AustLit

'In both contemporary Perth and nineteenth-century England, a woman is suddenly struck by a mystifying and very private pain. Alice, a writer, and her older husband Duncan, an academic, find their marriage threatened as Alice investigates the history of hysteria, female sexuality and the treatment of the female body, while in 1860s London, Arthur sees his wife suddenly struck by a pain for which she can find no words, forced to endure harmful treatments and reliant on him for guidance.' (Publication summary)