Dear Child

“Love. It’s love. No matter how sick, distorted and misunderstood, it’s still love.  Love that spurs us on.  That turns us into monsters, each in our own way.”

If I had to pick a quote from this book to summarize it, I’d say that’s the one.  Romy Hausmann’s debut novel is a powerful look into the psychology of both love and trauma, and how it expresses itself uniquely through different people, sometimes in horrifying ways, and sometimes in healing ways. 

The story is told in three narratives by ‘Lena’, the victim of an abduction who is forced into a surrogate wife/mother role to the abductor and his two children, the abductor’s daughter, Hannah, and finally Matthias, Lena’s father.  While that seems fairly straightforward, an accident happens that reveals that there’s more to ‘Lena’s’ story than was first imagined, and the book follows the implications of these new discoveries on her life, the lives of Matthias and his wife Karen, who’ve been searching for Lena for 13 years, and on Hannah and her brother Jonathan’s lives, among others.

This is one of those books with start to finish tension. There’s an intentional confusion to the story which never lets you get comfortable that everything will be OK, because every new reveal knocks you back down a little.  You’re never sure who to trust, which adds a nice creepy, suspenseful feel to the story, and I truly didn’t see the revelation of the abductor’s identity coming.  The characters are universally flawed in this story, so there’s not really a “feel good” character to latch onto, but I think that made everything more realistic.  Trauma is messy, and so are these characters. 

There is a big undercurrent of power dynamics in this story.  An abductor exerting his will over his victim, a grieving father fashioning a future path for he and his wife, regardless of her opinions on it, children who’ve never questioned their obedience to their father, and conversely, the power of victims to survive their circumstances.  Everyone is holding onto whatever control they have over their situations, whether fair to the people around them or not.  Love takes on a distorted form that each character justifies in their own way.  There were a few characters I had a difficult time with (I’m looking at you Matthias), but by the end, when all was revealed, I could at least understand all of them enough to feel sympathetic.  

It’s not a fast-paced book, but it kept me completely invested.  If you like a psychological thriller heavy on the psychology, this is a great one.  I’ll definitely be watching for more from this author.

★★★★ ½  (rounded up to 5)