Most mental health novels are told from the viewpoint of the person with a mental illness – the patient. We wanted to show the other side: the clinical perspective, perceptions and prejudices. We found ourselves drawn to a TV-medical-drama structure: each episode / chapter focusing on a case, but with ongoing characters and stories.
I think the result has many of the characteristics of a TV series: a big cast of characters; multiple stories and strands; takes a bit of getting into, but becomes addictive.
We hope readers will take a risk with a story structure that’s unusual in a novel, but will be instantly recognisable.
– GCS
The Glass House is the latest book from Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist. It’s the first in the Menzies Mental Health series, following a trainee psychiatrist as she learns on the job, beginning with the Acute Unit – the emergency medicine of mental health.
Here’s what the back cover says:
Psychiatry registrar Doctor Hannah Wright, a country girl with a chaotic history, thought she had seen it all in the emergency room. But that was nothing compared to the psychiatric ward at Menzies Hospital.
Hannah must learn on the job in a strained medical system, as she and her fellow trainees deal with the common and the bizarre, the hilarious and the tragic, the treatable and the confronting. Every day brings new patients: Chloe, who has a life-threatening eating disorder; Sian, suffering postpartum psychosis and fighting to keep her baby; and Xavier, the MP whose suicide attempt has an explosive story behind it. All the while, Hannah is trying to figure out herself.
With intelligence, frankness and humour, eminent psychiatrist Anne Buist tells it like it is, while co-writer Graeme Simsion brings the light touch that made The Rosie Project an international bestseller and a respected contribution to the autism conversation.
‘Highly engaging. Brings alive the frontline of mental health care’ PROFESSOR PATRICK MCGORRY AO, AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEAR, 2010
