Leah
Written on Jan 18, 2010
I’ve been wanting to read But Inside I’m Screaming for a few months now – ever since I picked it up in the book swap before putting it back down again; I liked the sound of the book but there was always something stopping me actually picking it up and buying it – until now. I saw it in the charity shop today and thought why not?. Since I finished my previous book last night I decided to start this as it sounded intriguing.
The book starts well enough – with Isabel freezing live on air when she’s supposed to be telling America all about Princess Diana’s car accident, however the blurb makes it sound as if she goes into some kind of frenzy – like I imagine someone suffering a nervous breakdown would – and I struggled to understand why Isabel only being mute constituted describing what happens as “unravelling”. To me, it seemed like stage fright of some sort and didn’t seem like that big a deal. The big deal to me came during the next chapter where Isabel attempts suicide. For me that was the catalyst that sent her into a psychiatric hospital, not her mute-ness live on TV.
The book is mostly set in Three Breezes, the facility in which Isabel ends up, so to expect anything other than a dark, depressing book would be stupid. What I did expect was a bit more meat to the whole thing. I have no idea what it’s like to be locked up in what is essentially a mental institution but for the duration of the book it wasn’t as if they were at a mental institution. Yes, some of the patients had episodes and yes, Isabel had to take her meds constantly but it all seemed rather toothless to me. I could be completely wrong and what goes on in the book may really happen in all psychiatric hospitals, I don’t know.
We also make frequent visits to times in the past that seem important to Isabel – episodes that explain how she ended up where she was. Most of it seemed innocent – generally just Isabel travelling around the country for news pieces – but there was a deeper edge there, particularly where Isabel’s husband Alex was concerned. He was nothing but a bully and I just couldn’t stand him. That helped to explain how Isabel ended up in the hospital. Isabel also seemed to have some huge daddy issues and again it all seemed forced and quite unbelievable.
My main problem with But Inside I’m Screaming were the characters. The fact is, we barely get to know any of the characters because they’re all completely insane in some way or another. Isabel is our principal character but she was one dimensional and had nothing that made her stand out. The same can be said for all of her other co-patients in Three Breezes. The lack of characterisation shocked me and did nothing to help the book at all. The fact is – the characters were so one-dimension that that is all I can say about them. They were truly that forgettable.
The writing is nothing special and if I’m brutally honest I think Flock should have written this from the first-person perspective rather than the third-person perspective it was written from. The third-person just didn’t work for the book and I think having it told entirely from Isabel’s point of view would have been so much more beneficial to the book. I would have much preferred to get into Isabel’s head because then I’d have felt more connected to Isabel. I disliked the book so much that I skim-read the last 150 pages as nothing really seemed to happen. I have no idea what I expected but it certainly wasn’t what I got. I think I was expecting something that would shock me – who doesn’t believe that life in a mental institution isn’t shocking? Exactly.
I truly expected so much more from But Inside I’m Screaming and I’m gutted I got such a rubbish read out of it. I’m not one to essentially give up on a book but for this I did. The fact is: not a lot happens, there is total lack of characterisation and it was written from the wrong perspective. All in all it was a truly disappointing read.