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Bedlam, Greg Hollingshead’s new novel, tells a dramatic and compelling story of three ordinary people caught up in the turmoil of the late-18th century, their lives inexorably intertwined in a world where nothing is as it seems.Europe, reeling from the French Revolution, is about explode. Conspiracies, plots and paranoia sweep across the country, landing James Tilly Matthews in Bethlem Hospital, a notorious, crumbling home for the insane. Although he is delusional—convinced that a gang of villains is controlling unsuspecting minds by means of a diabolical machine called an “Air Loom”— Matthews appears to be incarcerated for political reasons. Margaret, his beloved wife, spends years trying to free her often lucid husband, but she is repeatedly blocked by her chief adversary, John Haslam, Bethlem’s apothecary and chief administrator. Haslam, torn between his conscience and a desire to further his career through studying his famous patient, becomes another puppet in a game governed by shifting rules and shadowy players.Bedlam creates an indelible portrait of 18th-century London, a city teetering between darkness and light, struggling to find its way to a more just and humane future. In its darkest corners, where noblemen, pickpockets, royalists and republicans jostle one another, where corruption is all in a day’s work, Matthews, Margaret and Haslam must contrive their own destinies.Enlivened with wit and intellectual daring, Bedlam is a novel that pulses with insight and compassion, in which imagination bridges the chasm between fantasy and reality, love and hate.
In the shadow of the French Revolution, a man confined to the notorious Bethlem Hospital for his radical political beliefs and perceived delusions finds his fate entangled with his wife and his captor. James Tilly Matthews, a man convinced of a conspiracy involving an "Air Loom," struggles to prove his sanity against a backdrop of institutional corruption and political paranoia. His wife, Margaret, fights a protracted battle for his release, while John Haslam, the hospital's administrator, navigates the ethical divide between his medical ambitions and the reality of his patient's incarceration. The narrative explores the shifting power dynamics within a crumbling asylum, where the line between madness and political dissent becomes increasingly blurred.
This work presents a dense, atmospheric examination of historical power structures and the fragility of the human mind. The narrative style emphasizes the claustrophobic nature of 18th-century institutional life, grounding its philosophical questions in the gritty reality of the period. Readers are likely to find the interplay between the three central characters a study in moral ambiguity and the limitations of individual influence. The text suggests a preoccupation with how political instability manifests within the confines of private lives and public institutions.
Page Count:
478
Publication Date:
2004-08-16
Publisher:
Phyllis Bruce Books
ISBN-10:
0002005573
ISBN-13:
9780002005579
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