Synopsis:
What would guilt make you do?
Hadleigh Keene died on the road leading away from Hollyhock Asylum. The reasons are unknown. Her sister Morgan blames herself. A year later with the case still unsolved, Morgan creates a false identity, that of a troubled housewife named Charlotte Turner, and goes inside.
Morgan quickly discovers that Hollyhock is… not right. She is shaken by the hospital’s peculiar routines and is soon beset by strange episodes. All the while, the persona of Charlotte takes on a life of its own, becoming stronger with each passing day. As her identity begins unraveling, Morgan finds herself tracing Hadleigh’s footsteps and peering into the places they lead
Review:
Hello again dear reader or listener, buckle up, this is going to be a tough one. Let’s take a moment to drool over the beautiful cover though.
With thanks as always to the Angry Robot team for approving my NetGalley request for an eArc of this book, allow me to try and unravel my complicated thoughts about it.
You may have noticed that I kept this rating-free and the simple reason why is because I cannot for the life of me decide on a numerical rating, for a variety of reasons. In very short, Panatier certainly succeeds in what he sets out to do with this story, but in getting there, unfortunately, he somewhat lost me along the way for a while. Purely from an entertainment point of view though, cause intellectually I was vibing. Let me try to explain.
At its core, Redemption is a book about the true horror that is the loss of bodily autonomy and mental health. Something that women have faced (and, depressingly, continue to), in societies that have arbitrarily decided any deviation from certain gendered templates is grounds for taking over their free will and guilt-tripping them into oblivion. And, as I said, from an intellectual standpoint, Panatier carried this very important theme across brilliantly. His writing is evocative and the narrative style he employed for the novel, worked perfectly well to deliver the dizzying, disjointed, and progressively more horrific plot. Some of the imagery was truly chef’s kiss. Stylistically, it strongly reminded me of the first season of True Detective, with a past plot unfolding while interspersed with present time police interrogation transcripts, among other types of evidence. These various change ups actually helped me to read the bits of this book that were written in present tense, which I normally struggle with, but that’s a personal caveat.
This book is what would happen if elements of True Detective, The Alienist S1, Split, and Don’t Worry Darling (and I’m told AHS Asylum by Anna) had a chimera spawn that brought and discarded at your feet most of the injustices that patriarchal societies impose on women, the way a cat proudly presents its owner with dead vermin. It even goes a step further in exploring the deeper horror and hypocrisy of those crimes being enacted by a woman. That is a whole other level of betrayal we don’t have time to unpack here but oh so good and nuanced.
Since researching the beginnings and atrocities of early psychiatry is one of my more morbid hobbies, I was instantly hooked by the premise of a woman going undercover in a psychiatric hospital to discover the truth about what happened to her dead sister. The author even used real events to inform his story. As such I was so ready for psychological horror, and I even welcomed the body horror elements or the tact with which Panatier explored some of the more harrowing aspects of asylum “care” that I expected to find. That is also one of the most bewildering aspects of this novel perhaps: the fact that it is supposed to be set in our current times yet everything that happens within Hollyhock is reminiscent of the 50s and before, from the diagnoses reminiscent of female hysteria to the gaslighting and manipulation perpetrated by those supposed to protect the patients. As for the supernatural elements within, a part of me would have enjoyed more concrete definitions of what they were but at the same time a bigger part of me could appreciate the point of them being as abstract and abstruse as they were, as it fit within the confused and disoriented point of view. We don’t always get the answers we want or hope for and it can work if it’s done well.
This is where you’ve probably begun to wonder then what is it that has me so conflicted, dear reader. Well, here’s the thing. I’m very jaded when it comes to this genre but so long as there is a mystery to solve, I’m hooked and even curious to see what kind of weirdness the author will come up with to evoke the various states they wish in the reader. Just because I don’t necessarily feel all the feelings of disgust from body horror myself for instance, doesn’t mean I can’t be appreciative of the work that’s gone in it since I know it’ll affect others strongly. And as I said already, Panatier’s writing definitely wins in that department. His pacing is good, the reveals well timed and working within his planned disorientation of the reader, to accompany the confusion, denial, and terror that the protagonist is going through. In fact, I read 80% of this book in one sitting during an afternoon.
I got to the last 20% the next day and I was ready. I had all my questions that demanded answers, I had my theories, and I had my deep appreciation for the overall themes and messages. But then came the downfall of what had been up until that point really solid storytelling. I’m probably being a little dramatic here for silliness, but the truth is that in that last buildup to the end, the author went too heavy handed with the metaphors, the imagery, the meandering, hell, even the abstract supernatural that up until then I had been ok with just became too much. For lack of a better phrase, it killed the mood. The point had been made, 99% of the reveals cleared up, and I felt like a horse overbeaten into indifference, so I just mentally checked out hoping the end would finally get here. Had this book been about 50ish pages shorter it might’ve worked better for me.
Even then, through that, call it a stumble, the final scene is a powerful final gut punch, so it’s not like the author just lost himself entirely and dropped the ball completely. Just took a few turns too many to get to the destination.
This book isn’t for everyone, that much is true, and maybe the way the author went about that climax will work for others in the ways that it didn’t for me which is perfectly valid. I am still very interested in reading his other books because I enjoyed his overall writing style and I would surely enjoy reading more of it.
Plus, any author that takes the time to try and work through the themes that Panatier did, with the tact and grace that he did, deserves the attention.
In fact, what is perhaps most aggravating/infuriating in the end is nothing strictly to do with the book itself, but with the knowledge that such a horrific and prolonged metaphor might be needed by some in order to even only begin to understand the terror and pain of the real women whose bodily autonomy is horrifically in the hands of others.
Until next time,
Eleni A. E.
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