The Dark Circle by Linda Grant – An Emotionally Fulfilling Read

After the Second world war, tuberculosis cases are on the rise and the twins, Lenny and Miriam fall prey to the illness. They are sent to a sanatorium in Kent where they forge new relationships, some of which leave permanent scars. The Dark Circle by Linda Grant promises to be an emotionally wrenching read.

REVIEW

The Dark Circle is set mainly in 1949 when the war has ended and anti-Semitism is on the rise. The story concerns the twins, Lenny and Miriam, eighteen years of age and living with their mother. Their father is dead and they have an uncle who helps the family out. Lenny has big plans; Miriam works in a flower shop and dreams of opening her own shop one day. Their dreams bite dust when they both are diagnosed with tuberculosis. Under a new plan of the National Health Service scheme, they are accepted into a sanatorium in Kent where the privileged ill stay. Housing an eccentric cast of patients, the sanatorium has excellent food and orderly silence until Arthur Persky, an American merchant seaman, is admitted as a patient and he decides to hold the mast for small rebellions.

This book made me realize how fortunate we are to live in a period with so many medical advancements. The patients in those days were administered harsh measures such as sleeping in the biting cold in the verandah for fresh air, or being tested with new medicines and methods which often had drastic consequences. The children who are diagnosed with TB are shut in rooms or even tied down to contain their excitement and urge to play. It was scary even reading about them, both the young and the old, confined to a sanatorium with an uncertain future. This book made me feel grateful for all the busy moments of the day that we often whine about. The patients are advised full rest and are provided all the good facilities such as nourishing food and nursing care; but this joblessness terrifies them, bores them and they crave to lead a normal life.

The cast of characters in the book is wonderful. There is Arthur Persky, the ladies’ guy, an American who brings about chaos in the orderly life of the institute; Hannah, a German who suffered the brutalities of war only to be confined in the sanatorium; Lady Anne, the privileged lady with a sad and shocking ending who was kept with the sole reason to attract more privileged patients; Valerie, Miriam’s room mate who is an avid reader and wonders if she would get along with Miriam.

Love forms a main theme in the book. There is love between the brother and sister that lead to some hasty decisions and ends in an unexpected way. The love between a lesbian couple force one of them to try to get medical care to the other in a faster manner by manipulating the list of patients lined up for medical care. There is the man who finds a creative outlet in building structures of matchsticks, whose wife lends him her coat so that he will be warm when they place him in the verandahs. He loses the coat in a gamble and fears during his last days whether she would ever forgive him; whether she has another man in her life or whether he is going mad because of the illness that makes him think this way.

The novel is a Bible of human emotions. The relationship between the twins is the crux of the story. They make sacrifices for one another, love one another but the illness wrecks the forgiving nature in them. Being shut up in a sanatorium forces the patients to interact with one another and spend their time together, but Lenny realizes how hard it is to make a friend compared to making an acquaintance. Through Miriam (who is obsessed with dressing up) and Valerie (who is more of an academic than someone who gives importance to attire), Grant portrays how important physical beauty is in a woman’s mind. When Valerie is disfigured because of an experimental surgery to cure her, she is furious and wishes she had the beauty and not the treatment. Miriam takes pains to dress herself when she goes out even though she knows they are confined to the neighbourhood of the sanatorium.

The story is set in a time when Jews were not accepted freely in the mainstream society. The owner of Miriam’s flower shop changes her ‘working-name’ to Mimi and says, “Whilst there’s nothing wrong with Miriam, it’s a little too Hebrew for our clientele. Not that they are prejudiced, but they expect a level of service and certain standards from us”. The anti-Semitism sentiments are strong among the nurses and doctors in the sanatorium as well, but we see how the patients, even though they are from different backgrounds, understand and live amicably with one another. Some patients develop feelings of love towards the other. There is an interesting scene of the fickle mindedness of the human mind shown through Valerie who develops feelings for the Jew boy, Lenny, whose visits to their room are a big concern for her father. After they are cured there is a touching scene where Valerie, being conscious of her shortcomings in her physical appearance says to herself that “he’s an uneducated lout who in few year’s time would have gone fat… and be some small-time hoodlum, probably in prison himself, for they all are.” This is in stark contrast to her thoughts of sympathy to the twins when her father makes racist remarks.

Though the majority of the book takes place in 1949 we the second and third parts takes place in the future, and these bind the book into a phenomenal read. Grant shows how time disparages the hardships the TB patients went through during their life. There is a touching scene where Miriam talks about her illness to her hairdresser, a young, ignorant girl, who responds with the question, ‘Is it cancer?’. The novel is highly realistic by showcasing how patients keep their fears, regrets, grudges against one another after they are cured. It is no fairytale story where everyone is forgiving and lives happily ever after. As years pass and TB is no longer an incurable illness, the world forgets it but the cured patients can never be at peace with their memories.

The writing is not easy. It follows a style similar to Virginia Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness. So the book requires you to read it with your full attention because you might be reading about the thoughts of one character in a paragraph and without warning it will jump to another character’s thoughts in the next paragraph. This is the only aspect that I think all readers may not find suitable.

Final Verdict

I expected the book to be a grim, dull one because of the premise of TB patients and the setting being a sanatorium. I was so wrong, and found it to be an extremely engaging read. Linda Grant is a wonderful writer; she has a knack of being witty in serious circumstances leading to many laughs and making you well up in other portions. Her minute observations of human nature, the changes one undergoes when being diagnosed with an illness that does not have a cure yet and the scars that remain if at all the patients survive the illness, are both remarkable and thought provoking. When I finished the book, I felt so emotionally fulfilled that I burst into tears. I would highly recommend the book.

If you are reading through the Baileys shortlist this year, you can check my reviews on the other books:

1. Stay with me by Ayobami Adebayo – Deception, Marriage and Childlessness

2. The Power by Naomi Alderman – When Girls Rule the World

3. Do not Say We Have Nothing by Madeliene Thien – Ambitious, Musical and Historical

4. First Love by Gwendoline Riley – Minimal, Melancholic and Pensive

5. The Sport of Kings by C. E. Morgan – What is Wrong and Right with the Novel

Title : The Dark Circle
Author : Linda Grant
Publisher : Virago
Published : 2016
Language : English
Pages : 320
Rating : 4.5/5

Disclaimer : Much thanks to Virago for a copy of the book. All opinions are my own