Who are you? – Julie Hearn’s Rowan the Strange

Julie Hearn‘s Rowan the Strange is, at once,  a fairy tale and also a riff of One flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or, perhaps, the Bell Jar.It continues her exporation through questions of identity that she has explored in books like Ivy and what adults can do to children. It is becoming a wider question in children’s literature as writers like Neal Shusterman explores this question in Unwind or Skinned by Robin Wasserman.

Rowan is sectioned for schizophrenia by his family and undergoes electroshock therapy under the guidance of Dr Von Metzer. After his first treatment, he confuses his identity for Superboy in his comics which are delivered. Von Metzer decides that a leading role as Peter Pan in the pantomime could be used to induce an attack to try and right his sense of self. Hearn explores the notion of how Rowan sees himself and the different voices inside his head as the “real” identity comes back to the fore.

The ECT is shown to be short term but he wants the treatment again when his friend, Dorothea, commits suicide on the edge of the asylum and in the sight of freedom. Hearn iterates over the theme with Rowan but a trip to see the film of the Wizard of Oz helps him begin to understand his own place in the world. The fantastic darkly echoes the issues that Rowan is exploring and it is on the return from the cinema that he is able to stand up to the adult world and reject its own interpretation of him as insane and Dr Von Metzer as a suspected Nazi spy. He finds his own place and space.

Disturbing and revelatory, less preaching perhaps than some authors, Hearn forces the reader to identify with Rowan and his story. One does question how he will fit in with the world outside which is at war and his family but it is a hopeful ending, a litlte like Ivy who also takes her own identity into her hands. Unlike Ivy, Rowan does not need to escape from the world but he is not entirely part of it.  Hearn’s worlds are chaotic and this novel brings this to the fore.