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Perimenopause or Paranoia?

Author: Nat Cassidy

There’s a dead woman in the bathtub. This isn’t the first time, however, that Mary has seen death up close and personal. She sees it every time she looks in the mirror and her face begins to transform, to decay. She sees it when she looks at other women, their features shifting from alive to putrescent. This is only the latest in a series of gruesome hallucinations. But the doctor says it’s fine. Just perimenopause. Nothing to worry about. Comes along with the hot flashes. Mary is not convinced, but don’t you dare call her crazy. That could be very, very dangerous.

Mary is a nearly 50-year-old woman living in New York city, working an underappreciated job in a dusty, forgotten section of a local bookstore. Except they just fired her for being too old. Mary’s only living connection is her horrific Aunt Nadine, the woman who raised her after her parents were murdered. She could happily live the rest of her life without seeing Aunt Nadine again, but she was summoned back home. Aunt Nadine needs help. It’s just temporary. She will in no way be stuck back in the hometown she fought to escape, and maybe she can make enough money taking care of her aunt to get back on her feet. And so, Mary packs up her few things, carefully wraps her Loved Ones (a collection of porcelain figurines, and she tries to listen as they whisper to her be good, be good, be good.  But, when she arrives back in her hometown, it turns out that Aunt Nadine has lied, there’s a ghost in her bathtub, and the fifty-year anniversary of the town’s famous serial killer is fast approaching. Oh . . . and the killings have started up again.

If you think you know where Mary is going, I can assure you that you are wrong. At first, we think this will be a simple narrative of a woman going insane, one that deliberately echoes the insanity of menopause, societal expectations of women, male dominance over women, and the general unfairness of aging. But it’s not so simple. First, we get the dead women, all with bags over their faces, and then we get the serial killer narrative. There is more to Mary than a simple imbalance in the brain. One might even say, it’s supernatural and natural all at the same time.

Image by Barbara from Pixabay

The narrative is quirky at times, almost funny with the introduction of the foul-mouthed, larger-than-life Aunt Nadine, but it’s also very dark, in contents and depictions of violence. It’s not for the faint of heart, and once you think you know what’s happening, where it’s going, the story shifts, then we get a new revelation, and another aspect of Mary’s fractured character is revealed, all serrated edges and possibilities. The Loved Ones may chant be good, be good, be good but other aspects of Mary aren’t so good . . . and maybe that’s the way she likes it. Maybe that’s the way we like her.

Mary’s desert hometown comes largely into play here, and we have a story bifurcated by time and the male / female dilemma. Now, sometimes the narrative gets preachy, but it is also consistently surprising, gruesome, and imaginative. You will never figure it all out, and even the ending leaves a hint of foul possibilities. No one is walking away from this happily never after, but some of them may come away with a taste for blood and vengeance.

Is Mary crazy? Possessed? A down-and-out every-woman? An innocuous lady with a penchant for collecting figurines? A ghost? A victim? A killer? Yes . . . and no. As Mary’s character morphs, you at times love her and at other times fear her, yet, somehow, even as the glistening guts pile up, you remain in Mary’s camp. She’s a complicated person, for sure, and we can never applaud all that she does . . . but we can remain viscerally interested in it, and even a bit sympathetic, despite the sheer enormity of the kill count. It’s weird and wonderful, and not the kind of thing that should ever be read while eating dinner. Mary is the every-maiden, the every-monster in us all, and she’s waited a long time to come out and play. Highly recommended.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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