The Redemption of Morgan Bright

April 1, 2024
A sinister sanatorium with a history of escapes and deaths is the centerpiece of this eerie splice of psychological and supernatural horror from Panatier (The Phlebotomist). Using the alias Charlotte Turner, Morgan Bright voluntarily commits herself to the Hollyhock House, an asylum in Hay Springs, Neb., to undergo a short stint of treatment for purported “domestic psychosis.” Really, Morgan is seeking to uncover the undisclosed facts behind her sister Hadleigh’s death after she fled from Hollyhock two and a half years earlier. To Morgan’s dismay, the character of “Charlotte” soon takes over and begins cooperating complacently with the asylum’s bizarre treatment regimens—as revealed in postcommitment interviews conducted between Morgan and police and medical authorities and laced throughout the text. These transcripts suggest Morgan harbors two strong personalities in conflict with one another and call into question how much about Morgan’s identity the reader can trust. Though the description of Hollyhock’s strange therapies becomes repetitive in spots, Panatier conjures an unsettling mood of suspicion and disbelief from his depiction of the asylum’s cultish caregivers and their oddly ritualized behavior. Fans of paranoid thrillers like Catriona Ward’s Last House on Needless Street will devour this.

March 8, 2024
In his first foray into horror, Panatier (Stringers, 2022) draws inspiration from the repeal of Roe v. Wade and disturbing psychiatric treatments of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to provide an eerie commentary on present threats to women's bodily autonomy. Charlotte Turner and Morgan Bright are being interviewed by a police detective in the aftermath of a bizarre, catastrophic event that has destroyed Hollyhock House, a remote institution for the psychiatric treatment of women. Charlotte arrived at Hollyhock with a diagnosis of domestic psychosis and the determination to get well so she could start a family with her beloved husband. Morgan was admitted under false pretenses, secretly trying to uncover what happened to her sister, who died shortly after escaping from Hollyhock a year before. Charlotte and Morgan are the same person--or they were, before the persona Morgan created to gain entry to Hollyhock took on a life of her own. Though Panatier doesn't succeed in linking all his story elements to the themes of the book, the story's grounding in the real-life horror of history makes for a chilling read.

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