Reviews - W-3 | The StoryGraph

24 reviews for:

I am a little unclear where exactly I learned of this book - other than it was recently in the 'bookish' press as the independent publisher, A Public Space, republished it this past January as part of their rediscovering 20th century women writers project.

W-3 is a locked psychiatric ward at a Chicago university hospital that Bette Howland was at after she attempted to kill herself by taking a bunch of sleeping pills. Howland's memoir is funny and sorta hopeless, compassionate and honest. Howland published the book in 1974; I was 12 and it had been 7 years since my own mother's nervous breakdown. She didn't recover as well as Howland but she did survive. And that in the end is pretty much Howland's point - it is hard and lonely but the vast majority of us just want to survive. But some just end up going to a state hospital.

There is something about the book that feels very 1970's, Alice Neel, feminist but I can't quite describe it. One of Howland's best talents is her ability to capture portraits of people that are snarky but kind.

A non-representative passage that I wanted to capture:

"But I only had orgasms a few times," Trudy burst out suddenly. "Just a few times! Almost never!" And here the throat bulged, the big painted mouth crumpled bitterly; she lowered her face and hung her head. I heard her whimpering: "Never. Never."

I was stunned . This was textbook. Can it be that she only read it somewhere? I wondered, gazing at the rows of dim faces, the scrawled sign on the wall; Trudy's shining, quivering blond head.

"YOU MUSTN'T SAY SUCH THINGS TRUDY. IT'S NOT APPROPRIATE." Blanche patted her lips with her paper napkin; sympathy always made her stiffen.

It's not appropriate. The very words we heard most often - performed with reverence, a kind of obeisance, foreheads touched to the ground. And yet invariably applied. as now, with reckless inaccuracy. What Trudy just said seemed to me all too appropriate. Like a dictionary definition, one of those thick tomes in Zelma's room; the attributes of a case history with some Latin name. It was hair raising. You mustn't say such things Trudy, I thought looking at her stricken, downcast face, suddenly afraid for her. No you mustn't say such things. It can't be that your life is an open-and-shut book.

Trudy only wept for a moment though. Trudy never did anything, even weep, for more than a few minutes at a time. This too was instructive. It was obvious that Trudy was a classic case, some sort of a classic. Her self-revelations were so predictable as to leave you speechless. Trudy was not less candid with herself. But classic is just a nice word for stereotype. Could it be that the reluctance of the rest of us to express ourselves, reveal ourselves - in the same way that Trudy was everywhere expressing and revealing herself- was simply a fear of this? a suppression of stereotypes? If we spoke our hearts at last would the words come out - like slugs of type?

maureenstantonwriter's review against another edition

5.0

This is simply the best book I've read on the experience of being on a psychiatric ward, with gorgeous prose and acute and darkly witty insights. Written in the 1970s, recently rereleased, well worth reading.

molabie13's review against another edition

Whilst the story is interesting, it's a very taxing read. The language is challenging and difficult to follow the plot. Perhaps I had a bad week trying to read it, but it wasn't for me.

foggy_rosamund's review against another edition

5.0

Like Susanna Kaysen, author of Girl, Interrupted, Bette Howland spent some time during the 1960s in a psychiatric ward. Bette Howland woke up in an intensive care unit, have swallowed an overdose of sleeping pills. From there, she is transferred to W-3, a public psychiatric ward in an underfunded Chicago hospital. Unlike the world Kaysen describes in Girl, Interrupted, this ward does not cushion its inhabitants from the outside world: overflowing with people, it is a place where the poor and down-and-out are sent for stints of twelve days, in which time they are supposed to overcome acute mental illness. Howland, being white and having a family who can pay for her to stay for a longer period, is in a position of relative privilege, though she too has nowhere but the ward to call home, and endures the over-crowded, sleepless and noisy spaces of the hospital. The comparisons I'm making to Girl, Interrupted are not meant to reflect negatively on either work: I admire both these books, but it's impossible not to compare them to one another, as they explore an experience that is both similar and very different. Howland's work is concerned with what she witnesses while on the ward: she does some exploration of her own life, but the bulk of her writing concerns the other patients, and the treatment they receive. W-3 is a place where no one can thrive, or heal, but it does provide a kind of shelter and a place of change for the patients. Not everyone can get better, but within the pressures and tensions of the ward, some people are able to find a way to get back to the outside world. A moving and necessary book that captures many different experiences that can lead to a psychiatric hospital.

jiprutten's review against another edition

3.0

emotional funny informative slow-paced

eleanorfranzen's review against another edition

Kindly sent in a parcel of proof copies by Rebecca! A short memoir of a few months Howland spent in a psychiatric ward after attempting suicide at the age of thirty-one, this is much less a personal excavation—as the introduction by Yiyun Li notes, Howland is barely present in her own retelling—and much more a kind of encyclopaedic guide or handbook to the denizens of the ward. Both men and women live there, which surprised me slightly, and the treatment strategy of heavily medicating the inmates while also failing to even mildly chastise them for doing things like standing on the dinner table and revealing their bare buttocks to other patients feels extremely of its time. In fact, most of W-3 feels like this, a portrait of a world that was at least as terrifying outside the ward as inside: rape is a fact of life for most of the women, children and vulnerable young adults are given no special consideration, let alone a call to social services, and physically disabled patients are trapped in wheelchairs with all the manoeuvrability of a small moon, in environments that no one even contemplates attempting to make “accessible”. Howland was very observant, and she survived, but I didn’t really enjoy reading this, not so much because her descriptions of mad people are disturbing (though they are) but because of the sense that the real madhouse was Chicago in the ’70s, and there was no getting out of that.

isachu's review against another edition

3.0

I wonder what it says about me that the first book that I finished this year is a memoir of the author’s stay in a psych ward. And she is also 31 years old? Wild.

Howland’s almost detached tone about her stay gave the book a sort of journalistic quality to it. She writes at a distance without a trace of sentimentalitt, her experience feeling very much like she is merely observing her own life as well as her fellow patients. While this lends a thoroughness to her experience, I felt like I would have enjoyed more of a personal touch. Howland recounts her stay in W-3 as a defining moment of her life, the memoir suggests otherwise. Regardless, I don’t regret the read. It was clear-eyed but also so exhausting.