“Out of the Dark” is an auto-biographical account of abuse by Linda Caine and co written by her psychotherapist and now friend Robin Royston.
On the face of it, Linda Caine appears to have an idyllic lifestyle and have plenty of blessings that many people would pray for. Yet she is also suffering from a terrible depression that is causing her to consider taking her life on several occasions. This book is an account of how she overcame that depression and is set roughly between 1988 and 1991.
She married her loving husband Chris in 1974, having met at school in Africa – where they were both raised. The years of Linda’s life covered by this book are in fact set in Canterbury, Kent, where the family have lived more or less from the day they married. Chris is a successful barrister and his legal practice has the Archbishop of Canterbury in their client base.
Their life seems typical of middle class England. They have two children, one boy Gary and a younger girl Christy (b1980). They have a magnificent sounding three storey home in Kent including an artist’s studio for Linda’s work, and have a healthy involvement with their church. Yet Linda is struggling big time because of an un-named undercurrent that stems from her earlier years spend in Rhodesia causing a serious depression and suicidal tendencies.
Linda did confide in friends from her church, yet surprisingly she would not go to her GP as she felt she would be sectioned – she had plans to kill herself in her car on Thanet Way, truly believing that her family would be better off without her.
What follows is a voluntary admission to a private hospital – Ticehurst – and treatment from her psychotherapist (and co-author) that threatened his own well-being as Linda’s treatment took its painful three year path.
We do learn quite a bit about Linda and her life in Rhodesia early on in the biography, in particular about her family, including her elder sister Annette and her younger brothers and the fact that she apparently doted on her Father and that her Mother left when Linda was eight years old. Her father subsequently marries their housekeeper, a black lady, and they move to Zambia, neither country having much of an advantage over the other when it came to mixed raced families in the era. Once their housekeeper becomes their step mother, relationships between the teenage Linda and the housekeeper turn sour, causing her to leave home and this in itself results in unwanted pregnancies and self inflicted abortion, and a hopeless marriage as well as a temporary move to the USA.
Critics will no doubt question why Linda Caine has written and published this account of her struggle to overcome the root cause of this depression which affected her so greatly in the late 80’s and early 90’s. And to a certain extent I can empathise with this. However writing it down has enabled the author to move from a world where she saw herself as a weak person to viewing herself as a strong person who fell down for a while, and that’s not a bad perspective to have. She doesn’t actually say why she felt the need to go public, and it is unlikely to be financial gain, so I can only assume that by sharing her story she hopes it will help others in her situation.
I can certainly empathise and strongly relate to (although not personally) Linda’s circumstances and her behaviour and in particular the need she had to self harm to release her pain and anger, and yet at the same time felt it was such a tragedy that given the lifestyle now available to her and her role as a mother that it took such a long time and yet more suffering on the parts of her husband and children for her to overcome these demons.
I am afraid to admit that on reading this account, I did find it difficult to understand how Linda’s depression was allowed to affect her family life so much and at the expense of her children growing up – it seems so difficult to imagine, at the depths of despair that Linda was at.
Through a long period of dreams analysis, and psychotherapy sessions with Royston and other members of Ticehurst, Linda has to face and confront her demons for the final time. Linda is never admitted under a section order but spends a good deal of time here, and it is difficult to comprehend the depth of despair so great that you can leave your husband and young children to voluntary admit yourself to a clinic such as this.
Yet during the period of treatment and on the rare occasion that Linda contacted her elder sister, she tended to receive the same standard “ Pull yourself together, forget it” kind of response that I am sure we are all familiar with when dealing with different people’s responses to situations; yet would have been very hard for Linda
This book, at 446 pages is difficult to put down, and you are likely to complete it in a few short reading sessions. It is disturbing, and while I don’t think it was as sickening to read as some of the other more publicised accounts of childhood abuse (and I certainly don’t mean to make any scale judgement, it is just that the book does not contain the level of description that other notable titles have); I certainly did wake up in the middle of the night from a very disturbing dream after reading 100 pages or so in bed which did leave me feeling quite shaken and reluctant to go back to sleep; so it certainly affected me.
It did give me a much greater insight into the relief people get when they do self harm, and in writing down her anguish, Linda may help others to understand this common behaviour.
I did find it difficult to fully understand the concept of “leaps” which both Linda and her psychotherapist referred to quite frequently in the book, although it wasn’t hard to understand that these occurred when Linda had to go to sleep at night, therefore implicating the root source of this anxiety.
I don’t think this is a book that you would want to read twice. Reading it quickly it is easy to create a mental picture of what life was like in this institution in which Linda finally began to recover after 3 years of treatment, and the scenes which formed in my mind of her behaviour were really quite shocking at times.
ISBN 0 –552-1869-5 £6.99 RRP via Bantam Press. Also available under WHSmith’s “buy one get one half price” current offer.
I don’t think you can make a recommendation to read a book such as this – so I am giving a fence sitting three stars this time, as I don't think this kind if book will ever make essential reading for anyone.
(Please also ignore my ratings on Story and Characters as these are not relevant either.)
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