Friday, November 24, 2023

Books: The Butterfly Garden


 (Drivebycuriosity) - There are sometimes grizzly media report often about young women who have been abducted and held captive for years. The novel "The Butterfly Garden" by Dot Hutchison takes this issue to a new extreme ( amazon ). A young woman, who - together with other women - has been kept in a kind of winter garden for years, is questioned by the FBI after her release (this is a spoiler free blog).

The plot is not plausible, there are too many parts which I can`t believe. But I accept the book as a satire, as a modern fairy tale in the tradition of the gory Brothers Grimm`s fairy tales and the French story about "Bluebeard" . 

The novel is certainly a horror story, but it is also a psychological study about survival under very extreme circumstances and about women who are forced to adapt  to extreme situations. Parts remind of the Stockholm Syndrome and the Patty Hearst Case. The plot kept me curious and interested in the fate of its characters till the end. But certainly not for everyone.

 

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