Orange Prize 2011. Grace Williams Says it Out Loud.

The Orange Prize for Fiction Longlist was recently released, so I am hunkering down again in a bid to read my way through it.

I am finding this quite the challenge....the carbamazapine has really messed with my concentration and I find it really hard to actually absorb that which I have read. But...onwards and upwards.

Grace Williams....is a hard story to read. Or I found it so. I thought it was well-written and believable. Believable is why I found it so hard. Set in the middle part of the 20th Century, it recounts the story of Grace, sent to an asylum when she was 11 - a doctor having decided it was best, damaged as she was at birth and subsequently by polio. But Grace and her companions are not the dumb animals that the staff assume them to be and what follows is a rich, and frequently brutal, account of her life 'inside', in particular with a young man called Daniel. In many ways this reminds me of what I can recall of Skallagrig, which I read many years ago.

I am sure that some people may think that the brutalities and abuse handed out in the book were over-stating the case.I don't think so, not for one minute.