Book Description
Set in an experimental hospital for the criminally insane in the 1950s, CONFINEMENT is loosely based on the author’s one year residency in a psychiatric center, when lobotomies and other equally cruel treatments were rampant, and when the highly-experimental “Insulin Therapy” was in vogue. The focus of the story is Duffino, an attractive girl in her early 20s, sent to the mental hospital when she refuses to defend herself at trial for the highly publicized, gang-related murder of her boyfriend’s rival. Refusing to speak, Duffino is ordered locked-up until she’s willing to talk. The richness of the story unfolds with Duffino’s relationship to the other inmates, all in for violent crimes, including her obese roommate, Charlotte, who was sentenced for murdering a nun. Charlotte becomes obsessed with Duffino, and will not let up until she speaks. Throughout the course of the story, we see flashbacks of Duffino’s romantic life on the gang-infested streets, juxtaposed with flashbacks of Charlotte’s severe life in the convent; after much tribulation, the inmates slowly come to learn why they did the crimes they did, as they make us question the true nature of guilt. Between the horrifying treatments, the group therapy sessions, the flashbacks to violent crimes, the question of whether Duffino will talk, and the constant hope of escape, CONFINEMENT is a page-turning psychological thriller, in the vein of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
