Wise Creatures

Deirdre Sullivan has an aptitude for exploring teen trauma through a supernatural lens. Wise Creatures is a read that requires patience as its fragmented structure reflects unreliable narrator Daisy’s fractured mind. Just as in Perfectly Preventable Deaths, there is an eerie setting, strange happenings and shocking secrets festering under the mould.  Adverse childhood experiences, toxic relationships, abuse, power games, broken family dynamics, anxiety, depression, stress, deteriorating mental health and self-harm all play their part. Adults struggle with their inner demons and broken hearts while the distress of the protagonists, cousins Daisy and Nina, begins to manifest itself.

Adolescent worries, alienated internal commentary, friendship fractures, mysterious video diaries, psychic trickery and tortured flashbacks all make up a broken jigsaw of self-recrimination, doubt, fear and suspicion. Sullivan uses lyrical metaphors to help the reader navigate, likening Daisy’s memory to a braid of hair where, ‘one strand is the stories I’ve been told, and one strand is the impact of what happened. And the third strand is cobbled together from memories, from dreams where I can’t move, from something in me that I can’t let out.’

Haunted by memories of her vicious and manipulative mother, her sensory visions threaten to swallow her as Daisy wonders if she’s strong enough to survive a second onslaught. Can she support her sensitive cousin Nina who is suffering from a malaise which she cannot voice?

The story creeps under the skin and makes the reader challenge their perceptions as events escalate when a self-confessed ghost hunter and his son get involved. Just who can be trusted? Even the chapter headings can be read separately to tell a tale of remnants and fragments, scars and humiliation, an exposed throat, dreams that flicker and unexplained chills.

Sullivan meticulously researched the psychology behind Wise Creatures. She studied the work of psychiatrists Judith Herman, Bessel Van Der Kolk and Lucia Osborne Crowley who wrote about how early childhood trauma affects the body and the nature of the recovery process.

‘Our pain, our grief, our secrets’

‘This house where we’re all broken in different ways and can’t seem to fit together the way we did before.’

Ask yourself when you read this, what is real and what is imagined? It will chill you to the bone as the shape of the verses and carefully crafted repetition reflect the trapped thoughts.

As Sullivan explains, her novel mirrors the complicated feelings of young adults as they come of age, ‘…that bridge between childhood and adulthood, where the contrast between who you are and what you have been told about yourself can sometimes become particularly stark.’

At one point Daisy looks at herself in the mirror and is startled by what she sees. Significantly, it’s also a time when adults can be revealed as fallible and vulnerable.

This book is intense and craves to be reread. It switches from first to third tenses giving the reader more pieces of the puzzle. Wise Creatures will appeal to teens looking for representation of diverse relationships within the pages of a spooky story. The insightful look at the fragility of the human mind will also resonate with readers interested in child psychology.