Book Summary and Reviews of Bedlam by Jennifer Higgie

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Janine_S

The price of sanity
A hauntingly lyrical fictional biography focusing on one year in the life of the Victorian painter, Richard Dadd.

First, before I started the book I wanted to know a bit about its subject since I had never heard of him. I learned that in his early twenties he showed such promise he was invited to exhibit at the Royal Academy. Then in 1842 through an invitation from Sir Thomas Phillips, a Welsh lawyer, he joined a group doing the Grand Tour of Europe and the Middle East to document its journey. While in Egypt he suffered heatstroke or a mental break down and became a devotee of the god Osiris and upon his return he murdered his father believing he was an imposter - sad tale for sure.

Higgie writes in short pithy sentences, sometimes even using one word or at others in more traditional writing style. I think this contributes greatly to showing how unhinged Dadd’s mind is becoming. It’s around Venice that we start to see a change. The story moves chronologically and the mind grows “so full of terrible thoughts that at times I have truly doubted my own reason. I have begun to believe that paintings are not imaginary things, while the works I move through is constructed entirely from shadows.” Then he learns of Osiris from a book Sir Thomas gave him and Dadd seems in his mind to be better having encountered this god. They journey back home. It’s 1843 and London has become constricting to Dadd, believing he must fight the devil because he’s grown to believe most people in his life are either the devil or imposters. The book ends in 1885 at Broadmoor Hospital with Dadd, now incarcerated as a “criminal lunatic” wondering how he got there.

While strange in a way, the book brilliantly creates the inner workings of a mind in turmoil and descent. The prose-poetry writing I think helps this and I mentioned earlier also contributes well to describing a mind breaking up. Dadd’s comments on his art which he describes in fabulous way is another way Higge captures the mind’s fragility.

For all of the above that I gave this book five stars. I was so interested in the story from the beginning. I was intrigued by the writing style and felt the anguish of a mind disintegrating as I read.

My thanks to NetGalley and Verso Books for allowing me to read this ARC.