This is a short and surprising book, about a woman transported back in time.[return][return]Melanie is a 1950s housewife who is recovering both from giving birth and then a fit of TB. After being confined to bed for several months, she is allowed to have a change of scene - lying down on the Chaise Longue she had picked up on a whim in a second hand shop.[return][return]After a nap, she wakes up to find herself in a room she doesnt recognise, wearing clothes she doesnt own and being called a different name. It seems she has travelled back to the 1860s. She has no idea how she got there and how she can get back to her own time and place. [return][return]Is she dreaming? Has she actually travelled back in time?[return][return]Millie's restricted life (she's very ill and incapable of much movement) and Melanie never sees anything beyond the one room. She is courted by someone she doesnt really trust and finally comes to believe that she is dying - either in this timeline or in her "real" timeline of the 1950s. The book leaves it where you can then decide what was real and whether you believe she actually dies (and from what). If she dies in 1846, does she die in the 1950s? Who will miss her? ( )

This is an intriguing little piece. Melanie buys a Victorian Chaise-Longue while she is in the early stages of pregnancy. She also has a tubercular shadow on the lung and is forced into rest for the remainder of the pregnancy. The book starts after she has given birth and she is being allowed a change of scene and is moved onto the chaise-longue in the living room. There she falls asleep. When she awakes she is still on the chaise-longue, but has been transported into the body of Milly Barnes, Victorian fallen women & consumptive. The definition of self, who is Melanie if she occupies Milly's body, if she dies here will she die at home and can she ever get back. There is something quite compelling about this, watching Melanie and her fearing her loss of identity and trying to get to grips with the past and her potential future. ( )

An unsettling novella about existentialism while also exploring and comparing the state of middle-class white womanhood in 1860s and 1950s England. Despite its length, many interesting concepts were raised here. But because of its length, its potential was not fully realised. I reckon it'd be a very good basis for an expanded feminist horror-mystery story. ( )

Melane- a 1950s first-time mother - is recuperating from tuberculosis. As she is moved to the sitting room, lying on an old chaise longue she picked up in a junk shop- she falls asleep...and awakens on the same pice of furniture, but in a malodorous Victorian room. Half-memories beset her...the place and people seem familiar...as she lies, consumptive, and attended by an unfriendly sister..Aware that she is truly Melanie (not Milly Baines), it begins to feel that she can never return to her real world...
The feeling of being trapped is well-evoked,; I think one might interpres the ending (and indeed the whole premise) in different ways.. ( )

A small, tight, perfectly-calibrated novella, that demonstrate very well the art of being just the right size and stopping in just the right place. It is sinister and insistent, and works both on the surface and as a metaphor. Well done.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).
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