The Anvil
(Shelagh McKenna)
'The Anvil' is a novel about ateenaged girl named Clare who is put into a program of psychological therapy inToronto during the 1970s, and it relates the process by which her character isviolently forged. The novel is in three sections. The first section is a flashback of Clare's decline, sandwiched between scenesof the waiting room in the psychiatric institution. Chapters on her home lifealternate with chapters on the private school where she slowly falls apart.Although Clare blames the school, it is apparent that the real cause ofdisturbance is her hypocritical family. In the second section, when Clare enters the psychiatric institution the placeseems impossibly benign. But disillusionment slowly develops as she senses alack of respect for the patients. After she is initiated into womanhood byKegan, the resident heartbreaker, she responds with passion to a single momentof affection from an otherwise uncommunicative patient named Ray. In the third section Kegan has succeeded in turning Ray against Clare when, ina flash forward, she reveals that for years she has been sexually abused by herfather. The psychiatric institution denies the truth of her accusation,claiming that it is the result of an unbalanced mental state. Nevertheless,Clare prevails despite the long term effects of abuse. Then we return to herill fated love affair and its inevitable outcome as her time at the institutiondraws to a close and her grief is misunderstood.
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