ShutterstockSigns of Damage is Diana Reid’s third novel, following her bestselling campus romp Love & Virtue and the post-lockdown novel Seeing Other People. The novel presents itself as a psychological thriller. Its cover – a broken glass vase and a funereal white lily against a black background – signals dark and disturbing subject matter.
The publisher’s website describes it as a “gripping tale of unravelling memories and moral ambiguities” that “wrestles with the difference between understanding other people, and trying to explain them”. The epigraph continues the theme, referring to the depths of the unconscious: Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in ugly ways.
The lines have been attributed (likely misattributed) to Sigmund Freud, though here they are credited to “source unknown”.Review: Signs of Damage – Diana Reid (Ultimo Press)The plot moves between Italy in 2008 and Australia in 2024. Death shows up almost immediately.
We first meet the protagonist Cass in the prologue. She is in an Italian police station speaking to a coroner about someone’s untimely death. She was present when the person fell from a balcony.
Cass claims that she had a seizure immediately before the incident.We learn that she suffers from psychogenic nonepileptic seizures, which are caused by underlying psychological distress, rather than abnormal electrical activity in the brain. For epileptics, the signs that anticipate a s.
