When silence dawns, only dusk will break it.

In the shadowy corridors of The Beaumont, a mental hospital haunted by its dark history as an asylum, a disturbing mystery unfolds when in 1953, a woman is found mute, naked, and drenched in blood on the outskirts of West Yorkshire. With no memory of her past and no one to claim her, she is dubbed Patient A and placed under the care of the institution’s staff.

Counsellor Jane Galloway, is drawn to Patient A’s case with a resolve to restore her ability to speak, no matter how unorthodox her methods appear to be. However, her efforts to penetrate the silence meet with stark opposition from the hospital’s rigid hierarchy. The situation takes a spine-chilling turn when whispers in the night link Patient A to a recently discovered corpse.

As Jane edges closer to unravelling the eerie connection between her patient and the mysterious death, she must challenge a web of institutional resistance and hidden agendas. With time running against them, Jane’s quest to help Patient A reclaim her voice grows desperate. But in the harrowing halls of The Beaumont, speaking up can be deadly.

Will Patient A find her voice before the shadows of her past come to silence her forever?

My Review

Some parts of this book were very personal for me, so I found it harrowing to read at times. I apologise as I’ve alluded to this before, but my Jewish mother (who I now believe was suffering from PTSD following a traumatic escape from Vienna in 1938, and the death of my sister from tubercular meningitis in 1951) was sent to one of these places. She was given electric shock treatment – I can never read about the patients being tied down and a piece of wood put in their mouths to stop them from screaming without flinching – and finally she had a lobotomy.

Women suffering from depression and chronic anxiety disorder were described as having ‘neurotic melancholia’. Sir Alexander Feyman (head of the Beaumont in the story) believed that EST and a lobotomy were the only ways forward. Patients supposedly became calmer like Cleo. Lobotomies were often performed on gay men to ‘cure’ their homosexuality. Shocking to think that this was what they still did in my lifetime.

The Night Counsellor opens in 1953 where Counsellor Jane Galloway, has been hired by the Beaumont lunatic asylum (they still used that term) to try and help Patient ‘A’ to regain her speech. But Jane is getting nowhere and time is running out as the police believe Patient ‘A’ is linked to the death of another woman, whose body was found nearby. They don’t know who either of the women are.

Then we go back to 1952 and Georgina is married to Charles who takes her away from London to live in his huge house in Yorkshire. It’s right next door to his mother Lillian, who comes and goes as she pleases with her own key. They have tried to start a family, but she miscarries every time and she soon finds herself severely depressed. She self-harms and becomes anorexic, and this is where Charles brings in Alexander to ‘help’, while he swans around Europe selling luxury cigars, allegedly.

While a lot of the treatment in these mental hospitals seems barbaric by today’s standards, the author makes it clear that The Night Counsellor is a work of fiction. I’m sure most hospitals believed they were helping patients using the limited knowledge and expertise of their time, not carrying out experimental procedures that resulted in patients being buried in unmarked graves. Science has moved on thank goodness.

I really enjoyed reading The Night Counsellor, particularly from Jane’s point of view. The last quarter of the book really ramps up the tension as the truths and secrets are revealed, much of which was shocking and unexpected. I also adored the Gothic feel of the book, as Gothic is probably in my top three genres at the moment.

Many thanks to @lovebookstours for inviting me to be part of #TheNightCounsellor blog tour.

About the Author

L. K. Pang’s love of the great gothic love stories have been ingrained in her since her teenage years and ever since watching the school production of Jane Eyre on stage, she has been imagining life immersed in a Victorian world of big dresses, wild moorland, large country mansions and handsome, enigmatic men. Of course, being of Chinese ethnicity growing up in 1980s England, this gothic world was far from reach – until now. Her debut novel, Moat Hill Hall, is the amalgamation of these desires.

Since being published, she has continued with novel writing, enjoying the telling of mysteries, blurring the boundaries of suspenseful thrillers and tales of love with a gothic edge. Her second novel, The Night Counsellor, continues on with this theme and embraces the harsh truths of mental hospitals and women in society during the 1950s.

L. K. Pang is also an artist and lives in Yorkshire with her family.

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