Reading this book is what I imagine a hallucination feels like. It takes you inside the mind of someone with suicidal ideation but then twists it into something Escheresque.
Today is Vick’s last day. When he gets off this train he’s going to end his life. However, things don’t exactly go to plan.
It gradually dawns on me that I’ve been denied a destination, caught in a transitional environment, a space between beginning and an end.
There’s the dread of anxiety and the muted colours of depression. There’s the wandering through life without purpose, turning a corner and finding you’re back where you started. There’s the isolation of feeling like there’s no way out. It’s bleak and confusing, and there are choices to be made.
We are small in this place; silence its judgement and indifference our condemnation.
This is a strange novella. I’m not entirely sure where I sit on the love-hate continuum. I loved how experimental and disorienting it felt. I didn’t always love the descriptions, which sometimes landed on using the most obscure word in the thesaurus. I loved that the … journey (for lack of a better word) embodied the hopelessness of suicidal ideation.
For a kid that lived for choose your own adventure, I didn’t love that aspect and that’s what’s sticking with me. I was uncomfortable making decisions that would result in how Vick’s story ended. Yes, this is fiction but apparently that doesn’t change how I feel about this.
I’m not on board with trying to make other people responsible for you. For better or worse, your actions are your own.
Having friends who have experienced suicidal ideation as well as having been there myself, I cannot emphasise enough the value of appropriate support and resources when it feels like there are no good choices.
A list of international suicide hotlines can be found here.
Favourite no context quote:
Isn’t that what sickness is? A violence, in need of direction, channeled inward?
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this novella.
Once Upon a Blurb
Vicken has a plan: throw himself into the Saint Lawrence River in Montreal and end it all for good, believing it to be the only way out for him after a lifetime of depression and pain. But, stepping off the subway, he finds himself in an endless, looping station.
Determined to find a way out again, he starts to explore the rooms and corridors ahead of him. But no matter how many claustrophobic hallways or vast cathedral-esque rooms he passes through, the exit is nowhere in sight.
The more he explores his strange new prison, the more he becomes convinced that he hasn’t been trapped there accidentally, and amongst the shadows and concrete, he comes to realise that he almost certainly is not alone.
A terrifying psychological nightmare from a powerful new voice in horror.
Schizanthus Nerd 