For someone who doesn't have much knowledge of what's its like in the medical field and dealing with different mental illnesses this book definitely gives an insight to what it is like.

Each character that came into view in the book definitely got me thinking that I was in their shoes and what I could have done if I was them.

Thank you hachette for letting me read an early copy of this book and I can't wait for it to be published

‘Acute psychiatry is the emergency medicine of mental health: for the stuff nobody saw coming.’

Twenty-seven-year-old Hannah Wright is a registrar at the Acute Psychiatric Ward at the fictional Menzies Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. Hannah is hoping to be accepted into the psychiatric training program despite having been rejected once. It’s a difficult task Hannah has set herself: impossible hours, in a medical system strained to breaking point complicated by politics and differing views about effective treatments. Hannah and her colleagues are all working under pressure.

In this novel, the authors take us into the worlds of both therapists and patients. We are with Hannah as she negotiates challenges of her own. We meet several patients fighting their own battles. Three who have remained with me are Chloe, with life-threatening anorexia nervosa; Sian suffering postpartum psychosis; and Xavier, an MP, who has attempted suicide. No patient can be treated in isolation. History is key, as is family composition and dynamics. The deeper I read into the novel, the more important these factors become.

I read this novel as someone who has experienced two sides of mental health care. My brief experience as a student nurse introduced me to the complexities of care, while periods as an inpatient over a period of forty years have been both helpful and overwhelming.

This novel reminds me that caregivers are human (and fallible), that mental health issues are rarely straightforward. Diagnosis and treatment can resemble untying a Gordian knot. Not all endings can be happy. The novel finishes with various author acknowledgments, including:

‘The Glass House was inspired by the courage of patients and the dedication of mental health workers who deal with issues which are often poorly understood, inadequately resourced, and for which there are few complete solutions. We hope this book will contribute to a better recognition of the challenges they face.’

As do I. I read, I learned, I remembered.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Australia for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Wife & Husband duo Anne & Graeme’s latest novel follows trainee psychiatrist Hannah working in a psychiatric ward. The author Anne works in psychiatry herself which I found really interesting going into this book because even though this is a work of fiction, it really gives depth to the main character and her experiences. The bulk of The Glass House follows various patients from presentation to diagnosis to treatment (in the middle it started to feel a bit formulaic and repetitive but it didn’t slow me down too much!) as Hannah tries to prove herself to the powers that be and genuinely help those at their lowest in a broken healthcare system.

All the while, just like anyone else, she is dealing with workplace conflict, the interference of others, dating, and figuring herself out in a life where you seldom ‘come first’. Hannah and the other hospital staff were all fleshed-out characters with a clear purpose, a couple did feel a little one-note but I believe this is because the authors wanted to focus on the complexity of the patients instead and I’m perfectly happy with that compromise. Speaking of the patients, a wide range of psychological illnesses are covered in this book including eating disorders, postpartum psychosis and schizophrenia so just be mindful of triggers. I think the patients and their family members were incredibly layered for the most part with a couple of minor exceptions who are a bit forgettable.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I consider it very unique! Of all the books I’ve read set in a mental health institution/ward, this is possibly the only one that isn’t from a patient’s perspective and the detail that the authors could incorporate from lived experience really elevated it. This book has shimmers of humour and I also found it pretty philosophical, it makes you think about the way we treat and think about mental illness and how many people are affected when a loved one suffers.

3.5 stars

We follow our main character, Hannah a couple of weeks into her registry in the Mental Health Unit at Menzies Hospital as she gets experience to get into the psychiatric training program. Throughout we hear many stories from patients going through some of the worst moments of their life and gives us a real insight as to what happens in a mental health unit.

This was quite an eye-opening book! It really shows what goes on behind the scenes at a hospital using diverse characters. The story flowed well and had many subplots which really added to the overarching story.

The only thing I had an issue with was the many, many characters, some of which didn't have a lot of depth and were mentioned constantly but we never got to understand what they were going through/their background.

Overall, it was a really interesting book which I wouldn't have picked up usually so thank you to Netgalley and Hachette for sending me a copy of this one to review. If you're considering picking this one up, please check the trigger warnings as this book deals with some heavy stuff.

Set in Australia, Hannah Wright is a trainee psychiatrist with a background in emergency medicine. Thinking she had seen it all working in the ED department, that is until she joins the team at Menzies Hospital psychiatric ward.

The Glasshouse is a book for of interesting and diverse characters. It follows the lives of Hannah and a handful of her co workers. Giving you an insight into the struggles of dealing with mentally ill patients. This story gives you a really good insight into many different aspects and each chapter deals with a different illness including pregnancy psychosis, manic depression, schizophrenia, religious delusions, suicide, anorexia nervosa and PTSD. It allows you to get an idea of the difficulties faced by each of the staff members working in the Glasshouse.

I really enjoyed the diversity in the character development and the insight you are given into their own personal lives. Hannah is a really great main character, I really enjoyed getting to know her throughout the book. I especially enjoyed the fact that they showed her flaws and all.
We often feel that people working in mental health may have it all together, when in fact they are all just as flawed as everyone else and often dealing with their own personal traumas. The Glasshouse really does leave you more open and thoughtful of mental illnesses and what those treating the patients go through themselves.

I really enjoyed this book for the most part, although the ending wasn’t really conclusive. In some ways you are left wondering what will happen but I believe that is the intentions as obviously it is an ongoing storyline. In reflection part of me just hopes that future Hannah is able to heal some of her own trauma and find what she needs in her career.
Definitely a thought provoking and interesting story.
The writing and research was all really well done and kept my interest throughout. It also at times had me thinking of my own personal experiences and flaws.

My feelings are that this book is likely not for everyone. It’s a rather heavy, emotive type read.
If you have an interest in literary fiction and the subject of mental healthcare, then I would say give it a go. It’s certainly a book I would recommend to everyone for the most part especially if you’re looking to gain insights into the good side and short comings of the mental health system in Australia.

Thanks kindly to NetGalley and Hachette Australia and New Zealand for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

This is an almost perfect book for me, grippingly set in a fictional Menzies hospital with trainee Psychiatrist Hannah Wright. An amazing look into an area of health care that is so very specialised and important to so many patients and their families.

We meet Hannah a few weeks after she begins working as a registrar in the Mental Health Services’ Acute Unit at Menzies Hospital.

“Acute psychiatry is the emergency medicine of mental health: for the stuff nobody saw coming. Until someone close to them becomes paranoid or overdoses or begins cutting themselves.”

We follow Hannah as she finds her feet in this role while working towards her goal of being accepted into the psychiatry training program. Along the way, we’re introduced to Hannah’s colleagues and patients. It’s confronting meeting people experiencing some of the worst moments of their lives and throughout this book you’ll witness what mental health emergencies can look like.

I got off on the wrong foot with Hannah. Her appearing to casually ‘diagnose’ a colleague she barely knows and her blind spot about how beneficial therapy could be for her irked me.

“As for getting therapy myself, it’s not at the top of my to do list right now.”

Her ability to put off getting therapy surprised me too. The people I know who work as psychologists and social workers all have regular supervision appointments. I expected to be attending the psychiatry equivalent with Hannah, even if she didn’t go to therapy herself, but if this was part of her life she didn’t invite me along.

Hannah slowly grew on me as I made my way through the book but my own bias prevented me from warming to her much. I’ve noticed in my own life that people in helping professions who are hesitant to work on themselves are less likely to be able to sit alongside me as I work on myself. Hannah’s reluctance to do so, while I knew there’d be a reason behind this, meant that I never really trusted her.

It didn’t help that sometimes her judgements about patients and lack of sensitivity infuriated me.

‘How can she bear to be so pathetic?’

This is challenged by a coworker. Thank you, Jon.

Connecting with a main character isn’t essential, though. I’ve liked plenty of books where I didn’t and liking Hannah isn’t necessary to enjoy this book. There are so many other people to meet, both patients and staff.

There were some, like Nash and his clear disregard for the value of social work, that I wanted to steer clear of. Then there were others I wanted to spend all of the book with.

Carey’s insight made me want to get to know them better and I loved Elena’s ability to think and work outside the box. I wanted to go back in time and advocate for Chloe and Brianna.

This book provides a rare glimpse at what working in this field is like, from an insider’s perspective. You feel the pressure of making the right call because the wrong one could result in someone’s death. You witness the struggle to free up beds to work within the parameters of a healthcare system that’s flawed at best. You see the power struggles amongst the staff and are wearied by the politics.

I found it interesting that by beginning the chapters with just a snippet of conversation or a scenario about someone we don’t know yet, it invites you to make a judgement call on what diagnosis the patient will be given, and indeed who the patient will be. It’s easy to start seeing people as diagnoses, not people, like when Nash talks about patients as PD’s (meaning personality disorders), stripping them of their humanity.

I don’t have a problem per se with diagnoses or with appropriate mental health treatment. My bugbear is when peoples’ normal and expected responses to trauma are given a diagnosis that’s then used to discredit their character and reliability. This didn’t play out as much as I expected here but I still cringed whenever a personality disorder was diagnosed.

I kept thinking that this is what a mental health spinoff of 24 Hours in A&E might look like. This book provided mini case studies that ran the gamut of mental health emergencies.

I can see this working well as the first in a series. I’d be interested in watching Hannah grow in both her personal and professional life over time.

Content warnings include addiction, child abuse, death by suicide (including the method used), eating disorders, foster care, mental health, self harm, sexual assault, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Hachette Australia for the opportunity to read this book.

“The Glass House was inspired by the courage of patients and the dedication of mental health workers who deal with issues which are often poorly understood, inadequately resourced, and for which there are few complete solutions. We hope this book will contribute to a better recognition of the challenges they face.”

– AUTHOR NOTE

If the above was the intent of this novel, then the authors got it right. The Glass House is not for the feint hearted, but for those who reach for it, you will not be sorry. It’s primarily about the mental health crisis in Australia but focuses on the psychiatrists and psychologists who are literally on the frontlines in our hospitals assessing and treating, attempting to help, surviving themselves in a field that is overrun by patients and under resourced universally.

As someone who has navigated the mental health system with a family member, as well as having a daughter who is studying towards a career in psychology, I found this novel fascinating, thought provoking, and deeply affecting. Anne Buist and Graeme Simsion have written a truly excellent novel that many will find both compelling and deeply contemplative. Highly recommended.

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

This is the diary of Dr Hannah Wright during her time on the Acute Psych ward, a hyper-realistic and candid account of life as a junior doctor. Working as a service registrar, Hannah aspires to enter the psychiatric training program. As each chapter introduces a new patient, cleverly allowing us a comprehensive insight into the spectrum of mental illnesses categorised in DSM 5, more of Hannah’s past, chaotic home life is revealed to us with hints of a pivotal traumatic event driving her motivation to pursue a career in psychiatry.

It is clearly apparent that this career path requires a team of support and Hannah reaches out to her fellow registrars to form a study group. Though initially wary of her colleagues, a mutual understanding of the demands of their jobs brings Hannah closer to her peers. This closeness blurs camaraderie with a potential romantic relationship which ultimately falters with the demands of the job.

More characters fill the story, indispensable nursing staff, interfering administrators and the apparently sceptical and overbearing Professor of Psychiatry who will ultimately decide Hannah’s fate in entering the training program.

When confronted a tragic crisis, Hannah shares the devastation with her, team, doubting her own abilities and choice of career path in Psychiatry.

Ultimately we are left with feelings of hope, a hope that Hannah who shows the potential to become a brilliant psychiatrist will pursue this career path, and hope that there are many motivated, hardworking and diligent medical professionals who manage to juggle work, training and life outside of work to give the best possible care to their patients and families.

Thank you Netgalley and Hachette for the DRC in exchange for an honest review

Thanks kindly to NetGalley and Hachette Australia and New Zealand for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This novel was seriously impressive. As a mental health advocate based in Victoria where this story takes place, it was pretty incredible to see how much of our local context was actually reflected throughout.

Anne Buist and Graeme Simsion’s The Glass House is the first in a planned series that follows trainee psychiatrist Hannah Wright as she moves through different sub-specialities in the fictional Menzies Hospital.

This premise makes space to cover a wide range of mental health issues and their very real impacts on patients and families. For a sense of the breadth, my three standout clinical subplots related to: the mental health tribunal’s role in the treatment of a woman with postpartum psychosis (which included ECT); family based therapy involving a woman with a severe and enduring eating disorder, and a nod to sexual assault in politics.

Buist’s background as a psychiatrist also shines through, with plenty of commentary on power structures, hierarchies and politics within the medical and healthcare systems. The main protagonist is also shown navigating relationships with their colleagues, questioning their career choices and briefly alluding to a troubled childhood.

And for my queers - there was a non-binary character. Which I loved.

The plot was however a little hard to follow at times given the multitude of characters. Though it’s obvious there was a concerted effort further along into the book to re-contextualise those who hadn’t appeared for a while with a brief description.

To take this to a ‘you rocked my world’ five stars, I would have loved to have seen the authors pare down the number of elements they wanted to focus on. I think in a rush to build out this world and show just how much it has to offer (it reads as educating folks on the sheer scope of our mental health system), it loses some of its focus and brilliance.

This book is perfect for someone, like me, that is interested in a portrait of our mental health system in action. It is reminder of how the experiences of patients and their families, carers and supporters are shaped by the people and power dynamics within our current paradigm; the struggle of the well-intentioned; and how small, meaningful interactions and a commitment to helping others can make a big difference.

In an unexpected way, this novel has engendered hope.

I’ve already shared this upcoming novel with several friends, colleagues and advocates within the space, and I look forward to discussing and expanding upon the book’s themes further as part of the planned book tour.

My Rating: 5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ not blow you out of space 5stars but I really enjoyed the writing and characters!!

Trainee psychiatrist Doctor Hannah Wright, thought she had seen everything in the Emergency Room… that is until she joins the team at Menzies Hospital in the psychiatric ward. Hannah is a country girl who has trauma in her own past that she is dealing with… or avoiding dealing with.

The Glass House is full of characters and not all of them are the patients. Hannah and her coworkers are dealing with the bizarre, the devastating, the hilarious and just plain weird sides to mental health. All each trying to find their own place in the world, dealing with their own trauma and their own issues.

So… this is my first book of the year and you can see that I am kicking off with five stars. I would like to very upfront say that anyone who reads my reviews for the thrillers will not find that here. This is a lit fic book and very character driven. It wont be for everyone and even if it is for you it might not be five stars. I have taken a week to think about my review and for me the more I think about this book the more I liked it.

It is set in Australia (I am Australian), and while I normally avoid Australian novels just because I like to get away in books… I think this one worked so well for me because it was centred around Mental Health, and the system we have here in Australia. The author is an Australian psychiatrist as well and she knows her stuff. You can tell this stuff is based of lived experience and having had some lived experience (different to the author) myself it was all very accurate and familiar. I really liked how raw and real it was.

I liked the characters… there was no one that blew me away but again this book wasn’t intended (in my opinion) to do that… but they each had a part to play. The writing is very nuanced… sometimes you don’t know why or what you are reading about … until you realise the author has tied it in so nicely that you may not have even noticed that you didn’t quite know what was going on initially. I liked not having my hand held especially for a topic that is so easily misunderstood… it would have been easy for the author to spew out medical jargon and do a play by play of this is this and this means that… but she didn’t have to at all. Her writing style allowed us to follow along in the stories that presented themselves and at all times I knew where it was going… or I found out.

Something that I liked but others may not is that there is no definitive ending to this novel, for me that makes sense, because it wasn’t over… it will never be over. It is the days in the lives of the workers, the patients and the families of those working and living with mental health… that doesn’t end. What I did love and wasn’t expecting was the tie in that the author managed to do with all the cases… I won’t go into it in depth because it will ruin it for those that wish to read it but… I really enjoyed how it very subtlety showed us what was going on throughout the book that we as the reader would and could not have been aware of… that was actually my favourite part.

I liked Hannah, and that she like all of us is flawed… and that she haunted in her own right and own way by the things that she carries with her in her life. Each of the characters have their own thing… and we learn about them throughout. I also like the authors inclusivity, there were characters from other cultures, minority groups and walks of life, all of which I felt were really well represented and written but it also wasn’t shoved in our face and explained to us in a condescending way… I enjoyed reading about their lives and struggles without it being because I’m XYZ… or because I’m from here or there… it was all very clear why these things were a very real and raw issue but you didn’t have the author shoving her own agenda down our throats it was a very nice way to represent and include people.

Overall, I think if you like Lit Fic and the subject matter is interesting to you give it a go. It is very well written I really enjoyed it. Far more than I was expecting to… I certainly didn’t go into this thinking it would be a 5 star read… but I actually was quite disappointed when it ended although I think it ended the best way it could have. I will be going and looking for more work by this author.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and Hackett Australia for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A lot of people will adore this book, but unfortunately, it wasn't for me.

I appreciated the commentary on the state of the mental health system, and The Glass House certainly had many interesting characters. The overall plot was great and I especially enjoyed how everything came together towards the end.

The problem I had is that Hannah, our narrator, did not have a unique or engaging voice. She could have been anyone in any story. Some things that could have made the storytelling stronger (in my opinion):
- More flashbacks, rather than just the one. This would have given the revelation about what happened to the foster child a deeper sense of gravity.
- Swapping first person perspective to third person.
- Less characters. Not less patients, as these are the heart of the story, but less hospital staff. It pulled focus and confused things at times.
- Swapping between perspectives of the trainees and staff. The strongest part of this book was right at the end when we heard from Alex, Prof and others.

Regardless of my opinions, The Glass House will sell very well and be loved by many!

“Our patients’ problems are so complex, our treatments so crude, ourselves so human.”

The Glass House is the third novel by husband and wife writing team, Anne Buist and Graeme Simsion. After three months as registrar on the Acute Psychiatric ward of the Menzies Hospital in Melbourne, twenty-seven-year-old Hannah Wright is hoping she will be able to mitigate the effects of the incident that led Professor Liron Gordon to reject her entry into the hospital’s psychiatric training program.

She has six months to impress, while treating the wide variety of admissions: pregnancy psychosis, suicide attempts, manic depressive, religious delusions, schizophrenic, histrionic personality disorder, anorexia nervosa, and PTSD; some are heart-breaking, some, like the manic, comical, although a colleague notes ”On the surface, he’s entertaining. Underneath, he’s battling a life-threatening illness”, one or two, professionally satisfying, and a few are sobering, serving as a warning: “All of us are at risk of mental illness. It can happen to any of us, out of the blue.”

Against a (sometimes distracting) background of power plays between her boss and the hospital’s new Director of Mental Health, well-meaning interventions by Child Protection, and patients’ family members with their own agenda, Hannah does manage to save some lives with a combination of training, past experience, luck, and intuition.

Well aware that she’s often seeing patients at a low ebb in their lives, Hannah tries to imagine them at their best, until another registrar points out that putting herself in their shoes, as well as assessing her patients more holistically, might prove more helpful or effective. And, of course, it’s a team effort that involves consultant psychiatrists, trainees, interns, nurses, psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists and the occasional student.

Hannah soon sees the value of the psych nurses’ input: “Increasingly, I’m trusting his take, and that of the other experienced nurses, on my patients. They spend more time with them than I do; I seem always to be on the phone to relatives, pathology or other hospitals and doctors. Not to mention doing paperwork.” And the time trap that paperwork is: “‘Time spent on accountability,’ Nash says, ‘is time spent away from patients. Someone should be accountable for that.’”

Discussion with her fellow registrars is always valuable for the sake of perspective. With the anorexia case, they acknowledge the associated stigma: “Would we say the same if it was sixteen admissions for asthma?’ A friend from school spent eighteen months in hospital after a motorcycle accident. We do think differently about mental illness.” More generally, they recognise the need do their best and then, if they are to survive, to detach, because “our patients will do what they will, we’re only a small factor in it.” Hannah examines the reasons she opted for this profession and certain incidents lead her to doubt her choice.

The cases that Buist gives her protagonist are intriguing and it becomes apparent that often there is no simple answer, that a mix of therapies might get the best result, or that it may require the right intervention at the right time; that the best result might not be wholly satisfactory and likely far from perfect.

Buist gives some of her characters insightful observations: “It’s tough to have your mistakes pointed out in public, and, god knows, we all make them. Review and criticism is part of every job. It can’t happen if there’s a culture of fear and humiliation – or schadenfreude”. Also “There’s a lot of pressure to treat what’s seen as urgent, and tangible. Obstetrics, blindness, drug abuse, plain life expectancy . . . plenty of work to do. Psychiatry’s seen as a luxury, as the medicine you do after everything else… Yet depression is one of the leading killers.”

This is also a novel that reminds us that those practitioners charged with the treatment of the ill and vulnerable are themselves human, and despite thorough training and expertise, may be plagued by very human flaws and failings, and their perceptions, attitudes and reactions to their patients’ presenting symptoms may be coloured by their own history.

Most chapters are prefaced by a description of the episode that results in the admission of a patient into the Acute Psych ward. The banter between the characters is often entertaining, and some of the dialogue is laugh-out-loud, if blackly, funny. Of course, Buist’s background gives each aspect of the story a ring of authenticity, so this portrayal of mental illness and its treatment, and of the mental-health system, is wholly credible, but also topical, laced with humour and quite thought-provoking. Recommended for anyone who thinks and feels.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Hachette Australia.