Book Review

By Derryll White

Dionne, Karen (2020).  The Wicked Sister.

“I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”   ― Marilyn Monroe

In spite what other reviewers have to say, I don’t think this is a good novel.  Drawn to it by the mention on the cover of mental institutions, incarceration and psychopathy, I was looking for some examination of the state of U.S. mental health services and an informed discussion of the world of a psychopathic child. The author is inconsistent even in ascribing the needs and wants of Diana, the young psychopathic child in question.

There are plot inconsistencies. Dionne also employs a number of plot mechanisms that don’t enhance the story line.  Time switches back and forth, sometimes in a barely trackable manner.  Fairy tales are introduced as plot mechanisms, perhaps so that Rachel, the primary character, can magically talk to animals and birds without it seeming foreign.  Disbelief is not suspended.

Karen Dionne seems to require a happy ending.  Many die but Rachel perseveres.  I would not recommend ‘The Wicked Sister.’

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Excerpts from the novel

RECALCITRANT CHILD – I keep telling Peter that we need to accept our daughter for who she is, and that whatever idealized version he’s carrying in his head of what he thinks a little girl should be is not our reality.  Diana was never a sapling that could be shaped and bent; she was born a tree, roots planted firmly in the earth, thick trunk, sturdy branches.  Intractable, immoveable.  Asking her to change would be like asking a rock to get up and walk.

TREATMENT – Growing up in a mental hospital is every bit as One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest as it sounds – locked rooms, leather restraints, electroshock therapy, mood-altering drugs – but that was the point.  I was warehoused.  Forgotten.

PSYCHOPATHS – Taking something away from her as a punishment has no effect, because there’s nothing she cares about enough to make the threat of losing it change her behavior.  Psychopaths also don’t feel resentment because they don’t care what other people are doing or about what they have.

PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT – The padded room is meant to calm patients after they’ve had an episode, but in my experience, after a few hours you come out so beaten and worn down from being so completely at the mercy of others, you’d do anything they told you to if only they would make it stop.  Never mind the drugs.

PSYCHOPATH – I understand that Diana can’t help what she is, that she is incapable of feeling love or compassion, and that her sole focus on pleasing herself drives her every thought and action.  But you can be evil even if you don’t choose it.

PARENTS – Parents of psychopaths often have a hard time admitting that their children are dangerous.  They deny, minimize, refute, excuse.  Even if they are intuitively aware of their child’s sinister side they tell themselves their children aren’t evil because they wish or need this to be the case.

MISTREATMENT – But when it comes to mental strength, I have the advantage.  I‘ve been locked up, subjected to electroshock therapy, spent weeks in solitary, been hosed down with cold water along with a host of other humiliations.  I’ve been forced to undergo hypnotherapy.  I’ve been sleep deprived, drugged.  I may not be his equal physically, but I‘m pretty sure I’ve got him beat when it comes to endurance.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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