Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: A Want of Kindness
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1970
WEBSITE: http://www.joannelimburg.net/
CITY: Cambridge, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY:
http://www.joannelimburg.net/ * http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/7598648/The-Woman-Who-Thought-Too-Much-by-Joanne-Limburg-review.html * http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/170262/Fighting-back-The-woman-who-is-scared-of-everything
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: nb 99172160
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/nb99172160
HEADING: Limburg, Joanne, 1970-
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PERSONAL
Born 1970, in London, England; married Chris; children: son.
EDUCATION:Holds an M.A.; attending Kingston University.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Magdalene College, Cambridge, England, Founding Fellow, 2008-10; Newnham College, Cambridge, England, Royal Literary Fund fellow. Has taught at educational institutions, including the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Continuing Education, the Open College of the Arts, and Open University.
AWARDS:Eric Gregory Award, 1998. Grants from organizations, including the Arts Council and the Society of Authors.
WRITINGS
Also author of the poetry pamphlet The Oxygen Man.
SIDELIGHTS
Joanne Limburg is a British writer and educator. She has served as a fellow at Magdalene College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge. Limburg has released poetry collections for both adults and children, as well as memoirs and works of fiction.
The Woman Who Thought Too Much
In The Woman Who Thought Too Much: A Memoir, Limburg comments on her struggles with mental health issues. She traces her problems back to her childhood. Limburg was smart, but certain physical aspects made her unpopular with her classmates. She longed to be accepted. Limburg suggests that her obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) began developing around this time. As she reached adulthood, she attempted to address her issues in a number of ways. Eventually, she learns how to keep her mental health stable.
Helen Brown offered a favorable review of The Woman Who Thought Too Much on the London Telegraph Web site. Brown suggested: “Although Limburg’s condition seems to improve—which is impressive given the number of bereavements she endures—she doesn’t give us an unrealistically happy ending. Still, I think it will help other OCD sufferers to hear how well she’s coping, still writing poems and enjoying a happy home life with a very supportive husband and funny young son. Most of all it will help anyone with similar mental health issues realise they are not alone.”
A Want of Kindness
In 2016 Limburg released A Want of Kindness: A Novel, a fictionalized chronicle of the life of Queen Anne. In an interview with a writer on the Shiny New Books Web site, Limburg discussed the writing style she employed in the book. She stated: “I decided to use some version of the seventeenth-century voice because I was committed to Anne’s perspective, and the language available to her would have determined the thoughts she was able to have, and the way she could express them. The problem was that I knew very little about that period or its literature, so I had to set about immersing myself in it. I started with the King James Bible, which I read right through, and looked into other religious texts that Anne would have been familiar with.” Limburg also commented on Anne’s representation throughout history. She noted: “Anne hasn’t been written about much, and it may partly be that she is so very frustrating, with her stubbornness and rather short-sighted way of looking at things. She isn’t beautiful or brilliant or dashing. She is very much of her time, which can make her difficult for us to empathise with.” Limburg told Anne Garvey, a contributor to the Jewish Chronicle Web site: “She is an unusual choice. I could have done Sarah Churchill, her more flamboyant helpmeet, but I think there are enough beautiful, feisty heroines. … Anne was a limited person, fat and short-sighted, limited in imagination and trapped by the beliefs of her religion.” Limburg added: “Her reign … was riddled with hysteria about the Catholic menace and xenophobia, still present in national life; in Guy Fawkes’s burning, it used widely to be the Pope on the bonfire. Her point of view is paramount.”
In the book, Limburg depicts Anne as a quiet child who is close to her sister, Mary. The king at the time is her uncle, Charles II. Her father is James II, and her grandfather was Charles I, who was executed partly because of his religious beliefs. When she comes of age, Anne’s family arranges a marriage for her with Prince George of Denmark. The two begin trying to have children, but Anne frequently miscarries. She gives birth to eighteen children, seventeen of whom do not survive long after being born. Anne’s sole heir is William, Duke of Gloucester, who suffers from health problems throughout his life. Anne, who is a devout Protestant, clashes with her father, who favors Catholicism, over their incompatible religious beliefs. While James is serving as king, Anne’s brother-in-law, William of Orange, seizes power in an event known as the Glorious Revolution. Anne is not upset that her father has lost power, but she resents the fact that her sister Mary, now queen, controls her finances. Mary keeps Anne on a strict allowance and does not approve of Anne’s gambling habits. Additionally, Mary breaks off one of Anne’s greatest friendships, with her lady-in-waiting, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. Anne also begins to seethe over various aspects of William’s behavior. Limburg ends the narrative before Anne takes the throne. She also includes excerpts from historical documents of the era.
A critic on the Historical Novel Society Web site described the character of Queen Anne as “difficult to like.” “Limburg proves adept at creating the inner life of an English queen who has been overlooked by history,” commented a contributor to Publishers Weekly. A Kirkus Reviews writer noted: “This is decidedly a scholarly approach to historical fiction, complete with scrupulous adherence to the diction of the day.” The same writer concluded: “Limburg succeeds in humanizing Anne and bringing her worldview to vivid life.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2016, review of A Want of Kindness: A Novel.
Publishers Weekly, September 12, 2016, review of A Want of Kindness, p. 30.
ONLINE
Historical Novel Society, https://historicalnovelsociety.org/ (July 13, 2017), review of A Want of Kindness.
Jewish Chronicle Online, https://www.thejc.com/ (October 8, 2015), Anne Garvey, author interview.
Newnham College Web site, http://www.newn.cam.ac.uk/ (July 13, 2017), author faculty profile.
Royal Literary Fund Web site, https://www.rlf.org.uk/ (July 13, 2017), author profile.
Shiny New Books, http://shinynewbooks.co.uk/ (July 13, 2017), author interview; review of A Want of Kindness.
Telegraph Online (London, England), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ (April 16, 2010), Helen Brown, review of The Woman Who Thought Too Much: A Memoir.*
Joanne Limburg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Joanne Limburg
Born 1970
London, England
Notable works Femenismo
Joanne Limburg (born 1970) is a British writer and poet based in Cambridge at Newnham College. She has published three books of poetry for adults, one book of poetry for children, a novel and a book of memoirs.
Life[edit]
Limburg was born in London in 1970 and grew up with undiagnosed autism.. She won a Eric Gregory Award in 1998 for her poetry.[1] In 2000 she published her first book of poetry, Femenismo. The book was shortlisted for the 2000 Forward Prize Best First Collection.[2]
She has written about the guilt of her miscarriage and the possibility that she had thoughts of harming her baby.[3] It was only during her pregnancy that she self diagnosed her own OCD and later it was confirmed by a specialist.[4]
She has published a book of memoirs titled The Woman Who Thought Too Much. The book is revealing of the authors feelings about her own obsessive-compulsive disorder and the challenges it has brought. She has a need for constant reassurance.[2] Limburg has lost jobs over her fear of unusual things happening. She considers what would happen if her husband got cancer or a car hits her and her son.[4]
Limburg is a Royal Literary Fund fellow based in Newnham College in Cambridge.[5]
Ms Joanne Limburg
MA, MA
Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow
College Jobs
Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow
Contact
Email: jl560@cam.ac.uk
Joanne Limburg
Biography
I am a writer, based in Cambridge. I have published two collections of poetry for adults and one for children, as well as a novel, A Want of Kindness and a memoir, The Woman Who Thought Too Much. There are two more books forthcoming next year: the poetry collection The Autistic Alice and a second memoir, Small Pieces. The latter forms part of my PhD in Creative Writing, which I am currently close to finishing. I am a returning RLF Fellow, and was the Founding Fellow at Magdalene College from 2008 to 2010.
Research Interests
Creative writing; life writing; trauma theory; disability studies.
Links
Personal website
Joanne Limburg began her writing life as a poet, winning an Eric Gregory award for her poetry in 1998. Her first collection Femenismo was published by Bloodaxe in 2000 and was shortlisted for the Forward prize for best first collection. Paraphernalia, her second collection, was a Poetry Book Society recommendation for spring 2007. Her first non-poetry book was The Woman Who Thought Too Much, a memoir about anxiety and OCD. It was published by Atlantic Books in 2010 and shortlisted for the Mind book of the year award. Much of this book was written during her time as the RLF Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Since then, she has published a poetry pamphlet The Oxygen Man and a full-length collection for children Bookside Down.Joanne is an experienced creative-writing teacher and has worked for the WEA, the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Continuing Education, the Open College of the Arts and the Open University. Her first novel, A Want of Kindness, was published in 2015 by Atlantic Books; it was written with help from the Society of Authors and the Arts Council. Joanne is currently working towards a PhD in Creative Writing at Kingston University. A new poetry collection, The Autistic Alice, is due out from Bloodaxe Books in 2017.
QUOTED: "She is an unusual choice. I could have done Sarah Churchill, her more flamboyant helpmeet, but I think there are enough beautiful, feisty heroines. ... Anne was a limited person, fat and short-sighted, limited in imagination and trapped by the beliefs of her religion."
""Her reign ... was riddled with hysteria about the Catholic menace and xenophobia, still present in national life; in Guy Fawkes's burning, it used widely to be the Pope on the bonfire. Her point of view is paramount."
Anne Garvey
October 8, 2015
Interview: Joanne Limburg
Restoring a misused monarch
Limburg - honouring women who have miscarried or lost children
Limburg - honouring women who have miscarried or lost children
Joanne Limburg is primarily a poet. She has an original imagination, perfect economy of expression and a very precise turn of phrase. And she is a writer of parts. Her new fictional study of Queen Anne, A Want of Kindness, is a dazzling tour de force written entirely in the language of the day.
In her book-crowded Cambridge house, hung with vibrant modernist and realist oil paintings, she speaks with elegant candour about her life and work
"I grew up with the JC", she begins gratifyingly, "it has been an integral part of my life since I can remember."
Although she is no longer observant, Jewishness is, she says, "part of my DNA. My mother's family came from Kremenchug in the Ukraine and there is no easy way of finding out who they were. I have wandered around the cemetery there and looked at gravestones with Hebrew inscriptions - but it is all a closed book."
Limburg's paternal relatives are a better source of information. They came to England earlier, before the great influx of the later 19th century: "They were Dutch Jews, cigar makers. There was a story that they had a large factory in Limburg but frankly I think that's unlikely. What were they doing rolling cigars in London if that was the case? No, they were doubtless 'economic migrants'. Dutch records are good, and I am interested in genealogy so that is a productive route to my past. If I did become famous, the best thing would be to invited on to Who do you think you are?
I am Jewish, always Jewish. However hard or strained, it can never be disavowed
"Someone declared that Jews are not so much monotheists but ancestor worshippers, the idea of a connection with a part of yourself from the past".
So what has drawn her to a Christian princess in an English court riven by splits between its Catholic king, Anne's father James II, and the hardline Parliament? "She is an unusual choice. I could have done Sarah Churchill, her more flamboyant helpmeet, but I think there are enough beautiful, feisty heroines… Anne was a limited person, fat and short-sighted, limited in imagination and trapped by the beliefs of her religion."
Anne, like all Protestants of the day, felt herself in the presence of God, who judged her by taking her children from her - an incredible seventeen died from illness and diseases - and blamed her own shortcomings for her loss.
"Her reign," Limburg explains, "was riddled with hysteria about the Catholic menace and xenophobia, still present in national life; in Guy Fawkes's burning, it used widely to be the Pope on the bonfire. Her point of view is paramount. I use the tools she had to understand her world and only language she could have known. For instance, 'family' to 17th-century people meant the household and servants."
Using historical dictionaries, Limburg has limited herself to a close-up of a much-maligned historical figure. She dislikes the sweeping, 21st-century perspective beloved of many historical writers, studded with contemporary judgments of behaviour, or condemnations of actions they would have thought absolutely normal. Understanding and compassion are at the core of her writing, even for the unpopular and unattractive figure that was Queen Anne.
All of Joanne Limburg's work conveys a sense of family, right from her early volumes of poetry Feminismo and Paraphernalia. And being Jewish is at its core.
"My mother, my family and Judaism are nested inside each other. I am Jewish and always Jewish; it's analogous with family, however hard it is, and however strained, it can never be disavowed."
Does she bring up her son in the faith? "His mother is Jewish so he is Jewish, my husband Chris isn't - well, he's called Chris - but, even so, I didn't have the heart to do it. I was brought up as an observant Reform Jew but my parents told us to make up our own minds, and we did. So they can't complain. "
Joanne's brother, Julian, a brilliant scientist, committed suicide three years ago. Her mother died within three years.
"It's possibly why I am drawn to write about the past. To find yourself bereft of close family at 45 years old as I am, would not have been unusual then. But I do live in voluntary exile now. In Stanmore, we knew everyone, every third household had a mezuzah above the door. When I went to school, I was amazed to find everyone wasn't Jewish. It often catches me out. I look in the cutlery draw and think, 'What's going on here? There's only one set of knives and forks?' My parents, Reform Jews, would rearrange the kitchen for feast days; there was Friday-night and Sabbath observance. The memory traces are still there.
"When my brother killed himself, I went to the United States where he lived and The Oxygen Man is my book of poems about that time. It has a very Jewish attitude to suicide. A rabbi there told me, 'the pen is the instrument of the soul.' Over there, they take a pragmatic attitude to being Jewish; they have a kind of outreach programme and keep the thread of contact. It allows us to find our own way to be Jewish."
The connection between Limburg's heritage, her Jewishness, and the Queen Anne book emerges through her compassionate nature. She wanted to honour women who have lost children - and who have miscarried: "the harrowing miscarriage described in the book is my own," she reveals, adding that it is important "to respect the babies themselves. It must have been very hard for all of them. Anne was dismissed as a 'leaky woman', mocked for her suffering."
Limburg did write about her own anguish in The Woman who Thought too Much, a memoir. "I wrote it in good faith but there are times I open it and think: 'Did I really write that?' In today's media world I would be more careful."
She strives to be careful of causing hurt to others, to understand the perspective of the wounded outsider. In poetry and prose, this is a writer of accomplishment. Perhaps she'll get that slot on Who do you think you are? Though that is a question to which she knows the answer.
'A Want of Kindness' is published by Atlantic at £14.99
QUOTED: "I decided to use some version of the 17th century voice because I was committed to Anne’s perspective, and the language available to her would have determined the thoughts she was able to have, and the way she could express them. The problem was that I knew very little about that period or its literature, so I had to set about immersing myself in it. I started with the King James Bible, which I read right through, and looked into other religious texts that Anne would have been familiar with."
"Anne hasn’t been written about much, and it may partly be that she is so very frustrating, with her stubbornness and rather short-sighted way of looking at things. She isn’t beautiful or brilliant or dashing. She is very much of her time, which can make her difficult for us to empathise with."
An Interview with Joanne Limburg
By Victoria
limburg
Photo Credit: Chris Hadley
What I absolutely loved about A Want of Kindness was the voice you’ve managed to create. It was so brilliantly of the 17th century without ever losing clarity or sounding false. How did you go about creating it?
Thank you. It took a while to develop. I decided to use some version of the 17th century voice because I was committed to Anne’s perspective, and the language available to her would have determined the thoughts she was able to have, and the way she could express them. The problem was that I knew very little about that period or its literature, so I had to set about immersing myself in it. I started with the King James Bible, which I read right through, and looked into other religious texts that Anne would have been familiar with. These were the Book of Common Prayer, The Whole Duty of Man and Foxe’s Martyrs. Anne’s religious and moral vocabulary is taken from these. I was also lucky enough to be able to get access to the letters she wrote to Sarah Churchill, which are held in the British Library, and from these I picked up Anne’s characteristic writing style and her linguistic ticks (‘It is so much trouble to me…. I cannot hinder myself… you cannot imagine…I have so much kindness…) which gave me a basis for the first-person sections.
I stuck to the 17th Century vocabulary restriction for the other sections of the novel too, which meant I was very reliant on all kinds of 17th Century primary texts, and a very large Historical Thesaurus.
How did you feel about Anne and Mary by the end of writing the novel? They are such complex and real characters, infuriating and endearing all at once. What was it like to live with them for the duration of a book?
‘Infuriating and endearing’ is spot on! Anne hasn’t been written about much, and it may partly be that she is so very frustrating, with her stubbornness and rather short-sighted way of looking at things. She isn’t beautiful or brilliant or dashing. She is very much of her time, which can make her difficult for us to empathise with, but that was what I wrote to book to try and do. What drew me to her in the first place was her tragic obstetric history: I have experienced pregnancy loss myself, though nothing like on the same scale, and Anne’s story offered me a way to explore this subject in fiction – it happens to so many women, and yet it’s so rarely talked about. So I went into the project already identifying with her as a woman and as a mother, and that was a sound start. And then you can’t live with a character for four or five years, as I did, without becoming close to them.
I came to the end of the book feeling a little guilty towards Anne’s older sister, Mary. She seems by most accounts to have been a very likeable person, sociable, thoughtful and kind, but Anne fell out with her, and I was writing from Anne’s perspective, from which Mary can look rather unkind. I did feel for her though: she also suffered many losses, she was lonely and insecure and always so terribly anxious about doing the right thing.
want of kindnessAt the front of my copy, you write about being drawn to Anne for some shared similarities but it wasn’t until you properly researched her that you realised what a story she had. What was that research like? Did you get completely sucked into a torrent of historical books and records? How did you keep it all straight?
Completely and utterly sucked in! It’s very seductive, and potentially never-ending: you read a book or a paper, there’s something in the bibliography that looks useful, so you move onto that and there’s something in the bibliography etc etc I’ve built up quite a 17th/early 18th Century research library (which I shall have to justify by using again) and I also subscribed to British History Online while I was writing the book. I had a historical crib, the various biographies as well, and I would pull dates from them all and bring them together in timelines, so that I wouldn’t put someone where they couldn’t have been or forget that somewhere offstage there was a crucial naval battle or parliamentary debate going on…. It was both hugely absorbing and a major headache.
How did you go about blending fact and fiction together? Were you conscious at any point of going beyond the scope of archive material and into the realm of imagination? Were there any particular liberties you took with history?
As I mentioned in the previous answer, I did my best to be meticulous and faithful to the facts as far as they’re recorded, but in the end I had decided to write a novel because I was interested most of all in the quality of Anne’s experience, and how she interpreted events, and that meant I would have to speculate. Most of the dialogue in the novel is made up – though sometimes I would throw in bits from Anne’s letters – and the first person bits, the interior monologues, are of course my invention, though, again, phrases from Anne’s letters did make their way into them. The only liberty I took knowingly was to have Anne encounter Grinling Gibbons’ carvings at Windsor at a time when they probably weren’t there – but by the time I found that out I was quite attached to the scene I’d made up, so I decided it wouldn’t do such terrible harm to leave it in! Also, although Mary Cornwallis did exist, very little is known about her, and none of Anne’s letters to her survive, so although someone with that name was Anne’s beloved friend, and was dismissed after the embarrassing business I write about in the book, I effectively made her up as a character.
That said, although I had committed myself to writing a novel, I included real documents – including Anne’s letters – where they were the best way of telling the story. I felt that it would be perverse to withhold those wonderful letters to Mary and replace them with something diluted.
At the very end, I wondered whether you might be considering a sequel? In all honesty this is probably wishful thinking, but even so…?
As I said, I need to justify the purchase of all those books! And Anne’s time on the throne is another story again.
You are a poet and a memoirist too – I wonder whether there were aspects of both these ways of writing that turned out to be helpful in creating historical fiction?
As a poet, I’m used to writing short pieces with lots of white space round them, and also in taking apart the language people use to see what they’re doing with it, and think both those things fed into the novel. Starting out with 17th language as a formal restriction wasn’t unlike setting out to write a sonnet, or a sestina, or a pantoum, and committing myself to a set of rules: although on the face of it, this makes for a harder task, in some ways it’s easier, as it sets the parameters for you and reduces the number of tiny decisions you have to make. From memoir-writing I knew how it felt to write something book-length, and giving an account of a fictional character’s experience from an inside perspective isn’t so different from writing about one’s own.
Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process?
Lots of notes first – in notebooks, on post-its, the back of envelopes – then a first draft in Word; after that scribbling all over the first draft; then an edited draft.
What will you be writing next – will you be tempted to carry on with historical fiction, or will you want the variety of something quite different?
I’m working towards a PhD in Creative Writing, and my creative project for that is another memoir, about bereavement this time. I have an idea for a very different kind of novel, but that’s all I want to say at this stage…. and of course I would like to return to Anne, and – in the nicest possible way – finish her off.
Which authors have most inspired you over your writing career?
Muriel Spark’s a big influence. Her novels are structured like poems, and I love her tone. Hilary Mantel, Penelope Fitzgerald and Janice Galloway were my historical fiction inspirations.
SNB logo tiny
Victoria is one of the editors of Shiny New Books. Read her review of A Want of Kindness in our Fiction section here.
Joanne Limburg, A Want of Kindness (Atlantic Books: London, 2015). 978-1782395850, 464pp., hardback.
QUOTED: "This is decidedly a scholarly approach to historical fiction, complete with scrupulous adherence to the diction of the day."
"Limburg succeeds in humanizing Anne and bringing her worldview to vivid life."
Joanne Limburg: A WANT OF KINDNESS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 1, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Joanne Limburg A WANT OF KINDNESS Pegasus (Adult Fiction) 25.95 ISBN: 978-1-68177-259-2
Limburgs first novel is an intimate portrait of a Stuart princess whom history has occasionally underestimated. Princess Anne, daughter of James,
Duke of York, and niece of Charles II, the monarch who occupies the newly restored throne of England, grows up at a sensitive time. As a child,
Anne is coddled and encouraged to gorge herself in a court relishing pleasure after 30 years of Puritan rule. Older sister Mary weds Prince
William of Orange, a short, hunchbacked general Anne thinks of as this Dutch Abortion. As she matures, Anne forms a particularly close
friendship with Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, one of her ladies-in-waiting. Annes arranged marriage to George, Prince of Denmark,
proves to be a love match. However, childbearing is problematic for both royal sisters: Mary cannot conceive, and Anne, despite at least 17
pregnancies before age 35, gives birth to only one comparatively healthy child, her son, William, Duke of Gloucester. After Charles death, the
ongoing clash between Papism and Anglicanism continues to divide many families, not least the royals: though Anne and Mary are firm
Protestants, their father, James II, who ascends to the throne, is Catholic. Mary and William depose James and restore a Protestant regime, which
they rule jointly. Anne is next in line followed by Gloucester. Her former regard for Mary quickly cools, as Mary restricts her allowance,
criticizes her gambling, and, in the ultimate betrayal, forces Sarah from Annes side. The narrative is linear, providing serial glimpses into Annes
obsessions, anxieties, and many physical challenges, including smallpox as a child, miscarriages, stillbirths, and crippling gout. Small scenes are
telling: Annes enmity toward William of Orange is amply summed up when he hogs a dish of peas. This is decidedly a scholarly approach to
historical fiction, complete with scrupulous adherence to the diction of the day and excerpts from Annes actual correspondence. The abrupt and
inconclusive ending appears to signal a sequel. Limburg succeeds in humanizing Anne and bringing her worldview to vivid life.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Joanne Limburg: A WANT OF KINDNESS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Oct. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA465181963&it=r&asid=af8d9e3d88dfe8c9a043f37ee947a528. Accessed 2 June
2017.
6/2/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1496439537789 2/3
Gale Document Number: GALE|A465181963
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QUOTED: "Limburg proves adept at creating the inner life of an English queen who has been overlooked by history."
6/2/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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A Want of Kindness
Publishers Weekly.
263.37 (Sept. 12, 2016): p30.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
A Want of Kindness
Joanne Limburg. Pegasus (Norton, dist.), $25.95 (448p) ISBN 978-1-68177-259-2
In her first novel, Limburg re-creates the life of Lady Anne of York, the late 17th-century granddaughter of the martyred Charles I, niece of the
restored Charles II, daughter of James II, and future Queen of England. She grows up a weak-eyed and pious child in the court-of her charismatic
uncle, with her sister, Mary. Married off to Prince George of Denmark, Anne suffers numerous miscarriages; her surviving son, William, Duke of
Gloucester, is sickly from birth. There is little love lost between Protestant Anne and her Catholic-leaning father, so Anne barely misses a beat
after James is overthrown by Mary's husband, William of Orange, in the Glorious Revolution. Unfortunately, Anne's relationship with her sister
takes a serious hit after Mary becomes queen and keeps Anne on a short financial leash. The novel ends before Anne can ascend to the throne, but
the story told here is tragic without being especially dramatic. The historical record does not make Anne an easy character to portray or love, but
Limburg goes full Hilary Mantel in burrowing deep into her life and the politics of the Stuart court. Writing in short chapters interspersed with
actual letters to, by, and about Lady Anne, Limburg proves adept at creating the inner life of an English queen who has been overlooked by
history. (Dec.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"A Want of Kindness." Publishers Weekly, 12 Sept. 2016, p. 30. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA464046218&it=r&asid=eceae8a8bbd21506d3f40b16f2c6f535. Accessed 2 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A464046218
QUOTED: "Although Limburg’s condition seems to improve – which is impressive given the number of bereavements she endures – she doesn’t give us an unrealistically happy ending. Still, I think it will help other OCD sufferers to hear how well she’s coping, still writing poems and enjoying a happy home life with a very supportive husband and funny young son. Most of all it will help anyone with similar mental health issues realise they are not alone."
The Woman Who Thought Too Much by Joanne Limburg: review
Helen Brown reads a moving memoir about a the poet Joanne Limburg's obsessive compulsive disorder
By Helen Brown4:59PM BST 16 Apr 2010
Everybody expects poets to be a bit mad. So Joanne Limburg suspects she has less to lose than most by airing her mental health issues in public. The author of the 2000 Forward Prize shortlisted poetry collection Femenismo suffers from anxiety and depression which combine to form a debilitating obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
The Woman Who Thought Too Much by Joanne Limburg
The Woman Who Thought Too Much by Joanne Limburg
When it comes to covering up mental health disorders for fear of social stigma, Limburg suspects that OCD sufferers lead the field. They cope alone with the condition for an average of 11 years before seeking help. The shadow of shame cast by the obsessions (often fear of contamination, mental images of themselves hurting loved ones or engaging in forbidden sex) causes them embarrassment, while they are often aware that the resulting compulsions (such as relentless handwashing, or turning the lights on and off multiple times to prevent family car accidents) are likely to strike others as ridiculous.
So in her short and sharply self-aware memoir, Limburg tries to air her “soiled self”. When she tells people she’s got OCD, she’s asked what she “does”. She doesn’t flick switches or tie shoelaces. She compulsively seeks reassurance from others – most often her husband or her GP – about the fears that build up to what she capitalises as the “UNBEARABLE FEELING”.
For example, in situations where she sees others calmly stepping onto buses and trains (either unafraid, or rationally suppressing fears of crashing, terrorists and knife-wielding gangs), Limburg feels only an “ABYSS”. “I can’t see my way to the other side,” she writes, “I can’t see the bottom, and there’s no crossing except for one tatty rope bridge; it has a guide rope on one side only, and half the slats are missing.”
Although she fails to untangle the nature from the nurture in her condition, she takes us back to a Seventies north London childhood which saw a clever little Jewish girl with short legs and visible dental problems ostracised by her peers. Looking back she can see part of her problem was her craving for approval. People with OCD, she explains, “are law abiding, conscientious, exquisitely self-conscious and excruciatingly eager to please. We set ourselves the highest standards and are forever disgusted with ourselves when we fail to live up to them.” Limburg admits that although these qualities make for a tormented life, they do also make for an interesting – even comical – one. So when we follow her from school up to Oxford and from there into a series of increasingly inappropriate jobs, Limburg is snickering into her own sleeve: a careers officer! Me! I know!
Anyone who has struggled with mental health will also catch themselves laughing in hollow recognition at Limburg’s struggles with the NHS. She’s given the usual line about pulling herself together and going out to dances. She tries pills, cognitive behavioural therapy and years of expensive, private psychoanalysis. And she advises against seeking help when you seem sane: she suggests you get yourself properly worked up so as to have your problems clearly on display. However, I have a relative with mental health issues who did just that and was told she couldn’t be seen until she could more rationally describe her irrational state. So she went back seeming to feel better and was told there wasn’t a problem. It’s a Catch?22 situation.
Although Limburg’s condition seems to improve – which is impressive given the number of bereavements she endures – she doesn’t give us an unrealistically happy ending. Still, I think it will help other OCD sufferers to hear how well she’s coping, still writing poems and enjoying a happy home life with a very supportive husband and funny young son. Most of all it will help anyone with similar mental health issues realise they are not alone. I would also recommend it to relatives of sufferers as an articulate guide to the workings of the tormented mind.
I think a large percentage of the judgmental, train-boarding, friend-making mass that Limburg herds under the heading “most people” would find that, while they probably don’t walk around in terror, they do have much in common with her. And when we accept that, we’re a long way to breaking down the stigma that prevents the mentally ill from getting the help and understanding they need.
Helen Brown is an arts writer for The Daily Telegraph
QUOTED: "difficult to like."
A Want of Kindness
BY JOANNE LIMBURG
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Joanne Limburg considers that Queen Anne has been neglected by novelists in comparison with other English and British monarchs (Anne was the first English monarch to become British), and A Want of Kindness is her bid to remedy this. She calls her work a ‘collage’. It intersperses short pieces of narrative in modern English in modern typeface with pieces of 17th-century text in an approximation to 17th-century type. Most of the latter are actual letters written by Anne or texts she would have read.
The story follows the life of Anne from the age of ten until her late forties, just before she became queen in 1702. I think Limburg wants us to sympathise with Anne; she certainly suffered a great deal. By 1702 she had had 18 pregnancies, but only three children survived more than a few days, and none were still alive when she became queen. For all her efforts she was the last monarch of her dynasty.
None the less, I found Anne difficult to like. She complains constantly of the ‘lack of kindness’ of her father (James II), her sister (Mary), and her brother-in-law (William III), while showing a great lack of kindness herself. Even her prayers are full of complaints about her family. Her main activities, except when indisposed, are playing cards and intriguing to get an increase in her personal allowance.
Fortunately for Britain, she was totally dependent on her confidante, Sarah Churchill, who effectively became queen in 1702 and went on to appoint her husband as Britain’s greatest military commander.