I’m keeping my 2024 Stella Prize reviews brief, otherwise I simply won’t get through them before the shortlist is announced on April 4.
I read Hospital by Sanya Rushdi in one afternoon. It’s a novella (124pp), and although the cover clearly states that it’s fiction, the main character has the same name as the author, and it’s written in the first person… so… autofiction? I don’t want to assume but I have read that it’s based on true events. And that’s important to note because the story focuses on Sanya’s third admission into a psychiatric ward.
Thoughts:
- Impressive that Sanya manages to blur the line (or make nano-second switches) between sanity and paranoia. For example –
I go to the music and relaxation room with Leonie. It seems to me that she might be associated with a criminal gang.
I see Glen going into the TV lounge with a bottle of water. I follow him in there, and sit down next to him. When I ask him why everyone went into the courtyard, he shows me the bottom of the water in his bottle, where I see some white grains. ‘Arsenic,’ I think to myself in bewilderment.
- There’s a relentlessness to Sanya’s obsessive thoughts that is palpable. And exhausting.
And on choosing a seat on the train – Oh, but why am I sitting on the right? Do I support right-wing politics by any chance? No, I don’t. I shift to the seat on the left-hand side of the three-seater that the boy’s sitting on. He shuffles the pages of his book, perhaps to indicate his disapproval. That’s true, I’m not an extreme left-winger either. You could say I’m centre-left. Now I take the middle seat in the empty three-seater… I go back to the seat on the right. I notice that if I move two-and-a-half seats to the left on the seat opposite me, I can occupy the boy’s position.
Imagine being that boy on an almost empty train carriage. What would you think of Sanya?
- I was reminded of a discussion with my clinical supervisor about the idea that ‘sanity’ might be a case of ‘majority rules’.
- Wasn’t mad on some of the editorial/ stylistic choices e.g. rather than dialogue in some parts, character names and speech is bulleted like a play script. The result is flat (maybe that was intentional).
- The writing is spare – lots of pressure on the translator, Arunava Sinha. For example, after looking at an acquaintance’s artwork on Facebook Sanya says –
One of his later paintings suggested he was proposing to me. I took two days to think it over. When I felt I was willing, I hit a like on his painting.
- A significant part of the story is Sanya’s withdrawal from her PhD in psychology. This is used to give context to interactions with her doctors. Sort of. But not fully. As a result, we skirt around the edges of some big ideas about linking the brain and body, and the medicalised approach to treating mental health. These are topics that I’m very, very interested in but I didn’t get what I was hoping for.
Will it win? No – not sure it will engage enough readers.
3/5
Sanya’s mother brings her food when she visits the hospital –
Pulling a bowl out of her bag, Amma saya, “There’s some rice, your favourite prawn with long melon and fried pumpkin. Eat.”
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“No – not sure it will engage enough readers.”
Well…
I expect it is a worthy addition to the literature of mental illness but even though I received a freebie from the publisher, I didn’t want to read it. Or even feel that I should.
It is a worthy addition… there is something in there that I want to say about autofiction but thoughts still forming. Whatever those thoughts are, this book highlighted the difficulties with autofiction. Perhaps it says more about me as a reader that I want to know what’s ‘true’ and what’s fiction!
Maybe I’m a bit cynical but I feel compromised by it, much as I do when it’s used in misery memoir. What can you say, if the story comes from lived experience? Whether you are writing as a reviewer or just talking about it with friends, if you critique it, you are criticising the author’s life and their decisions. Or maybe the behaviour of other real people in the author’s life.
I find autofiction quite a difficult concept. Like you, I like to know just how much is fiction. I also feel there’s an element of fiction in autobiography.
Re the auto-fiction issue. I don’t have – I think, but maybe I’m kidding myself – the issue about what’s “real” and what’s “fiction”, partly because, even in autobiography or memoir there’s an element of fiction even if it’s just because in choosing to tell us some things and not others, the author has created a persona for themselves. Autofiction does require, though, I admit, my always being aware that this is not the author’s life and that I should not extrapolate details, though I can extrapolate something about their general experiences. And it sounds like the author has done an excellent job on conveying on the page some of how paranoia feels. That is probably true?!
You make me think of The River Ophelia (1995). A few years ago I interviewed author Justine Ettler who was very angry (and withdrew the book from publication) because she was being conflated with her protagonist, also Justine.
I enjoy, perhaps even prefer, autofiction, but if the author says it’s fiction then I believe that is how it must be read, however much personal experience infuses the writing.
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