First sentence: Ethel pulled on the lumpy blue coat she’d been given by the Red Cross and glanced in the mirror before heading out to the printer’s. There was nothing she could do about the coat’s ugliness, but the garment was hers and not much else in the world was. Just over a year before, on an unforgettable September day in 1945 at the end of the war, she had been carried out of a Singapore prison camp on a stretcher. This five-foot-seven-inch woman had been unable to tip the scales past eighty-five pounds then, but now she was on her way back to her old size, if not her old self.
Premise/plot: The Taste of Longing is a biography of Ethel Mulvany. It covers Mulvany's life from 1933 until her death. In 1933, Mulvany met and married her husband--an English doctor then living in India. In the late 1930s, the two are working and serving in Singapore. Which is where these two are when war finds them. Soon they are separated and imprisoned. Mulvany has a unique story to tell of her time in captivity. She oversaw several projects 'for the Red Cross'.
But what this book mainly focuses on is the cookbook she created on two ledgers--provided by the Japanese--which she and the other women of the camp contributed to as they daydreamed about their favorite foods. Each chapter opens with a recipe giving the woman who contributed it to the cookbook when possible. The book concludes with impressions of the recipes. Each recipe had a taster, a man or woman who followed the recipe and tasted it.
But the book isn't only about the cook book or its publication--her determination to publish it and use all the profits to send care packages to recovering Prisoners of War. It is also about her life and her mental illness.
My thoughts: It would be wrong to say it is ever easy to suffer from mental illness. But there are times which it would be worse to live and try to get help and treatment. Mulvany suffered from mental illness at a time when it was misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and mistreated. First do no harm really wasn't the approach. I'd heard about electric shock therapy before, but I'd never heard about "treating" mental illnesses with insulin shots inducing comas! It sounds absolutely APPALLING and all kinds of wrong. Mulvany experienced these two treatments...in addition to others.
The book was fascinating in a bittersweet way. Evans shares the sources of her biography, and that really sheds a light on how mental illness was--and in some cases still is--perceived. Her fellow prisoners--most of them, though not all--really shunned and rejected her because of her mental health or lack thereof. She had supporters who loved her and loved seeing her frantic involvement to improve prison life. And she had enemies who really thought she was trouble with a capital T. But what I really found bittersweet was how her husband reacted to his wife's mental health. For better or worse wasn't the case.
I found it a compelling read yet profoundly sad in a way.
© 2020 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
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