Only nineteen, April is an elective mute, accused of a religiously motivated atrocity. Logan, a borderline suicidal criminal psychologist, must assess her sanity in a world where – ten years after the death of Richard Dawkins – moves have been made to classify religious fundamentalism as a form of mental illness. Asking fundamental questions about the nature of reality, Barber skillfully explores the balance between the emotional and rational sides of human experience.
Devotion by Ros Barber Review
Religion is a Mental Illness and Logan is a Broken Man
It’s not often I find a book that both entertains me and challenges me intellectually. It’s not often I am sucked into the drama of a great novel (love, loss, betrayal, revenge) whilst simultaneously left pondering the bigger questions about life, God and faith. But that’s exactly what happened when Oneworld sent me a copy of Award Winning novelist Ros Barber’s second novel, Devotion.
In all honesty, I was a little intimidated when I began to read Devotion. Barber is an incredibly intelligent academic; she’s a Visiting Research Fellow from Sussex University, a lecturer in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths University and Director of Research at the Shakespearean Authorship Trust. My first thoughts were 1. Bugger, I may as well hang up my quill now, I’m not a proper writer like she is, and 2. This book is going to be way too clever for me. And I was right, in a way, because this book is clever… and expertly written… but instead of being overwhelmed by her writing I came away enlightened.
Devotion centres around the lives of April, a nineteen year old selective mute who has performed a horrendous crime in the name of God; and Logan, a criminal psychologist and depressive suffering from the loss of his daughter and attempting to prove that April’s religious beliefs are sufficient grounds for her to be classed as mentally ill. But then in steps the seductive Dr Salmon, who shows Logan that perhaps the answer to suffering on earth is to Believe. In something, anything.
So are those that he is classifying as ill actually the sane ones? Is he the one that needs to be saved? Will Logan push on through his grief, ruining his marriage and alienating those around him in the process? Or does he start to look to something higher to take him out of his darkness?
Barber’s protagonists are richly drawn and multi-layered in their complexity. She paints a vivid picture of society’s definitions of what is right and wrong, then shows us our own truth thinly veiled beneath the flaws of her fallible characters.
Barber’s writing is a delicious swirl of heavenly poetry combined with grounded (yet light) science. A well researched novel, Barber has the ability to educate on one of life’s most sensitive subjects, whilst still enthralling her readers with a tight and gripping tale of the rational and emotional sides of human experience.
What every author wants from her novel is to entertain and challenge her readers, no small feat, yet that is exactly what Barber has done. If God really does exist, He is in every flourish of her gilded quill.
Devotion is published by Oneworld Publications.
ISBN: 978-178074-728-6
