Next Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

Let’s get into a book universe this time. I am a huge book enthusiast, as you can tell from the basic premise that I love to paint stories, and where do we find the stories? Yes, nowadays … mainly on the internet. But the most beautiful version of any kind of story is printed on paper, bound into a book. You can smell it touch it and lose yourself inside it, be whoever and travel wherever you choose to.

We are at the beginning of the new year and I have finished one book and I loved it! It was a unique fantasy for adults and it was not bad! The Book of Night by Holy Black was her adult fantasy debut, released in May 2022. I am one of those humans that automatically connect fantasy stories primarily with kids. I was partly right here as the author’s primary demographic focus was on children and teens. However, this one is a nice detective story with a hint of magic. If you are not really into too much of a fantastical world but still want something unique, and by chance, you are an adult, you’ll like this.

To quickly sum up the plot:

The main protagonist is living a life of an ex-con artist trying to stir away from troubles and navigate towards a decent life. However, her reputation precedes her and soon she’ll be dragged into the game of dark shadows, wealthy men in secret societies, and crime. I would say it is not a typical fantasy story, it has fantastical elements but overall it reads more like a detective story set in the modern world. We experience a new approach to magic in books. Magic was incorporated into the story so seamlessly that I caught myself up being entirely engulfed by thinking having an enchanted shadow was a normal day-to-day thing. In the book, people can have their shadows magically altered for fashion reasons or to acquire special powers and influence but it doesn’t go without price.

As I love the dark parts of storytelling I did enjoy the book’s focus on shadows, not only for the magical uncertainty that shadows present but also for the close link to analytical psychology, mainly to Jung’s and Freud’s work on the unconscious. The shadow in psychology and also in the book represents our “darker” self, the parts that were repressed and do not correspond with our ideal ego. The author goes deep here and shows us what you can do to your shadow, what it consists of and how it behaves. Generally, shadows in the story were treated somewhat as slaves, entirely dependent (up until the point) on their humans. If you made alterations to your shadow it started to behave visibly differently. The magic in the story is brought about by the group of people that can make these alterations, they are called gloamists, who possess the old knowledge of how to work with shadows. The shadows can be tweaked, completely altered, or even stitched to a different human being as a means of acquiring special powers.

Despite the fantastical detective story, I mainly enjoyed the reminder that the author (maybe unintentionally) delivers us, to look at our own shadow. Do you know what it consists of? How does it behave? Are you willing to work on it? As I mentioned earlier, shadow work is a part of psychology that therapists may employ to help you out of a dire situation. But you can do the work on your own. It’s nothing new or woo-woo, it’s the basic fact that exist for centuries, we are reminded of it even in fairytales; that we all have a light part and a dark one. What is more important, however, is to accept it as a basic fact and not approach shadows as something bad. It is purely the other side of one coin. Without it, we wouldn’t be whole.

So, let’s take something from the book ... do take a kind approach to your shadow self, and do not push it away, it is here to help you understand yourself more clearly. Under the face of the story, we unpack the whole simile to our shadow archetypes. It encourages us to dig deep and search for what is close by but not entirely obvious.

And so what happens when the shadow gets untethered? According to Jung, when the conscious mind is surprised, perplexed, or frozen by indecision, the shadow can occasionally overshadow a person's behaviour. "A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps...living below his own level.” [1.]

It is a fresh new literary take on the topic of our unconscious. Nineteen century had its Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, does our century have Book of Night? I hope I rather encouraged you to either read the book or deep dive into your psyche on the way to improvement and health because it is not only that our bodies need attending but our souls as well.

Finally, I’m leaving you with a couple of links whichever way you’ll choose to go. If you are interested in learning more about Shadow, try first this article it may be a tad lengthy, however worth it. You’ll see there is a tiny membrane between psychology and spirituality.

For people in love with books, I suggest you start here and continue with Jung.

Love, Sandra

References

1. Jung, C.G., Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious**.** London, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 1991.