Word: cliffhaven
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...autobiographical novel which, like The Snake Pit and a dozen other books, takes place inside a mental institution; but Faces in the Water is especially brilliant in its descriptions of what happens inside the patient's mind. When Istina, a schoolteacher, is committed to New Zealand's Cliffhaven hospital, medicine does what it can. But the nurses are exhausted by twelve-hour days, and there are only 1½ doctors for each thousand patients. Istina gets electric shock treatment, insulin is pumped into her veins, and she is shunted to foul-smelling dayrooms with the other "hopeless" ones...
...decision works no magic-in fact, the truest magic in the book lies in Author Frame's eerie knack of conveying Istina's inability to know whether she is getting better or worse. After, nine long years, Istina walks away from Cliffhaven as from the scene of a terrible accident, leaving behind her a thousand moaning others still trapped in the smashup...
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