The Illness Lesson

"Brilliant, suspenseful. . . . A masterpiece."
--Elizabeth Gilbert, author of City of Girls

"This is Alcott meets Shirley Jackson, with a splash of Margaret Atwood...Unusual and transporting."
--Washington Post

"A meticulously crafted suspense tale seething with feminist fury."
--O, The Oprah Magazine

"Masterfully considered...Clare Beams' cool, cutting prose hypnotically evokes the oppression of female bodies and minds."
--Entertainment Weekly

"Part horror, part case study and . . . part feminist polemic. . . . [The novel's antagonist] is a true and timeless 21st century villain."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"Both savagely acute in its portrayal of misogyny and tenderly hopeful in its trajectory."
--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"[This] gripping novel meditates on how an all-male establishment can denying women's pain, and how the consequences can shape a society."
--Vanity Fair

"Expertly blends 19th-century and modern diction. . . . Steering [her] protagonist toward liberation, [Beams] seem to suggest that an honest reckoning with misogyny might produce not only solidarity, but also change."
--The Atlantic

"Frightening, suspenseful, and timely, The Illness Lesson explores the crushing weight of oppression and the indefatigable power of female defiance."
--Esquire

A haunting psychological thriller about society's preoccupation with controlling women's minds and bodies...[An] arresting, beautifully written debut novel.
--Newsday

"An astonishing book. . . . Beams shows a kind of mastery in yoking the natural to the surreal and linking grief and fear to rage."
--New York Journal of Books

"Provocative. . . . A scathing indictment of early toxic masculinity, a measured diatribe against male-dominated medical and educational institution."
--The Washington Independent Review of Books

"Clare Beams' writing is a revelation. . . . A fascinating mix of genres (the school story, body horror, paean to feminist anger), [The Illness Lesson] manages to achieve all the things that the best historical fiction should."
--Irish Independent

"Beams takes risk after risk in this, her first novel, and they all seem to pay off. Her ventriloquizing of the late 19th century, her delicate-as-lace sentences, and the friction between the unsettling thinking of the period and its 21st century resonances make for an electrifying read."
--Kirkus (starred review)

Luminous...This suspenseful and vividly evocative tale expertly explores women's oppression as well as their sexuality through the eyes of a heroine who is sometimes maddening, at othertimes sympathetic, and always wholly compelling and beautifully rendered.
--Booklist (starred review)

"Daring...[a] powerful and resonant feminist story."
--Publishers Weekly