Neel Mullick. Dark Blossom. New Delhi: Rupa, 2019. Print.
The first book from our reviews with a 2019 date is a true page-turner. It is not a thriller in the usual sense. One could perhaps call it a psychological thriller because the narrator and main character is a psychologist, but there is no psychopath nor is anyone going crazy. It can best be called a mystery with enough plot twists to keep readers guessing until the end. And yet, like any good mystery, it all makes sense.
Our narrator Cynthia tells of her professional relationship with Sam, a widower trying to come to terms with the death of his wife and only child, a son named Will, in a car accident. He struggles with the loss and the ensuing depression.
Cynthia notes in an effective analogy:
The loss of a loved one is like an amputation for the bereaved. Even though he may transition from anger to acceptance eventually, the phantom pain may never go away. (13)
Sam also is frustrated with the Westchester County police whose investigation seems inconclusive. There were no signs of any other vehicle on the road or any animal being struck, yet the car they were riding in just seemed to have skidded off the clear highway and into a tree.
The analyst and client seem to be at cross purposes, though Cynthia seems to be making some progress over time. But it is slow. While Sam pleasantly reminisces about his son, he refuses to even talk about his late wife.
Meanwhile, Cynthia’s own problems come to the fore. She has recently divorced her husband of about twenty years. The husband was abusive, but it turns out he was even more abusive towards their only child, Lily. This daughter does not really want to have anything to do with either of her parents and has been getting into trouble in school. She graduates high school, but those last few months were out of character when compared to her behavior and school record before that. She wonders if her mother was such a good psychologist, why didn’t she see what was going on between her and her father?
Cynthia does get some relief from a retired psychiatrist who was her mentor while she was working on her doctorate, but she is trying to make sense both of Sam’s behavior and her own disrupted family life.
The tale is intense. We understand or try to understand both Cynthia and Sam. Gradually things become clearer and eventually we even learn the truth about the accident that took the lives of Sam’s wife and son. But it is a convoluted path, with several surprises on the way. Like a good Hitchcock or Christie tale, the audience or reader may think everything has been revealed, but there is one more twist, and then maybe one more, and then…
No, there is no murder, but there is mystery. Does Cynthia really see what is going on? Is she really acting professionally? What is Lily trying to do? What is Sam really up to?
Dark Blossom will keep you in your chair reading.
Two personal observations. (1) This reviewer was able to guess the type of flower Sam planted in memory of his son before it was revealed. Can you? (2) Though the story is set in New York City and nearby Westchester County, the book was published in India and uses British spelling and punctuation practices. It even spells god in the lower case, as though it were not a name. That is not a problem for any reader’s comprehension, but since the narrator of the first-person tale is lifelong New Yorker, it just seems a little odd that Cynthia would use these conventions.