13/11 - You can really see Fellowes' inspiration for Downton Abbey in the true story of Lady Almina and Highclere Castle. I love that the book was written by the current Countess, and she is quite the writer, not in the way of writers whose words are described as 'lyrical' or 'beautiful', but in the way that you just want to keep reading. Her storytelling is accessible and she makes what could be dry facts into a compelling, and sometimes enthralling story. To be continued...

14/11 - There were a few editing errors - in one instance on page 96 she called Elsie, the 5th Lord Carnarvon's stepmother, his mother-in-law

"Lord Carnarvon had sold his two Somerset estates, Pixton and Tetton in 1901 to his mother-in-law, Elsie..."

then on page 116 she talked about 'Jessie' when from the context it's clear she actually meant Mary Weeks, Almina's secretary

"It was an adventure by anyone's standards, and one imagines Jessie and Almina rolling their eyes together at the privations they were both expected to bear. Jessie was a regular traveller since she accompanied Almina wherever she went, but it was the first time the two women had roughed it and it proved too much."

The fact that 'Jessie' is described as being a regular companion to Almina on her travels is what told me that she was actually talking about Mary Weeks, as that is exactly how Mary's job as Almina's secretary was described earlier in the book.

Fortunately, these slightly glaring editing errors did nothing to tarnish my enjoyment of the true story of the real Downton Abbey and when I finished it I immediately added the second book in the series on her husbands' ancestors that Countess Carnarvon has written, Lady Catherine, the Earl, and the Real Downton Abbey.

10/8 - I have been wanting to read this for nearly two decades, since I first heard about the 'case' when I was 12 or 13. In those intervening 18 years I've seen the Sally Field movie and learned the truth behind this story, but I'm still fascinated by the idea of true DID and even if I have to treat it as a fictional account of DID I'm excited to start reading it tonight. To be continued...

Later - The fraudulent nature of this book aside, the writing is annoying the hell out of me - it's way too flowery. In the preface Schreiber talks about her other publications, most of which are psychiatry journal articles (and the like), and it's plain to see that this was her first full length novel. She knows she needs to engage the reading public, who aren't her normal audience of fellow doctors, and she knows she can't do that with the dry language of a medical journal. Unfortunately she goes way too far in her attempt to not be dry. Sentences like

"The key to room 1113 was the engine that drove her, the motor on which her panic turned."

and

She was ready to go wherever the bus would take her, anywhere, everywhere, world beyond, world without end - anywhere."

smack of trying too hard. I mean what on earth does "...world beyond, world without end..." mean in he context of the situation Sybil has found herself in (she's 'woken up' in an unknown city with no idea how she got there, she walks for ages through deserted streets till finally finding a bus which she gets on figuring it'll take her towards civilisation)? I can suspend my sense of injustice at what the patient was coerced into believing, but I'm not sure I can suspend my annoyance with the writing at the same time.

As I said before, I've wanted to read this for ages and it's a gigantic disappointment to be feeling this negatively verbose only nine pages in (not counting numerous pages of preface). I feel like this is where Multiple Personality Disorder, now Dissociative Identity Disorder, became known to the wider public. Despite being revealed to be fake this book brought a real, though in truth very rare, disorder out of the stuff of myths and legends, something of a silver lining (in that despite none of this book being true, the disorder was no longer completely unheard of) for real suffers. To be continued...

12/8 - On page 45 - Why do we care that her bra is tiny? And if there's a good reason for knowing this inconsequential fact, why isn't it followed up with more information relating to the size of her bra? I don't know, I just found the fact that Schreiber took the time to comment on such a silly little thing strange.

13/8 - This book seems to have a DID of its own. The first chapter was the immature child who tried too hard for affection (using stupid, nonsensical, flowery phrases in a medical true story, pseudo or not, doesn't endear the reading public), but from the second chapter on (where Schreiber begins to detail Sybil's experience with Dr Wilbur from the beginning) we've been reading from a much more assured and confident writer.

The idea that you could experience an emotional moment at the funeral of a loved one, and then wake up at school two years later is terrifying. I can't imagine what that would have been like for a sufferer who actually went through something similar. I don't know how anyone could go through that alone without any understanding of what was happening, without believing that they had truly gone crazy. To be continued...

14/8 - The atrocities that are described here, that were perpetrated on Sybil, are beyond belief, beyond my imagining. The description of the cold water enema was very disturbing. If you haven't got a strong tolerance for unsanitised descriptions of extreme child (and I mean toddler) abuse there are a couple of chapters you should definitely skip - 14 and 15 will not be good for your mental health. All I can say is I hope to God Wilbur didn't hypnotise 'Sybil' into believing this happened to her (if indeed, none of this story is true. The thought that a patient might be 'given' these memories because the doctor didn't know what she was doing and was over-eager at the possibility of discovering a 'modern' sufferer of DID, makes me sick.

Every time Schreiber writes about what Dr Wilbur was thinking after a session with Sybil I can clearly hear Wilbur's excitement at exploring the personalities, being successful in her treatment of Sybil, becoming world famous as the psychoanalyst who 'cured' the most extreme case of DID ever documented. Every time I imagine her I see her eyes with dollar signs spinning in them, like in the cartoons. I don't see her as doing any of this altruistically (despite her claim of feeling like a friend towards Sybil during their trip to the country), she just wants to publish journal articles on the fascinating case of 'Sybil'. To be continued...

6/9 - I've read 20 pages and already it's sooo complicated. At the beginning of the book, before the actual story starts there are four pages of family trees, showing the Tudors, the Parrs and the Seymours. There are so many Marys, Janes, Elizabeths, Annes, Katherines and Williams, Henrys and Edwards in the three different families that I keep getting them confused. I'll be forever checking back to the relevant family tree to work out where they fit in. Plus the fact that each chapter is peppered with footnotes that need to be referenced each time you come across one. Despite all that it's a great book, I just need to concentrate and read a bit more carefully than I usually do. To be continued...

10/09 - I've read another 109 pages now and I am amazed by the amount of research that must have gone into writing just a chapter of this book. Some of the chapters have so many footnotes, it's constant flicking from the page you are up to, to the back of the book to check the sources and further details in the description of the footnotes. As I said, I've read 129 pages now, but already I feel like I need to go back to the beginning to start it all over again, it's so complicated that I've already forgotten who some of the major players are. Then Porter mentions them a few pages or a chapter later and I'm like "Who's that? I don't remember how he/she factors into the rest of the story." To be continued...

26/10 - You know how sometimes a book starts out interesting, but it's very detailed and involved and in the middle it becomes really slow and quite a toil to keep reading? Well, that's what this book has been for me. As you can see I've been reading this for nearly 2 months and I'm still not finished, another 50 pages of actual story, the rest are notes, bibliography etc. I enjoyed the first 150 pages, which described Katherine Parr's early life prior to marrying Henry, I mostly enjoyed the last 50 pages or so leading up to and after Henry's death, it's the middle that really dragged. The chapters detailing Katherine's religious views and writings and what her life was like while she was married to Henry were very detailed and particularly full of footnotes and they felt weighed down by all that detail, and in turn so did I. Which is why when prettier, more attractive books appeared in my life I couldn't tear myself away from them to continue reading this (I've read 5 or 6 inbetween books whilst reading this). To be continued (soon I hope)...

28/10 - FINALLY finished this average-sized book that reads like a tome-sized book. As it was a biography of Katherine Parr, I was surprised to find that Porter didn't end the book at the death of Katherine Parr, she went on to detail the death of her 4th husband Thomas Seymour. She also discussed her stepdaughter, Elizabeth I's, life after the death of the only mother she ever knew. As I noted above, I found the middle let the book down, almost leading me to take the easy way out and say it's just too hard and add it to my 'did not finish' shelf. Now that I've finished it I'm glad I perservered. After the death of King Henry VIII the pace of the book picked up considerably and it became more like the book a quote on the front cover claimed it was - 'packed with intrigue and danger'. At around the same time I decided to stop referring to the description of the footnotes at the back of the book, they were just too distracting and checking the back of the book constantly broke up the flow of the story too much. I might consider Porter's first book about Mary Tudor, but not until I've had a good long break from difficult books, it's time for some easier to read, more fun books.