Have you ever picked up a novel, read a bit, been markedly disturbed by what was on the pages but just could not put it down?
This pretty much sums up my feelings about Ann Morgan’s debut novel, Beside Myself.
Helen and Ellie are identical 6-year-old twins – two peas in a pod. Helen, the older of the twins is regarded as “the good one”.
She is intelligent, sensible, and a natural leader. Ellie, who was deprived of oxygen at birth, is not so developed. She is routinely overlooked and is regarded as the difficult child.
When Helen decides to swop roles for a day as a prank, Ellie obliges. But the next day Ellie refuses to swop back. And when Helen protests that she isn’t Ellie, no one believes her.
Everything – from her clothes and toys to her excellent academic record at school, from her friends and being her parents’ favourite – disappears overnight. Suddenly they’re all Ellie’s.
And so begins Helen’s nightmare as a series of dark events unfolds that has the reader reeling at the turn of each page.
Narrated in a series of flashbacks through a first-person narration by Helen, and in alternate chapters, through a third person in the present day, the reader is taken on a dark, psychologically nerve-racking roller-coaster ride.
And as the days turn to weeks, the weeks to months, and the months to years, Helen loses her sense of self, her identity.
All that is left is “Smudge” – the third person narrator of the novel.
Helen is determined to prove who she is by asserting her Helen-ness to the world. But no one appears to see it.
As she becomes more desperate in her attempt to establish her true identity, she inadvertently appears to behave more and more like the Ellie she wants to prove she isn’t.
As she becomes more unreasonable and troublesome, so she becomes Smudge – the problem child who chooses a path of self-destruction that eventually leads to her being placed in an institution.
Some 25 years later, Smudge is living on the margins of society.
She has a problem with alcohol, mental illness and a profoundly unstable sense of who she is.
Ellie on the other hand has flourished and has a successful television career. She’s also assumed the name Hellie – a disquieting blend of the twins’ names.
Smudge receives a call out of the blue.
Hellie has been left comatose after an accident and her husband is desperately trying to contact Smudge to go to Hellie’s hospital bed in an attempt to help revive her.
The phone call threatens to pull her back into her sister’s destructive circle. But it’s also a chance for Smudge to face her past and confront the demons of her past.
Morgan has written an intricate novel that poses questions about family and identity.
It is a darkly psychological exploration of what makes us who we are. I found myself questioning whether Helen’s life changed for the worse because she was treated differently to Ellie or if this was always the way her life would have turned out.
Beside Myself is essentially a disturbing tale of how fragile one’s sense of self can be.
It left me breathless.
* Beside Myself by Ann Morgan is published by Bloomsbury