In a prose and form as startling as its content, "The Shutter of Snow" portrays the post-partum pyschosis of Marthe Gail, who after giving birth to her son, is committed to an insane asylum. Believing herself to be god, she manuevers through an institutional world both sad and terrifying, echoing the worlds of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and The Snake Pit Emily Holmes Coleman (born in Oakland, California in 1899, died in 1974 on a Catholic worker farm in New York State) was a prominent American figure in the Paris literary scene of the 1920s, and her circle in London in the 30s included Dylan Thomas and T.S. Eliot.
