I've ostensibly had this book on my to-read only since last year, but I transferred it onto Goodreads from a list I'd copied several years earlier from The Women's Bookshop. They put out a list each year (I believe) called 50/50 Women, which is a list voted on by NZ readers of 'The Top 50 Women Writers of the last 50 years'. I'm not sure how long they've been doing this, so don't know how long ago I took their list and recorded the books to read sometime, but every now and then one pops up when I'm scrolling through my to-read list for a book to fit a particular challenge. Which is why I've just read this - I wanted something with a psychiatrist/etc playing a leading role.

This book is fascinating. It's set in 1917 in the Craiglockhart War Hospital, a psychiatric institution aimed at curing shell-shocked soldiers and getting them back into active duty. Craiglockhart is, in fact, a real place. Dr William Rivers was a real psychiatrist working there, as were the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, who Rivers treated (successfully), and the poet Robert Graves who managed to get his friend Sassoon sent to Craiglockhart rather than court-martialled for his public protest against the continuation of the war.

Around these historical facts, the author has woven a story that takes us into the medical practices of the day, the social aspects of the time, the horror of war and its ongoing repercussions, and the age-old dilemma of duty vs. the individual. Also, in a little aside in the book to look at the methods of another real-life psychiatrist of the time, Dr Lewis Yealland, we're subjected to an example of 'whether the end justifies the means'. I guess this half dozen or so pages was written in to help us see the conflicts Rivers had to face, but I felt it unnecessary to the plot - a little padding out of the text.

The book has a few moments of wry humour, which alleviate what could be a tasking read, and a great many moments of caring humanity. All in all I am most pleased to have read this book.