Death Wish

Some novels welcome you into their world. Gemma Vale’s Death Wish closes the door behind you, leaving you alone with the thoughts you would rather keep hidden.

There is a particular pleasure in reading fiction that disturbs me. I want to feel the author’s imagination reaching through the characters. I want to be fascinated, angry, uncertain, and so deeply absorbed that the familiar world disappears for a while. Vale’s psychological horror did precisely that. Its darkness is uncompromising; its greatest accomplishment is the peculiar intimacy of its voice.

Inside Lydia Mortensen’s mind

Lydia begins the novel surrounded by people who make her feel invisible. Her home offers little comfort, her school life is cruel, and her loneliness has accumulated into a private language of resentment. An unexpected inheritance introduces her to a house whose secrets are best approached with considerable caution. That is all the plot you need before opening the book.

What kept me reading was the relationship Vale establishes between Lydia and the reader. I could recognise the ache of wanting to belong, even as Lydia’s inner world began to make me profoundly uneasy. Her dry observations occasionally provide a welcome, wicked flicker of humour. Sympathy becomes complicated, as it should in a novel interested in the shadows of human behaviour. Vale trusts us to sit with that discomfort.

A voice you can almost feel

Vale writes with a heightened awareness of the body. Fear has texture; silence seems to carry weight. A feeling may expand across several images before the prose suddenly contracts into an abrupt, disarming fragment. The rhythm is unusual, sometimes exhausting and remarkably expressive. I found the accumulation of metaphors and sensations central to the experience of inhabiting Lydia’s thoughts.

In the acknowledgments to my advance copy, Vale describes writing with synaesthesia as a somatic experience. That description illuminates the singular physicality of her language. Her sentences pursue sensations that many writers would pass over in a line. The result is a narrative that can feel feverish, claustrophobic and intensely personal.

I read fiction to feel an author’s soul moving through the characters. Vale’s prose made that encounter unusually vivid.

The Gothic imagery is equally assured: an unsettling house, strange objects, an inheritance shadowed by family history. Domestic details acquire a threatening presence, and the supernatural atmosphere presses upon Lydia’s psychological reality. Vale develops the mood patiently enough for each familiar space to begin feeling unfamiliar.

Women are allowed to write darkness

I would love to see more women writing horror with this degree of ferocity. Female protagonists deserve the full, terrible range of the human imagination: jealousy, rage, obsession, cruelty, moral ambiguity. A woman in fiction can make us angry, frighten us, or leave us searching for a response more complicated than admiration. These are fascinating places for an author to explore.

Death Wish enters those places without cushioning their impact. Its violence and psychological distress are severe, and the emotional experience can be overwhelming. Readers should consult the content notes before beginning. For those who welcome challenging horror, however, there is something compelling about a novelist so committed to the darkness of her chosen subject.

ARC disclosure: I received an advance reading copy for review consideration. My rating and opinions are independent. Content notes: bullying, emotional abuse, intrusive thoughts, graphic violence and gore, death, and suicide. This is a particularly intense work of horror.