Dr Shelly, a brilliant psychologist forever haunted by her father and his murderous past, is driven by the need to discover why we do what we do. Is the concept of free will nothing more than a construct binding us to a less palatable truth, that who we are is predetermined and encoded at birth? Does anyone really choose, or are we just doing what comes naturally?
Shelly constructs an experiment to unleash the id and finds the perfect subject in Adam, a borderline psychotic born into a world of neglect and crime. By using a sensory deprivation tank and virtual reality, she aims to cure him of his psychosis and find out who we really are. By allowing the darkest part of us, the id, unencumbered by morality or remorse, to run free, Shelly delves into the deepest part of the subconscious only to surface with far more than she bargained for.
Dr Shelly, a brilliant psychologist forever haunted by her father and his murderous past, is driven by the need to discover why we do what we do. Is the concept of free will nothing more than a construct binding us to a less palatable truth, that who we are is predetermined and encoded at birth? Does anyone really choose, or are we just doing what comes naturally?
Shelly constructs an experiment to unleash the id and finds the perfect subject in Adam, a borderline psychotic born into a world of neglect and crime. By using a sensory deprivation tank and virtual reality, she aims to cure him of his psychosis and find out who we really are. By allowing the darkest part of us, the id, unencumbered by morality or remorse, to run free, Shelly delves into the deepest part of the subconscious only to surface with far more than she bargained for.
"Thunk, thunk, thunk," the soft wet beat of muffled drum filters into the dream of a little girl asleep. Alison Shelly is riding a blue horse with a rainbow mane. A mother she never knew rides next to her through a landscape only imagined. The rhythmic cadence of her breathing syncs to the pulse beyond sleep, still distant enough for slumber but drawing closer with every stroke.
"Thunk." Louder, closer, clearer, it becomes a gnawing intrusion once noticed. She looks to her mother for an answer, who, frowning, shakes her head, telling her to ignore it, but the sound penetrates and wipes away the last vestiges of sleep and pulls her into the waking world.
"Thunk," the sound made real. Alison, struggling to free herself from the tendrils of sleep, opens her eyes beneath the covers, wary of what lurks above. Knowing, the way children do, that some things only come to life when seen. But she is a brave child and breaks the surface as her eyes carefully move from one corner to the next, bedsheets clutched under her chin. Stuffed toys stare blankly back from glassy eyes, everyone, and everything in their proper place, just as she left them. The only movement comes from the gentle sway of her curtains catching the night breeze. She gets out of bed and shuts the window.
"Thunk."
Without bothering to switch on the light, knowing she shouldn't, she follows the sound downstairs.
"Thunk."
Louder in the kitchen but still one room away, she stops to run her finger over the tiny table already set for two. Syrup and salt, knives and forks, a day-old flower picked for her father, beginning to wilt. In the quiet of the night, drained from the color of the day, the room looks somber, false even, as if set for a play.
"Thunk."
It's coming from the cellar. Dad must be working downstairs, thinks Alison, her eye drawn to the blade of yellow light spilling from the open door, slicing the kitchen in two. The door that never shuts, constantly bouncing open, too much damp in the wood, her father once told her. To prove him right, Alison gently pushes the door shut, only to watch it bounce open once more, the light blinking in the dark. She licks her lips, her mouth is dry, and her throat parched and pads over to the sink. Taking a clean glass from the draining board, she fills it with cold water from the tap and takes a large swallow. It's good and cold. She's sure her father would like one. She is, after all, Daddy's little girl.
"Thunk."
She makes her way down the narrow stairway, careful not to make a sound. He'll be surprised, she thinks, but pleased to see her, he always is. A naked bulb hangs over her father's head. He has his back to her, diligently working at his bench. The chest freezer is open. A meat cleaver clasped in his right hand is raised above his head, ready to slice into whatever is on the bench. Alison weighs just over twenty kilos, light for a girl her age but heavy enough to creak the central stair. She screws her nose, surprise gone. Father stops mid-swing, caught in the moment. A moment she will remember. A moment she could have avoided, why couldn't she have just stayed in bed? Something tells her to turn away, go back, an echo from the dream, screaming to be heard, but Father is working, and like a good girl, she wonders if he's thirsty.
He turns to face her, lit up by her presence. She was right. He is pleased to see her. He always is. She is his life, after all.
"Hi honey, did I wake you?" He notices the glass, "Is that for me?"
His voice is chirpy, slightly higher than most of the dads she's met, making him sound permanently happy, as if ready to burst into song. She'd almost forgotten about the glass in her hand. Looking down she briefly wonders how it got there.
"Uh-huh." Her voice is thin, almost a whisper, "the window was open."
"I'm sorry, honey," he tells her gently, glancing at the bench, his smile breaks into a grin. There's a dark enthusiasm she's never seen before twinkling behind his eyes. "Hey, you wanna see what daddy's working on?"
She most certainly does not want to see what Daddy is working on, nor does she want to know. Daddies should have secrets. She wants to turn back re-join the dream, but her feet move her forward. She can see how much blood has soaked into his shirt sleeves and the tiny crimson dots that speckle his face. The rubber apron offers only partial protection. He wipes the sweat from his brow, leaving a red smear. Alison feels her lips tremble, eyes widen, she doesn't want her father to know that sometimes he scares her. She knows how much he loves her. His world is her, just the two of them, that's how it's always been, always will be, he's told her many times. There has never been room for anyone else. She knows he would never do anything to hurt her and would protect her with his life or someone else's. But he still scares her, something in the sing-song voice and the shadow she sometimes sees behind his eyes. She was sure once she had seen something lurking in there, hidden in the dark, something that wasn't as agreeable as her father, something that scurried away when the light shone. Sometimes she wondered if he was pretending to be the man he is, and if pretending, then what kind of man was he?
He followed her gaze and looked down at his shirt. "I guess this ain't ever coming out," he says, grinning in his sing-song voice. "Well, come on over here honey, why don't cha' take a look and see what's in the freezer?"
Every part of Alison's young brain screams, NO DO NOT LOOK, DO NOT LOOK AT WHAT'S IN THE FREEZER, YOU WON'T LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, AND IT WILL HURT YOU AND SCAR YOU. BECAUSE ONCE YOU PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN, YOU'LL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN. But she can't help it. She takes one last look at the father she knows before becoming the man known by a different name. Alison bends her head for a peek, and the world she knows disappears.
Id is a psychological thriller that shines a light into the darkest recesses of the human mind. The story explores the human capacity for hurting others through three pivotal characters: Jack Hopper is an old-school cop who gets into trouble for beating a suspect unconscious during an interrogation. Dr. Shelly is a psychiatrist who watched her murderous father at work in the basement when she was a child. The young man known as Adam is Dr. Shelly's subject, and a dark thread of violence connects him to Hopper, who was the one to catch him. Both Adam and Jack end up as Dr. Shelly's patients, and she takes a keen interest in what makes them tick, specifically in relation to their dark, violent urges.
The tension is maintained very nicely throughout the story, especially in scenes that capture the quiet before the storm, such as young Shelly about to walk in on her father or the police about to kick the door to Adam's lair open. Scenes also become incredibly tense when Spark juxtaposes two opposites, like the mental patient Adam and the innocent child Anton at the zoo.
The chapters are not very long and that makes it easier to dive in, looking forward to finding out what happens next. What works best in favor of this story is that the look it takes at those dark, uncomfortable places of the human mind is long, hard and unflinching. There is quite a bit of blood and gore, and it works very well in this book because the story seeks to portray the gritty, the unfortunate, the base and the violent, all the things most people tend to turn their heads from. I think the book manages to be just the right amount of graphic without crossing the line into the territory of violence for shock value. Hopper's observations about the criminal underbelly of his town and his conversations with Shelly appear fresh and crisp, even to readers who might be more desensitized to violence. The book definitely isn't for the faint of heart.
Overall, Id is a cinematic ride through the darkest parts of the mind that raises questions and explores a thrilling, if not easily palatable, side of humanity.