Synopsis:
Spirits are drawn to salt, be it blood or tears.
Roos Beckman has a spirit companion only she can see. Ruth―strange, corpse-like, and dead for centuries―is the light of Roos’ life. That is, until the wealthy young widow Agnes Knoop visits one of Roos’ backroom seances, and the two strike up a connection.
Soon, Roos is whisked away to the crumbling estate Agnes inherited upon the death of her husband, where an ill woman haunts the halls, strange smells drift through the air at night, and mysterious stone statues reside in the family chapel. Something dreadful festers in the manor, but still, the attraction between Roos and Agnes is undeniable.
Then, someone is murdered.
Poor, alone, and with a history of ‘hysterics’, Roos is the obvious culprit. With her sanity and innocence in question, she’ll have to prove who―or what―is at fault or lose everything she holds dear.
Review:
“My Darling Dreadful Thing,” by Johanna van Veen is a spine-tingling, sapphic love-letter to the gothic. A (timeless) period piece that seems to drip with sickness, death and murder, “MDDT,” is tender and beautiful whilst being grim, and casually cannibalistic. What more could a horror reader ask for, really? It reads like a Dutch “Annie,” had a love child with Del Toro’s “Crimson Peak,”… on steroids…with seances and spirits. Needless to say, it’s a fun and disturbing time.
We follow Roosje Beckman, who lives with her repulsive “Mama.” Like so many frauds in the 40s and 50s, the duo declare themselves mediums, able to momentarily reunite the grieving and departed through way of possession. Whilst unable to actually bridge the gap between the living and the dead, Roos is not quite as big of a sham as her contemporaries: because of Ruth. Her help-meet, her yolkmate, her spirit companion- Ruth is shackled to Roos, and able to possess her during her seances for the best performances. It’s during one of these seances that Agnes Knoop, a seemingly wealthy widow, waltzes onto the scene- looking to reunite with her departed husband Thomas. After a rather extraordinary encounter, the very next day, she finds her Mama has sold her to the widow, and that she and Ruth will be moving into the grand but crumbling Rozentuin estate. Even more life-altering yet, she finds she’s not alone in her spectral companionship, when Agnes introduces her to her own yokemate Peter, things get even more spooky.
“There’s a reason the word haunting is rarely used in a positive way. To never be free of someone, well, that’s not always a comfort.”
Ghost stories predate the Roman Empire, the ghosts often used to embody the unknown and the unresolved, serving as reminders of past traumas and unfinished business. In “My Darling Dreadful Thing,” the traditional script is flipped. Much like in Ai Jiang’s (absolute banger of a) novella “Ling Hun,” Ruth and Peter don’t do much haunting, bound to their human counterparts by blood as opposed to choice. By taking your traditional ghosts and throwing them into a narrative chock-full of themes of love and trauma, Van Veen challenges us to reconsider what it means to be haunted. If you’re looking for a unique ghost story, this one’s a good shout.
Our narrator, who we know has encountered some legal hot water, is interrogated by a psychiatrist (whose transcript serves as an epistolary element) before answering the multitude of questions we’re left with in the following first person chapter. It’s like van Veen is taunting us, answering our questions before gleefully upending our expectations and flipping the narrative on its head once again. Roosje, like many a narrator in the gothic genre, is a reliable narrator, we have to question: has her childhood (and fresh) trauma finally taken its toll? Or, are we, the readers, the ones losing it.
“Some things are so horrible that the only sane response is a bit of madness.”
Speaking of things that are horrible and INSANE, van Veen’s writing is graphic, and not to be underestimated. Yes, ultimately “My Darling Dreadful Thing,” is about coming of age, recovering from terrible things, judgement, oppression, abuse, and finding happiness. It is ultimately a love story, but a gross one. The writing is gorgeous but the scenes the poetic prose are painting? Decidedly less picturesque. From incest to sanguinarian spirits, van Veen does not shy away from the grotesque and macabre, creating scenes that are as unsettling as they are beautifully written.
When I demanded to know what she put in this book, Johanna replied “Crack.” You heard it here first. A deeply evocative chiaroscuro of love and unadulterated horror, in “My Darling Dreadful Thing,” tenderness and terror collide, making it a must read for fans of the gory and the gothic.
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