first person. Far from the insensible object of the system's routines, Grace the narrator is an exceptionally receptive subject. Nothing is lost on her. Bed-wetters wash their own sheets: "I quite liked plunging the soggy yellow cotton up and down in the enormous sinks, watching as the piss blended with then disappeared into the warm, soapy water." Whatever terrible things happen at the Briar (the brutality of some nurses, the dentist's sexual abuse), Grace records them, ruthlessly exact. Language consoles her; she remembers the music her father used to play her, recognises Goethe, knows that "wild roses grew on the highest slopes of the Himalayan mountains". The conceit is ingenious, and it works. Most novels, after all, find words to express the experience of subjects who could never have put it so well. If the writing sometimes slackens, it isn't because we don't believe in Grace. The problem may be that everything is told in an implied retrospect, as if she were remembering it much later, mixing together different layers from her past. Sometimes that structure leaches the freshness out of a story, however hard the writer's language works to put the colour back. But this is a sensitive and generous book – not least because, although so much that happens to Grace is outrageous, it's never a mere prompt for indignation. Its judgments – of Grace's parents who couldn't cope, and of the Briar – are opaque and complex. At its best it is exuberant and vivid. Grace's story is a life, like and unlike any other; not a case. In her protagonist, Grace Williams, debut novelist Emma Henderson has created a complex and compelling character. Grace is born in 1947 "all wrong. Not just not perfect, but damaged, deficient, mangled in body and mind." When, aged 11, her severe disabilities are complicated by epilepsy, her parents admit her to the Briar, a state-funded psychiatric hospital that will be her home for 30 years. .......This dynamic first novel is reassuringly upbeat. Henderson succeeds in creating a rich narrative despite the obstacle of limited speech and challenges the reader to confront prejudices about those living with disability. Grace Williams is a character who makes herself heard.
References to this work on external resources.
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This isn't an ordinary love story. But then Grace isn't an ordinary girl. On her first day at the Briar Mental Institute, Grace meets Daniel. He sees someone to share secrets and canoodle with, someone to fight for. This is Grace's story: her life, its betrayals and triumphs, the disappointment and loss, the taste of freedom.… (more)
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Wikipedia in English
Not having met Grace before, you should keep an open mind. Some of the people who do know her, at The Briar, where she lives, have rigid and, er, not-very-flattering opinions about her.
If you’ve heard any of that chat before you picked up this story, you might have your doubts. For instance, here is one of the nurses describing her to the doctor who fills the role of dentist at the institution:
“The occasional fit, but not epileptic. Occasionally violent, but we increased her Laractil in January. Physically and mentally defective. Obviously. A complete imbecile.”
Well, now you might be wondering about those 325 pages. Told, it might seem, in the voice of a defective, an imbecile.
But if you are a clever reader: you will realize there is something amiss. The girl, the young woman, that the staff at the Briar view in these terms couldn’t possibly write a book. But Grace Williams has done just that.
More, quotes and chatter about Grace, here. (