I thought it had a certain bitter beauty to it, the overall sadness of Grace's life punctuated with moments of happiness. I thought the writing style was really enjoyable, & what could have been a very bleak backdrop was transformed into a world of heroes, villains, romance & friendship. I liked it, & I'm glad I gave it a chance. ( )

I thought this book was lovely and moving. Like Lyrics Alley, it was plagued by odd pacing problems; but after reading up on the author a little, I have learned that, like Lyrics Alley, it was based (however loosely) on the life of one of the author's family members--in this case her sister, who, like Grace Williams, spent most of her life in a mental institution, classified as "ineducable." ( )

I thought this book was lovely and moving. Like Lyrics Alley, it was plagued by odd pacing problems; but after reading up on the author a little, I have learned that, like Lyrics Alley, it was based (however loosely) on the life of one of the author's family members--in this case her sister, who, like Grace Williams, spent most of her life in a mental institution, classified as "ineducable." ( )

"Institutionalize. Try for another child. this one's ineducable. A write-off"
By sally tarbox on 9 April 2014
Format: Paperback
Grace Williams is handicapped; born to a middle-class family in the 40s, the received wisdom is to put her in an institution and pretty much forget her.
Narrated by Grace, to whom the author has given a voice, we read of life in the grim asylums of the past. But there is magic too as she forms a friendship with another patient - Daniel, a debonair epilertic who can type with his feet - that turns to something much stronger
A novel that has you reeling with the awfulness of life for the handicapped in 60s and 70s; and yet, as the novel moves into modern day 'Care in the Community', something almost seems lost for Grace in her bright, sanitized, busy world complete with carers. Grace doesn't emote much, so what she thinks is uncertain; her feelings are rather expressed through actions - tantrums or talking to herself. But the emotions between her and Daniel are clear and very beautiful.
Compelling read. ( )

My tutor told me, at the start of my very first Creative Writing lesson, that 'we are a narrative species'. That is, when we see something or someone, we can't help but wonder about the story behind it or them. There's a theory that mankind's creativity began during the first ice age he was a part of, when very long winter nights led to the need to create in the cave until the blizzard died down. Possibly that's why Scandi crime dramas are so bloody long.
Certainly, it's unarguable that we make up stories about the people we see. Occasionally, sitting in a cafe looking at somebody with a quirky scarf, interesting hat, badger on a stick, or just an idiosyncratic way of eating the yoke of their fried egg, possibly by sucking it through a straw, we might be tempted to populate their history.
One wonders if Emma Henderson was sitting in a cafe, saw somebody out with their carer, started to wonder what the life of that person was like up to the point of that latte, then went home and wrote it down.
That would be consistent with her attending at least the first lesson of a creative writing course.
Having finished reading this book, I wonder if she finished the course.
If you are going to write meaningfully about somebody who has spent most of their life in an institution, any institution, one would hope that you would bring something fresh to it, write about the experience in a way that unlocks the secret life of an individual in a conformist environment.
Or, you could just assemble a crude bloody tick list of generalist assumptions about post-War mental health care and write around that. Peeling paint, ramshackled accommodation, crude therapies that have now been entirely discounted as helpful, sluice rooms, baths, toilet mishaps, beatings from staff, beatings from patients, uncaring staff, uncaring sadistic staff, uncaring perverted sadistic staff, uncaring perverted sadistic staff who sexually abuse patients, small moments of joy, the occasional 'character', the odd cultural reference to show the passing of the years, the decades, the guilt of the family that institutionalise their child, an unfeeling administration, a lack of understanding, a trip to the seaside and, of course, a stern and firm matron.
One can almost picture the off-brown/green of the peeling paint on the walls of the wards.
So, next up, language and style. You are writing about a girl who becomes a woman who has disabilities. No problem, even if this is all in the first person. So the thing to do is make the language quirky and playful, as twitchy as a limb not under control, language that fits, in both senses, and remains child-like even in adulthood, the growth of vocabulary stunted.
Being a first novel, it's also crammed with every bloody phrase and image that has been toted around in the author's notebook for the past decade. The problem is, these bubbles of invention are self-evidently shoehorned in, and the result is cobblers.
To be fair, it's not all about suffering in the grim institution of 'The Briar'. Sometimes there are grim flashbacks to Grace having a crap time at home with her overwhelmed family, one of which leaves home to become an aid worker. And that's the most subtle character development.
Life in post-War Britain was, apparently, fucking grim. Judging from the black and white photographs that I and, by the looks of things, the author has seen, everyone was dressed in layers of wool and overcoat. Overcoats were a big thing. And they were big overcoats. In fact the only thing grimmer than life in post-War Britain was life in post-War Britain in a state institution. And the grimness is troweled on, relentlessly. Put it this way, it's only half way through the book when the poor sodding inmates of 'The Brier' get decent overcoats. Yes, exactly.
Irritating and crude by turns, this attempt to create an 'against the odds' romance is heavy handed. This could have been a good story, might even have been a great story, but it doesn't quite come off, which is a great shame. ( )

Yup. She’s saying it. Just the way that she says it. It’s all about Grace.

Not having met Grace before, you should keep an open mind. Some of the people who do know her, at The Briar, where she lives, have rigid and, er, not-very-flattering opinions about her.

If you’ve heard any of that chat before you picked up this story, you might have your doubts. For instance, here is one of the nurses describing her to the doctor who fills the role of dentist at the institution:

“The occasional fit, but not epileptic. Occasionally violent, but we increased her Laractil in January. Physically and mentally defective. Obviously. A complete imbecile.”

Well, now you might be wondering about those 325 pages. Told, it might seem, in the voice of a defective, an imbecile.

But if you are a clever reader: you will realize there is something amiss. The girl, the young woman, that the staff at the Briar view in these terms couldn’t possibly write a book. But Grace Williams has done just that.

More, quotes and chatter about Grace, here. ( )

Semi-autobiographical.

What lifted this book above a four star read was the knowledge that the author's older sister had been consigned to an asylum at a similar age and the experiences described for Grace were based on Ms Henderson's memories of her sister.
On the other hand, I did feel the complicated descriptions of Grace's feelings and thoughts, in all their detail, were a bit unbelievable as having come from someone who was "not just not perfect, but damaged. deficient, mangled in body and mind" (P 11).

We meet Grace in 1947, as a baby with developmental problems. She is loved by her parents, older sister and brother, but was born into a time when the support for such a child was not available and the only advice given was to institutionalise her. This was a traumatic time for the whole family as they drove her to The Briar and left her behind.
Fortunately for Grace, she meets Daniel on her first day at The Briar. Daniel has lost both arms and is epileptic but he sees in Grace something that others have missed and their blossoming friendship is beautifully described.
The institution is as ugly as we would expect and rife with abuse and neglect. We sense the despair of the inmates and the filth and degredation they must endure. But Grace gives a positive spin too, as she makes a life within the walls of The Briar.

Although not an easy read emotionally, this was a gripping book. It reminded me of Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen (4 stars), a memoir telling of similar treatment for depression in the same era.

Highly recommended. ( )

Grace Williams was born with mental and physical deformities, which were compounded when she was stricken with polio at the age of six. By the time she's 11, her doctors convinced her parents to turn Grace over to a mental institution, and it's there that Grace meets the love of her life, Daniel, who sees through her disabilities. Their story is at the center of Emma Henderson's Grace Williams Says It Loud.

Grace proves to be a delightful narrator - cunning, observant and witty. Through her words, we learn how institutions treated their patients during the 1950's. In fact, the scenes that depict the name-calling, condescension and physical abuse were hard to read, even with talented Grace at the helm. These horrific scenes were juxtaposed with Grace and Daniel's friendship and love - a beacon of light in the storm. You could tell the two found solace through each other.

While the characters were complex and interesting, I was not as enamored with Grace Williams Says It Loud as many other readers. However, I can't pinpoint why. Somewhere in the middle of this story, it lost steam for me, and I skimmed some of the remaining pages. Not enough action? Tired of the institutionalized treatments? I am not sure. In any case, I still recommend Grace Williams Says It Loud and encourage you to read other reviews to get a feel for the book. Grace deserves a large audience, indeed. ( )

Grace Williams is mentally challenged at birth, deformed by polio at aged six, and committed to Briar Mental Institute at age eleven in the late 1950s. On her first day at Briar, Grace meets Daniel Smith, a debonair epileptic who wins her heart with his Parisian French, his stories of the world outside, and his unlikely and uncanny talents of shoe cobbling and piano playing. Theirs becomes a love which will endure beyond the sordid existence that is Briar.

The novel is a disturbing and heartbreaking read. Heartbreaking because Henderson’s portrayal of Grace, her victories, defeats, and great love are so achingly real. And disturbing because she, and some two thousand other Briar patients, are treated with such shameful disgust and loathing: “Subnormal, deficient, retarded, impaired.” (129) Briar’s routine consists of ongoing abuse, physical, emotional, and sexual; debilitating medications; and painful, often unnecessary, medical procedures.

“Daniel said it wasn’t too bad, ECT. But I knew he was lying. his egg-shaped head always appeared longer, and his eyes scrambled like a bust kaleidoscope, after his own occasional shocks. Few of us ever had regular electrics. Increasingly, we were treated with colourful cocktails of pills. The only patients who still received regular ECT were the adult skitters, the lady catatonics and a group of curled, withdrawn, lost-looking men called DPCs. Daniel said they came from abroad, from camps. If they spoke at all, they spoke in a mysterious mix.” (127)

For all its seriousness, Grace Williams is not without victory. Grace lives on well beyond the closure of Briar in the late 1980s; and by then, thankfully, education has, at least to considerable degree, precipitated humane and compassionate attitudes towards those less fortunate. I think Henderson’s achievement in Grace Williams is her ability to educate, to remind, to disturb, and to celebrate. ( )

Grace is born with disabilities of slow development, she is institutionalised to Briar. The story is told from Grace's mind and it is amazing how the author does this. At times you feel angry and sometimes sad at how these people were treated in the 1950 and 1960's. Grace falls in love with Dennis - a truly unusual love story. This book would be a senior fiction. Not for the faint hearted! However everyone should read it! ( )

Grace Williams, a small misshapen woman, lead a small life which seemed to conspire to rip every small joy from her grasp. It wasn't until I'd finished Grace Williams Says it Loud that I found an article about Emma Henderson in which she says she based Grace's story on the life of her own sister who was institutionalized for 35 years. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1281871/Emma-Henderson-talks-sister-....
Clare, the sister, and Grace, the fictional character, were both born small and developed slowly. Both had whatever small physical grasp they had on the world ripped from them at the age of 6 when they developed polio. Both were pronounced ineducable and the parents reluctantly caved to the pressure of caring for very difficult children by placing them in large, uncaring institutions. Both had a bratty, petted baby sister: Grace's was Sarah, Clare's was the author Emma herself. The picture that accompanies the article shows Clare sitting on a piano played by the feet of a fine looking boy. Could this be Philip Casterton Smelt, characterized as Daniel, the debonair armless bon vivant and love of Grace's life? Emma knew she hated visiting Clare in the institution, it stank, Clare stank, the atmosphere was noisy and oppressive. She couldn't give Clare back the years of her life lost to that institution, so instead she wrote, in lovely language, the way Clare may have seen the world. On the outside is a hunch backed, stiff limbed "spastic" from whose large mouth bow wows a large pink tongue; but her mind inside loves music, endures hardship and cruelty, and sees the world in its minute beauty. I hope, in her survivor's guilt, Emma made the institution more horrendous that it was. I'm sure much of the staff was uncaring or taunting, I'm sure many of Clare/Grace's belongings were stolen, but I so hope the sadistic doctor was just a boogie man nightmare. Hats off to Emma Henderson for writing about a life most of us have glimpsed only in passing but one that, with a different luck of the draw, could have been our own.

I'm including a little exerpt just to make you think you should make the effort to find it:
http://www.orangeprize.co.uk/images/shortlist/says_it_loud.pdf ( )

This is a love story unlike many others. Grace Williams suffers from physical and developmental disabilities, and is sent at age 11 to The Briar, an institution. (I was also shocked by a throwaway statement at one stage that there were 2000 inmates at the Briar. How huge - or, rather, overcrowded - was this place?) There she meets, and promptly falls in love with, Daniel. They both grow up together, through the 1950s and 1960s, into adulthood. The book is told from Grace's point of view, and it's quite marvellous how Henderson gets inside of Grace's head so well.

We repeated the words - Rose Day, Rose Day. They fluttered around the wards. People intoned and burped them. They were parroted, lisped, stuttered and muttered. It didn't really matter. We didn't really matter. We nattered - we nutters - and nattering away to the tune of Rose Day changed our grey, difficult, painful world into a joyful splosh of colour. That mattered. Preparing for Rose Day mattered.

Some of the story is quite shocking, as Grace just tells it like it is: sex, abuse, family abandonment. But it's also quite beautiful, with the wonderful relationship between Daniel and Grace growing all the time, yet also having its own ordinary moments.

This was a very compelling read, even though at times I dreaded having to find out what was going to happen. ( )

I was a bit dubious about reading this to start with as it sounds all a bit gimmicky, but actually thought it was fabulous. It's narrated by Grace, who is - I forget the exact details - but born with some kind of mental disability and then gets polio aged six which withers an arm and leg - she's considered to be 'ineducable' and at the age of ten is institutionalised by her family. The author has managed to tell the story of someone who could never tell her own story.

The story is basically all about her friendship with a boy called Daniel, who has no arms. Though I think the depiction of Grace's family through time is the best bit: watching how her parents and siblings relationships with her change over the years. I thought the relationship between Grace and her younger sister Sarah who was born after she went into the home was very well portrayed. Grace's parents were more or less told to forget about Grace and try again with another baby.

It's a sad story really, but full of uplifting happy bits and I'm pleased I read it. ( )

Grace Williams, born in the 1940s, suffers from a variety of mental and physical challenges from birth -as well as suffering polio at the age of six. . Young Grace ends up in a iron lung and survives polio with even more physical challenges.
A few years later, after Grace suffers a seizure, her parents are encouraged by the medical community to put her into a mental institution. They are told that she is mentally defective and ineducable. With some misgivings, her parents put her into Briercrest Mental Institution where she suffers many horrific events and is forced into a cruel environment. Yet Grace - in her way -and the majority of her fellow "inmates" make the best of a dreadful situation. The cruelty and even sexual abuse towards the " patients" is truly eyeopening and shocking. One of the saddest things is that I very much suspect that this story is very true to life. The story spans 1947 to 1987. We are able to understand so much through Grace's point of view as she is the narrator of the book. We also get an understanding into how Grace's challenges and life in Briercrest are percived by her parents and siblings .

The author, Emma Henderson, had a sister who was also institutionalized for similar reasons to Grace Williams, so the author knows her topic.

Kudo's to the Orange Prize Judges for bringing this book forward to the Shortlist for the 2011 Orange Prize. The style of writing is necessarily rough and inelegant ,because Grace, with her intellectual handicap, lack of both education and normal socialization does not possess the ability to express herself in an elegant way or with lovely language.

I think this a very important story for anyone to read - to understand what institutionalizing did to people years ago - and very likely still happens. I think it furthers our ability to understand and show caring and tolerance to those who may be physically and or mentally challenged .

I hope that those who read this book understand more deeply people who are challenged and look more deeply into who they are. For this reason I think this is a very important book.

I much appreciated the courage of Grace and the fact that story never got bogged down with sadness or self pity. Highly recommended! ( )

Meet Grace Williams, born with physical disabilities, unable to speak more than a few words and has lost the use of one arm after a bout of polio. At 11, she’s sent to The Briar, an institution for those with mental and physical disabilities after her parents realise they’re no longer able to look after her at home.

Meet Daniel Smith, whom Grace meets on her first day at The Briar hospital. Debonair and dashing, Daniel is an epileptic who has lost both of his arms in a car accident.

Could there be a more unlikely love story than that of Grace and Daniel? And yet, it works so well that I fell in love with both Daniel and Grace. Daniel, almost from the moment we first meet him when he bows so low that his hair brushes the tops of his shoes. Grace, as I got to know her over the course of the book.

Initially I found the style of writing difficult to follow but after 20 or so pages I’d got into the flow of it. Due to Grace’s inability to speak, other characters in the book often assume that she is mentally deficient as well as physically disabled. But as the readers we get to read Grace’s story from her own, unique point of view.

Although this book contains many descriptions of disturbing incidents in Grace’s and Daniel’s life which occasionally made the book difficult to read, there is enough beauty and wonder in their story to prevent this from becoming a depressing read.

What made this even more moving for me was reading that this story was partly based on Emma Henderson’s sister, Claire who spent 35 years institutionalised for similar reasons to Grace, and to whom the book is dedicated. ( )

Yup. She’s saying it. Just the way that she says it. It’s all about Grace.

Not having met Grace before, you should keep an open mind. Some of the people who do know her, at The Briar, where she lives, have rigid and, er, not-very-flattering opinions about her.

If you’ve heard any of that chat before you picked up this story, you might have your doubts. For instance, here is one of the nurses describing her to the doctor who fills the role of dentist at the institution:

“The occasional fit, but not epileptic. Occasionally violent, but we increased her Laractil in January. Physically and mentally defective. Obviously. A complete imbecile.”

Well, now you might be wondering about those 325 pages. Told, it might seem, in the voice of a defective, an imbecile.

But if you are a clever reader: you will realize there is something amiss. The girl, the young woman, that the staff at the Briar view in these terms couldn’t possibly write a book. But Grace Williams has done just that.

More, quotes and chatter about Grace, here. ( )

This is an unusual book. It's told by Grace Williams, who is placed in The Briar Mental Institute in the 1950s at the age of 11. She becomes very close to a boy there called Daniel, and the story very much focues on their relationship, as well as the life Grace lives at The Briar.

This is not an easy read on two counts. First of all, the abuse that Grace and the other patients suffer is quite disturbing, and I am sure that it happened like that in real life in some hospitals and homes. The other reason is because these are Grace's thoughts and I found it quite hard to follow them and really get into the story. I feel that the author would have been better off writing the story from different perspectives, rather than just one, but those are just my personal thoughts, and the next reader may not agree.

I do think this is a remarkable book, even more so when you consider Emma Henderson's own sister was physically and mentally disabled in a similar way to Grace. Unfortunately, I just found it quite hard to get fully engrossed in the story. ( )

Grace was born in the 1950s, a severely disabled and mentally retarded child, and this is her story told through her viewpoint. We learn how when she was 11 her parents could no longer cope with her at home and put her into the Briar. Whilst here her life is filled with traumatic and disturbing moments, some of which are heartbreaking to read, yet through it all Grace retains a ray of hope, finds some good friends and the love of her life. Grace tells her story with immense dignity, and her strength of character shines through. Her sense of humour keeps what could have been a heart wrenching read into one that is filled with honesty, hope and love. An excellent read and one that will stay with me for quite some time. ( )