The Dark Circle
| Author | Linda Grant |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Virago |
|
Publication date
|
3 November 2016 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 320 pages |
| ISBN |
The Dark Circle is the seventh novel by English novelist and journalist Linda Grant. Published in November 2016, it tells the story of tubercular east London twins, Lenny and Miriam Lynskey, sent to convalesce in a post-World War II sanitorium in Kent shortly after the formation of the National Health Service (NHS).
Eighteen-year-old twins Lenny and Miriam Lynskey initially enjoy life in post-World War II London, having spent an austere period in Wales as refugees. Lenny plans to become involved in the criminal world of their Uncle Manny, a former black-marketeer who is now attempting to build a more legitimate property empire, whilst Miriam has gained employment in a respectable florist's shop in Mayfair. When Lenny is conscripted for national service, Uncle Manny pays a bribe to ensure that his nephew is rejected on medical grounds. However, the military's tests revel that Lenny genuinely has tuberculosis and shortly afterwards Miriam is found to also have the disease.
They are both sent to the Gwendolyn Downie Memorial Hospital, known colloquially as the Gwendo, a recently-built sanatorium in rural Kent where they are the institution's first Jewish patients. Whereas such institutions previously only served well-to-do private patients, the recent advent of the NHS means that a wider section of British society is treated there for free. An additional bonus for the twins is that food for the patients is unrationed, unlike in the rest of post-war Britain.
However, Miriam and Lenny are rebellious patients from the outset, not least after they hear rumours of a miracle cure, streptomycin, which promises an alternative to the Gwendo's harsh surgical and cold air remedies. They are aided in their defiance by fellow resident Arthur Persky, a merchant seaman from the United States, with whom Miriam falls in love. Miriam and Lenny both form a friendship with another patient, Valerie, who uses her Oxford University learning to help educate them. Miriam is rendered deaf as a result of the side-effects of Persky injecting her with a batch of streptomycin stolen at the behest of Uncle Manny. The Gwendo is shut down shortly afterwards, following an unrelated government inspection.
Persky attempts to meet Miriam in Spain – where she is holidaying with Lenny, Valerie and other friends – but is caught stealing her a Paris gown belonging to a passenger of the cruise liner he is working on, and he is detained on board and returned to the US.
In later life, Lenny has forged a successful media career and married Valerie. Despite Miriam's deafness he calls her by telephone every day for over sixty years, on the basis that "As long as I hear her breathing at the other end, I know not to worry". Lenny and Valerie retire to the Côte d'Azur, where Miriam joins her brother after the death of his wife.
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