jisungie_reads 's review for:

My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen

4.75

dark informative mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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 I felt quite useless and rather lonely. I was used to this, but I resented how easy it was to feel this way again now, when I had expected I need never be alone again.

This was a delightfully excellent read. From the prose to the pacing to the actual handling of fictional psychosis and schizophrenia in the 1950s Netherlands. This is my second dive into gothic romance (After "Don't Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews), and although my first read in this genre was a pure hit, I was still hesitant and wary of this book. Boy was I in for a pleasant surprise.

Roos was the character I was mostly nervous to read about, as I felt that her character has the most potential to completely ruin the story for me if she alone was written poorly. I understand that this might not perfectly align with real life sufferers of psychosis and schizophrenia, but because this is a fictional story with a lot of research and care done to depict such a complex mental illness floated well with me throughout the book, and I never felt like I was reading something that felt insensitive or maliciously fanatical. After all, quote on quote symptoms and qualities of someone suffering from hallucinations or other mental illnesses doesn't have to exactly match up with someone else's experience. Thus, I found Roos and Agnes' story very compelling and well written. As for how mental illness is perceived in 1950s Netherlands was described well is outside of my knowledge.

Although the story was pretty good throughout, I think this story's true strength was the playful teetering between Roos', Agnes', and Wilheljm's hallucinations of Ruth, Peter, and Thomas, and their interaction with each other and the corporeal world. It really played magnificently with the very off-kilter, destabilizing experience of losing the ability to discern reality from fiction. At times, although I was fully aware of what the story was trying to suggest (that Roos, Agnes, and Wilheljm were all schizophrenic or psychotic to some degree and hallucinating Ruth, Peter, and/or Thomas), I would still wonder if the "spirits" were actually real and present entities that could interact with objects and other people and affect the world around them. It definitely seemed so in different little scenes, but then again, those could easily be explained since we are in the biased perspective of Roos. But that also in turn comes full circle - Doctor Montague would also explain those events with reasonable, more widely accepted explanations that at the time, was considered sane to write off as. Very trippy and cyclical thoughts after reading this book!

I'm very interested in reading more from Johanna!