This is the third in the ‘Menzies Mental Health’ series by the prolific writing duo of Anne Buist and Graeme Simsion and may be their best yet. Following The Glasshouse published in 2024 and The Oasis published in 2025, The General Hospital relates the next phase in the personal and professional life of trainee psychiatrist, Dr Hannah Wright, in the general hospital unit at the Menzies. This time she’s called on to apply her psychiatric expertise to patients in medical, surgical, obstetric and cancer wards.
Having read the previous two books in this series, I found it easy to identify with the main characters, particularly the protagonist, the setting, atmosphere and the premise that mental and physical health are inevitably intertwined.
Hannah’s personal life continues to present challenges, with ongoing concerns about her brother’s alcohol addiction, her troubled relationship with her mother, the divulging of a long-guarded family secret and the difficulty of devoting adequate time to a budding romance while being stretched to the limit by her career.
As in the previous two novels, serious mental health issues such as suicide, abuse, self-harm and eating disorders are addressed with sensitivity and enough medical background to enrich the reader’s understanding but not so much that it weighs down the narrative.
It helps strengthen engagement with the characters if you’ve read the previous books in the series, but the writing style, approach and vivid characterisation combine to give this one great appeal as a stand-alone read.
Reviewed by Anne Green
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Professor Anne Buist AO is chair of Women’s Mental Health at the University of Melbourne and the architect of the national screening program for perinatal depression. She began writing at eight but medicine intervened until 2015 when she wrote Medea’s Curse, the first of five psychological crime novels. The internationally bestselling Two Steps Forward, co-authored with her husband, Graeme Simsion, was optioned to Fox Searchlight / Disney, along with its sequel, Two Steps Onward. She is co-author of the ‘Menzies Mental Health’ series (The Glass House, The Oasis, The General Hospital) with Graeme.
Read more about Prof Anne Buist here.
Follow Prof Anne Buist on Instagram here.
Dr Graeme Simsion is the author of the widely acclaimed novel The Rosie Project, which spent 65 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and, with its two sequels, has sold seven million copies in forty languages. A film is in development with Sony Pictures. The Best of Adam Sharp, also an international bestseller, is in development with New Sparta Pictures and Creative Differences was optioned to Truce Films. Graeme is co-author of the bestselling ‘Menzies Mental Health’ series with his wife, Anne Buist.
See Dr Graeme Simsion’s books here.
0 Comments