I read W-3 four months ago and I still think about certain scenes at least once a week. It's really that good.
In this sharp, dark, and comical memoir Bette Howland depicts the time she spent on the psychiatric ward dubbed W-3 in the late 1960s. Brigid Hughes, editor of A Public Space, who
rediscovered Howland's memoir, once said: "I’m interested in writers who have a complicated relationship…mehrI read W-3 four months ago and I still think about certain scenes at least once a week. It's really that good.
In this sharp, dark, and comical memoir Bette Howland depicts the time she spent on the psychiatric ward dubbed W-3 in the late 1960s. Brigid Hughes, editor of A Public Space, who rediscovered Howland's memoir, once said: "I’m interested in writers who have a complicated relationship with that word ‘I’. I love the way W-3 upends expectations for a memoir. The way she pays attention to the world of W-3, the other patients, the doctors, the visitors. And how we come to know her through what she notices about others." It is exactly this, Howland's directing our attention outward rather than inward, that make this memoir stand out.
Despite its heavy subject matter (Howland attempted suicide in her friend Saul Bellow's apartment), there is a surprising amount of humour interspersed which help create some necessary levity. One scene in particular comes to mind that involves the patients of W-3 role-playing and imitating each other. By that point, we know the people Howland meets so intimately that without much clarifying we can identify which person is being imitated.
W-3 is one of the best memoirs I have ever read and I am very glad that her work and talent are posthumously being recognized and celebrated.
