When we first meet Celine Bower, we learn that she is a kind and respected young woman with an extreme and focused work ethic. She has come back to her home town to begin her career as a vet.  With the hopes that every new beginning brings, Celine is looking forward to her new start, for which she has slogged through years of study and commitment to excellence. For the reader, Celine is a welcome reminder of the hopes and aspirations reaped in the benefits of hard work.

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The unwanted and rejected advances of a predatory male in her world introduces a dramatic dread – because of her lack of interest in him, he becomes a beast that takes what he wants, and enjoys inflicting on the drugged Celine a debauched and horrifying gang attack and rape.

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Carly Brown’s writing brings the reader to that place, beautifully written in its cringe-worthy horror, leaving a numbness and stillness within. At this juncture, Carly Brown touches on a universal and human fear - feelings of helplessness, vulnerability, and powerlessness. Brown’s writing lets us sit in that, and feel as helpless as Celine does, for not being able to remember anything. She has gone away like a wounded animal, somewhere deeply inside herself to heal, suspended within herself. For a long time, Celine’s inner light and beauty have been stalled, and the tension of holding this touches our desperate need for resolution-not only on her behalf, but for ours. 

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An unexpected event changes this for Celine. Jagged memory bits bring her attack to life, and she feels all of it. Knowledge is now her power, and she enters a portal of change. Telling her mother  she is ‘no longer the person she was’ is at once sad and jubilant. What happens as Celine becomes her own phoenix is both spectacular and unnerving. We cheer the meting of justice. She is the vigilante for Everyman.

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There is a collective consciousness that holds the tensions of injustices everywhere in the world. There are leaders who put their own needs first, laugh at the vulnerable and encourage thieving and discreditable behaviour. Sexual assault, killings, and disregard for human life have become so normalized it causes a yawn in the news. Social media allows everything from bullying, shaming and encouraging death, and we are unable or unwilling to stop it. This connects to our own helplessness and the need to make sense of what appears to be an ‘alternate reality’. Celine’s decision to fight violence with violence may be open to criticism, but she is someone, doing SOMETHING,  to fight back.

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For this beautiful story  I thank you Carly Brown, for sharing your light, and giving us a reminder to touch into the power of our own.

~Anita