Reviews

A View from the Phantasmagoria: Haunts, Hexes, Healing by Kate Garrett

keana's review

5.0

The word ‘phantasmagoria’ is defined as a sequence of real or imaginary images, like those seen in a dream. Kate Garrett’s A View from Phantasmagoria: Haunts, Hexes, Healing brings heartbreaking realization that these ‘real or imagined’ images appear to Garrett in moments following extreme anguish. This pain, afflicted by premenstrual dysmorphic disorder, or PMDD, affects her understanding, confidence, and presentation of her ‘self’. Garrett adheres to the press’s mission statement, crafting her trauma into beautiful, melancholy art. With a masterful use of language, Garrett illustrates the isolation and loneliness of pain. With precise and forlorn expression, she bares these intimate moments for all to see; and it is with this willingness to share that she acts in solidarity with other womxn who may be suffering in silence. Ultimately, she “lets the light in, breaks the gloom” and proves that even after the harshest winter, spring will always come.