The horrors of the past echo into the present. Chris Panatier’s novel, The Redemption of Morgan Bright, winds through dark, atmospheric corridors using poetic language to tell a story about the dangers of falling in love with yesterday and the limits of positive thinking in the face of unending horrors. The story of what happens to Morgan Bright and Charlotte Turner, under the watch of director Althea Edevane is something I won’t soon forget. Normally, we don’t review novels beyond their release date here; but that may be changing because books that came out within the last year deserve some attention too (and I also have a small pile of recent novellas that I'm dying to talk about). This is my first experience reading Chris Panatier but I can say without a doubt it won't be my last, I'm hoping to check out his earlier novels The Phlebotomist and Stringers ASAP.
The story is set in near future Nebraska. Hollyhock House stands as a cursed monument to anachronism. The infamous asylum operates in isolation and mystery. Few of the women admitted as patients ever leave. This place is our monster, built on sour land. Panatier’s introduction to Hollyhock is peppered with personified, living language. I had a little difficulty placing this novel neatly in a time period as I read the early pages, mostly because Hollyhock resembles something pulled from the past. The disorienting opening grabbed me right away. I loved the collection of varying voices, narration, and documents that carry us through this novel. The entire story is pinned on a very believable but mercifully fictional statute of Nebraska law that allows spouses to admit their partners against their will to psychiatric hospitals. The book is front-loaded with lore, opening with documents and a recounting of "The Snow Walker’s” final moments. For a lot of this information, the necessary context comes later. An unidentified woman, the “Snow Walker” was found suffering the cold in her final moments. We are also privy to the start of a scheme. The author keeps a great literary distance here, as the two plotters aren't even named. I could only get impressions of who these people were as they drove to Hollyhock discussing their plan to admit the young woman under false pretenses to find information. Panatier gives more questions than answers early in the book but go along with it, I promise it pays off.
After a small time skip, we start the main narrative. Punctuating the chapters are interview transcriptions between Detective Gastrell and a young woman named Charlotte, the lone survivor of something very strange that happened at Hollyhock. These interview segments are great for pacing but also a way for Panatier to relay events without crowding the reader with detail, teasing just enough mystery to keep you going.
When we get into the story everything is relayed by Charlotte. Charlotte’s reliability as a narrator comes into question almost immediately. She has a little bit of Eleanor from Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House in her. There's something clearly off. Her sunny disposition and innocent nature are undermined by her poor memory, and unwillingness to see reality. Charlotte is obsequious and polite. She only sees the bright side. We get to glimpse Hollyhock from multiple angles in this story, and the others aren’t nearly as flattering. Most of the women behind Hollyhock’s walls have found themselves institutionalized for “domestic psychosis.” Hollyhock may be haunted by the dead, but it’s the living who are responsible.
Many reviews might spoil the first 1/3rd twist but that's not how we do things here. The Redemption of Morgan Bright is a difficult book to describe. A mixture of narrative voices, styles, and story elements are glued together with a tapestry of gorgeous figurative language. On a sentence by sentence level, Panatier delivers one great line after another. It’s a long book for a horror novel that you might shred through quickly, but for those of you word nerds, it’s hard not to want to slow down and soak in every bit of imagery.
The Redemption of Morgan Bright broadcasts its message loud and clear but manages to avoid obtrusive commentary or exposition. Nostalgia informs the language, the rich layers of imagery allude to narrative styles you might see in fiction from the 1950s, but when the narration shifts to present tense, for good reason, it reads perfectly modern and perhaps forces the reader to consider their own relationship with nostalgia and what they might be overlooking. Hollyhock is haunted, and behind its walls there may be cults, witchcraft and more. The monsters tormenting Morgan Bright are both human and supernatural, some projections of her own guilt others manifestations of her worst fears. Hollyhock becomes her penance but she's also a victim of her own shame and of a culture that preys on and blames the disadvantaged. What The Redemption of Morgan Bright amounts to is a horror novel examining a society in regression. In the afterward, Panatier admits to being motivated by the Dobb’s supreme court decision while penning this work. The social backslide happening among the most reactionary in America is horror; enduring the aftermath of when these ideas becoming normalized and codified is what the world Morgan Bright wants us to see. This world never went away and it can become normal again easily.
I loved this novel. It just clicked with my tastes. It’s a gripping psychological horror mystery and ghost story that serves as an allegory for our times. If you want something that reads like Shirley Jackson on a day trip to Silent Hill, I don’t think you could do much better than The Redemption of Morgan Bright. It was released on April 23rd of this year and is on shelves now.
I purchased this book and am leaving this review voluntarily. Below are links to purchase The Redemption of Morgan Bright from two local (St. Louis) bookstores which Nocturne Books and Media is not affiliated with but firmly believes deserve your support. It looks like Left Bank has the title in stock!
More horrifying, I don't think a statute was ever needed to involuntarily commit women. It was "scientific fact" at the time that any woman who rejected her domestic role was considered medically impaired. I don't know how long it went on, but it seemed to be common during the 19th century.