[Book Review] My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen

[hexmix]

Title: My Darling Dreadful Thing
Author: Johanna van Veen
Genre: gothic horror

I'd read and enjoyed van Veen's Blood on Her Tongue earlier this year and am happy to say that I enjoyed her first novel, My Darling Dreadful Thing even more! Both novels are billed as saphhic gothic horror, and both live up to that label, but both novels also begin with rather unfortunate author's notes. Notes warning the reader that they have picked up a gothic horror novel and that depiction does not equal endorsement and there are Dark Themes Afoot and blah blah blah, just the sort of thing that I understand the reasoning behind because I know what the (mostly online) discourse is like, but which read rather poorly (less simple content warnings and more "I have to cover my ass so internet pitchforks are not aimed at it," a kind of defensiveness which sometimes bleeds into--and spoils--an author's prose) and which very nearly put me off reading Blood on Her Tongue altogether; not because I was worried about the content, but because I suspected the writing to reflect that same defensiveness (and to therefore suck).

Luckily I was very wrong! This also allowed me to jump right into My Darling Dreadful Thing knowing that van Veen's writing would deliver, and it does so beautifully.

My Darling is set in the Netherlands in the 1950s and follows Roos, a young woman subject to the whims of her cruel guardian, Mama, who has forced Roos to perform alongside her in scores of seances, wherein Roos acts as medium, faking one possession after another.

Except that Roos can actually see spirits. Or at least one spirit, to be exact: her sole companion Ruth, who has haunted her since childhood. Ruth has remained the only spirit that Roos has ever encountered right up until Mama arranges a seance with well-off once-promising pianist Agnes Knoop, who has just lost her dear husband tragically, and who is haunted by a spirit of her own.



My Darling is split between Roos' recounting of her time with Agnes and the inevitable (it's gothic horror, after all) tragedy that befalls them both, with transcriptions of conversations with the psychiatrist tasked with determining whether or not Roos is "mentally fit" to stand trial for her part in the aforementioned tragedy. Van Veen seems to have done her research well, and her portrayal of mental illness is done with much care despite the biases of the time period she is writing in. Both of her novels deal quite heavily with perceived and real mental illness as a theme, particularly as it has historically overlapped with other marginalizations (homosexuality as perceived mental illness is central to Blood on Her Tongue).

This framing, as van Veen notes in the included interview at the end of my copy of the novel, does a very good job of heightening the suspense: you know something wretched has happened, and you even know what, but the why of it gets to you more and more, especially as more and more details are sprinkled in by the psychiatrist (who does become slightly less insufferable, believe it or not).

(Side note to say that van Veen's intentions with this framing are made explicitly clear by both the inclusion of several epigraphs from The Turn of the Screw as well as the inclusion of a character named Peter Quint. Although I feel that it's clear which way the novel leans, van Veen does do a good job of sprinkling in just enough doubt to create something approaching the uncertainty of the ending of The Turn of the Screw.)

But speaking of detail: this is my favorite part of van Veen's writing. She is particularly good at adding in incredibly human details to the actions and observations of her characters. This really stood out to me in Blood on Her Tongue, but it's a definite highlight in both novels. These are sometimes very odd but equally human behaviors that helped to flesh both of van Veen's protagonists out for me. There's a centering of the body that was both incredibly fitting for the genre but also refreshing in the way that van Veen does not shy away from presenting her characters in a less-than-flattering light.

Clearly I'm a fan lol, but if there's one thing I could pick at, it would be the endings: both van Veen novels conclude a little too neatly in certain aspects. Not enough to really spoil things for me, but enough that when it happened in My Darling too I had a "I'm not surprised, just disappointed" reaction.


But overall, the writing is solid, the gothic horror is there, bog bodies are cool, the characters were great (even the terrible ones; they were all the fun-to-hate kind), and YES there is a sapphic romance in this one and YES it is explicit. (Yuri fans rejoice!) If you're looking for something spooky (but not TOO spooky) to read this spooky season, then My Darling Dreadful Thing is certainly worth picking up.

Comments

[liminaltime]

This is on my TBR list!!

[rocky41_7]

This sounds quite interesting, thanks for sharing!