Timeless Appeal: Antique chaises have a timeless appeal that transcends changing design trends. They embody elegance and sophistication, making them suitable for both traditional and contemporary interior styles. The overmantel, which carried so many small objects that she had only a confused impression of worthless trash."

Sanitariums for recuperating tuberculosis patients in the Swiss Alps featured chaise lounges that resembled a hospital bed/chaise cross. The connotation, while initially masculine, became entirely feminine, and associated with weakness and illness. It, therefore, was a blend of meanings, both connoting high class and an access to leisure time, as well as the feminine “constitution”. The legacy of the chaise lounge in gendered understandings of health and mental health continues.A long legacy of prescriptive and sexist science remains at the foundation of psychiatric medical treatment for women. From the first diagnosis of hysteria to the present-day disparities in mental health treatment, the tradition of medicating women’s emotions has held constant. Within this context, the line between empirical treatment and medicating the lived experiences of women grows dangerously thin. Treatment of psychiatric symptoms in women (by mostly men, until a few decades ago) has always been connected to ideas about sexuality and domesticity. Whether “over-sexed,” “repressed,” too attentive to their children, or too withdrawn, psychiatric diagnoses often centered on women’s perceived domestic failures. The chaise lounge was part of a system of treating women’s dissatisfaction and reasonable responses to a unequal society as a mental illness, as well as catering to a view of women as fundamentally weaker than men. Versatile Positioning: Chaises are designed to support various reclining positions, allowing individuals to relax comfortably. They can be positioned in different areas of a room, such as near a window or fireplace, and can serve as a focal point or a luxurious accent piece. While I loved the book for its content and delivery, there were a few quibbles I had with the writing, which seemed to jump about a bit (But then, this may have been a way to show the MC's state of mind.) and with one element that left me puzzled - had the treatment of TB in the late 1940s/early 1950s really not moved on from the 1920s? Solo pochi capitoli, neanche divisi per numero, mi hanno catapultata in due vite differenti, con relative storie, segreti, amori e orrori.Sounds mysterious? Well, it isn't. It's just that the plot is one thing if you read it with the expectation that everything in the book happens just as it is described. If, however, you begin to doubt the narrator, you may start to wonder what is really going on.

At the end of this novel, I was actually very relieved to be out of it -- not because it's not good (it's excellent, as a matter of fact) -- but rather because while I was in it, I felt as trapped and as powerless as the narrator of this story. In fact, those two words -- trapped and powerless -- are actually good concepts to use here in thinking about the novel as a whole. Now, when a book can do that to me while I'm reading it, well, it's a good one. It's extremely rare that I find a book that creates a personal reaction that actually mirrors what's happening in the story, but here it was unavoidable. Only the very best writers are able to do that, and it is something I genuinely appreciate. It could have been any conceivable period of time in which the thought that all these were strange took shape and words." The presence of an antique chaise adds a touch of luxury and refinement to a space. It offers a comfortable spot for relaxation, reading, or contemplation. An antique chaise serves as a versatile and stylish piece of furniture that elevates the aesthetic and creates a sense of timeless elegance in a living room, bedroom, or any other area of the home. Romanzo breve di genere gotico, Sulla chaise-longue racconta la storia della benestante Melanie, convalescente dalla tubercolosi, che appisolatasi su una chaise-longue usata ma mai utilizzata dai suoi nuovi proprietari, si ritrova imprigionata nel corpo di una ragazza malata, in un'altra vita e un'altra epoca. I had high hopes for this but I really dislike a book that ends with more questions than answers. I'm not that clever, people! Spell it out!The plot is quite simple, at first - a 1950 young woman recovering from Tuberculosis falls asleep and wakes up 90 years earlier, in the body of a stranger. Sounds intriguing. Yes. It is also extremely unsettling, evoking feelings of imprisonment, doubt, and fear to name a few. The comparison merely came up because both authors seem to base their ideas on a similar question about what time really is, and how we live in time. Here’s a description of a chaise longue from Wikipedia (and it has pictures of it from the olden days… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaise_... ): an upholstered sofa in the shape of a chair that is long enough to support the legs. Récamier: a récamier has two raised ends, and nothing on the long sides. It is sometimes associated with French Empire (neo-classical) style. It is named after French society hostess Madame Récamier (1777–1849), who posed elegantly on a couch of this kind for a portrait, painted in 1800 by Jacques-Louis David. The shape of the récamier is similar to a traditional lit bateau (boat bed) but made for the drawing room, not the bedroom. In Melanie's world, everything is cold and clinical. She can't even visualise her son's nursery from her bedroom "from which all flavour of love and joy and delight had long since fled." Things are done efficiently, but without warmth: "The knitting had been done, swiftly and beautifully but surely not with love, by Sister Smith."

I notice that some reviewers have compared it to Gilmans classic story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and whilst it does have number of similarities (ie illness and male doctors) I didn't feel that Laski had an overtly feminist agenda in mind, as the book seemed more concerned with the individuals interior notion of self. There was a lot of show wood on this Chaise, so the fabric had to be fixed to the indented area just before the show wood.

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Dijo: Quizás Milly Baines murió aquí. Entonces, sin duda Milly Baines está muerta, dijo sin emoción, Milly y Adelaide y Lizzie, todas muertas y podridas hace rato. Este cuerpo que habito debe haberse podrido inmundamente, esta funda de almohada debe de ser un pedazo de trapo, esta colcha debe de estar apolillada, crujiente y pegajosa por los huevos de las polillas, cayéndose a pedazos mugrientos. Todo está muerto y podrido, el jugo de cebada contaminado, el camisón raído y tirado, estas manos, este cuerpo entero pestilente, podrido, muerto. Se estremeció y supo que se estremecía en un cuerpo muerto hacía mucho tiempo. Se le puso la piel de gallina, y era una piel que se había puesto verde y licuefacta y se había convertido en polvo húmedo junto con la húmeda madera pútrida del ataúd.

At first the contrast between the two halves, one set in the then-present, one in Victorian times, seems stark: highlighted by the difference in tone, the opening section has a slightly pulpy, fluffy feel, while the section that follows is far more serious and sombre. Melanie lives in a meticulously-restored house in a newly-gentrified part of London, made possible by her husband’s successful career. She’s carefully tended to and, Laski makes it clear, considered deserving of attention because she’s young and pretty. Milly however, who’s resting on the same chaise-longue is confined to a stuffy sitting-room in a dreary, cluttered house, overseen by her stern sister who’s clearly obsessed with the ways in which Milly has somehow transgressed. However, as Laski’s narrative unfolds it’s evident Melanie and Milly are both in cages, it’s just that Melanie’s is more luxurious. The story was fascinating and odd. It read like a play almost. I liked the story for it���s simple strangeness, but didn’t fall in love with it. It was an interesting take on a time travel story since the main character was transported into another woman’s body who was kind of ‘her’ in a way as well. The story had such a claustrophobic feeling because of Melanie (our protagonist) being trapped on the chaise-longue and trapped in another body. It had an interesting theme of showing the different fates for women in different time periods particularly around sexuality, yet showed the similarity between the women who were trapped because they were bedridden with illness. It showed the hopelessness and loss of control when dealing with that. For the rest of what I think about this book, I'll link to my reading journal. Sometimes for what I want to say, this little box here where I'm supposed to post my thoughts just isn't the right venue. Don't worry - there's not much in the way of spoilers there.Il tutto contornato da situazioni angoscianti dovute al non sapere gli elementi pregressi rispetto all'arrivo di Melanie in quel corpo del passato. I actually don't say this too often, but I think this his book would've benefited from a more rigorous editing process. The second half was actually quite good, and there were ideas and moments in here with great potential, but in general I found the book largely disappointing and even cringeworthy at points. Scritto magistralmente pur mantenendo uno stile semplice, ho trovato questa piccola storia una perla ben eseguita. It opens with a bald fear of death: firstly from a quotation of TS Eliot, "I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me", and then the opening sentence of the book itself, "Will you give me your word of honour... that I'm not going to die?" (Eliot may have been echoing Cranmer’s “In the midst of life we are in death”, translated from the Latin, “ Media vita in morte sumus” for the burial service in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.) I thought it was too detailed on describing rooms and furniture and such, and I was losing interest as a result. I think if it had been maybe a long short story and if it had been tightened up a bit, I would have liked it more. As it was, I felt I was experiencing the nightmare with Melanie/Millie in real time like over the course of two hours. Two hours to read the book and I was getting bored. If I could have read it in 30 minutes (a long short story with a lot of I feel unnecessary details removed) I would have been more positive to this story.