Beyond the Glass by Antonia White

Clara Batchelor is a well-brought-up, upper class, Catholic girl from a highly respected family and recently got married to a charming young man of just as high a social stature. There’s only one problem; Archie can’t have children. The newlyweds decide quickly that the only way for either of them to be happy is to get the marriage annulled. Clara’s family doesn’t agree quite as much as she’d hoped but the church will agree to an annulment and that’s all that matters. Clara is then left to move back into her old life with her parents in her childhood London home.
As Clara become aware of the hole she has fallen into, trapped within the walls she had been so eager to leave, she begins to go completely mad. Slowly at first but with the precipitous interruption and additional complication that is Richard, she falls further and further into insanity.
The twists and turns that her thoughts take are startling and give us a basic and harrowing understanding of the make-up of the human mind and the boundaries that it invariably has.
The third and final story in a trilogy, Beyond the Glass is a fascinating examination of a mind falling apart at the seams. Told with easy to follow sequence and clarity of understanding this book was a rather curious insight into what a mind goes through with such added stress and the utter ease in which it all will crumble. The pace of the story was somewhat irregular with the beginning stretching out and the ending rushing in far too quickly. The final chapters also leave you wondering if Beyond the Glass really is the last volume in the series.
A definite “must read” if you’re looking into the human psyche, but otherwise Beyond the Glass is a little too tough of a story for the gently browsing type.