October 2010 - Out of the Dark by Linda Caine and Robin Royston

Most members really enjoyed this book, however, all of us felt extremely let down by the ending.

Linda Caine, writes her part of the book, based around her real life experiences. She should be a happy woman, she has the house, the family, and her husband has a successful and well paid job, however, Linda finds herself, spiralling into a severe case of depression, not knowing what is causing it.

As most people have experienced some form of depression in their lives, this makes the first half of the book a compelling read. Everyone wanted to find out why Linda was so depressed, and the job of unravelling the details fell on Dr Robin Royston.

The writers take it in turns to write about Lindas life and history, slowly delving into her subconscious to discover some very dark secrets, most of which came as no surprise to our members, knowing that to behave the way Linda had, her repression must have been the product of some very bad events.

The family and Dr Royston were well liked, especially Lindas long suffering and mostly supportive husband (although he didnt always understand the extend of her depression). Linda on the other hand, gave us cause to debate amongst the group. Whilst we appreciate the severity of depression, we found her story (and although real life it is still something that is read), a bit repetitive, especially during the second half, and didnt need to be quite so long. We also thought that publishing this book was fairly selfish, considering all her family have already been through.

The one thing we could all agree on was the ending. The majority of the book took us along a very long and drawn out road to recovery, with the ending being very short and almost seen as a quick fix. We felt cheated, by the way the book lead us in the wrong direction and ended up wondering why Dr Royston would put his name to such a book.

  

The beginning of the book made up for the ending and everyone enjoyed hearing about the culture and political themes of Rhodesia and Lindas horse riding days.

Six members attended, scoring this book an average of 7 out of 10.

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