A Striking Novel of Reflection and Delusion
As its title suggests, Mirror Me by Lisa Williamson Rosenberg (Little A, $28.99) unfolds through a hall of mirrors: it’s a novel with psychological ambiguity, told by a pair of characters who may or may not be the same person. This is a slippery book, by design: characters fade and come into focus and fade again. They form repeating patterns and double themselves. Narrators are unreliable and delusional (maybe).
The author’s biography feels particularly germane to the story that unfolds within these layers, as Rosenberg is the daughter of Black and Jewish parents, a former professional ballerina, and now a practicing psychotherapist. All these aspects of her experience weave through the book, whose setting in a mental hospital gives it a sense of eerie uncertainty that propels us through the confusion.
Our first narrator is Pär, whose Swedish name is pronounced “pair” but Pär is, we think, the alter ego of protago- nist Eddie Asher. When we meet Eddie, he is a patient in the Hudson Valley Psychiatric Hospital, convinced he has murdered his brother Robert’s fiancée, Lucy. We learn who Eddie is through a series of flashbacks mostly recounted by Pär. Eddie is connected with a group of dancers led by a mercurial director. The dancers and their acolytes/friends live lives of transiency. Some are adopted and in touch—or out of touch—with their birth families, some are Jewish, some mixed race, some both.
Eddie remains likable and relatable, even though the reader is never sure who he actually is. We are led to believe he’s struggling with mental health issues, that he may even be violent and delusional. But his doubts and vulnerabilities make for an engaging character. As with everything else in Mirror Me, Lucy, Eddie’s love interest/ obsession (his brother’s betrothed) is hard to pin down. She’s often dishonest, but also emotionally raw; again, Rosenberg keeps these tricky characters appealing.
As for Pär, we never fully figure out whether he’s embodied or not, but cer- tainly, he covets Eddie’s physical self: “What if it were me living this body’s life, me being touched and missed and loved? Me loving in return, me experiencing, laughing, shouting, swimming, dancing, being.” Pär also aggrandizes himself. He tells us that Eddie regards him as “cooler, tougher, his fantasy self.”
So what is real and what is fantasy here? The ideas in this book are compelling and clever. Rosenberg makes excellent use of her experience as a psychotherapist. She shares important insights about mental health and mental illness, the untrustworthiness of memory, and the risks inherent in misdiagnosis and inappropriate psychological treatment. Rosenberg has a lot to say about our perceptions of race. Whom do we see when we see a person of color? What are the consequences of failing to see people for who they are, distracted by what they “represent”? My assumptions about characters were upended in a good way. I’m always happy to be played by an unreliable narrator.
Reading this book soon after the November 2024 election in the U.S., I wondered if Mirror Me reflects who we are as a country. We are beset by unreliable narrators. We have a tenuous grasp on what truths make up our nation, and who we are as a people. We live with each other, and yet have increasing gaps in our understanding of one another.
All of which makes Rosenberg’s skill at handling misperceptions and fantasy both noteworthy and laudable.
Martha Anne Toll is a book critic and novelist, author of Three Muses and the forthcoming Duet for One, both from Regal House.
