About the Book
Book Reviews
Matt McAvoy
The Gentling of Hanna Johansen: A Betrayal of Trust is a phenomenal achievement: this is not just a book, it is a project, a study into the human psyche, how personalities overlap and the influence they have on each other through their own personal stories. The Gentling is a clever, intricately woven narrative about trauma, hope, despair and ultimately the power of love, trust and renewed belief in others. Most of this book’s small cast of characters have experienced trauma or depression, with issues including bereavement, active combat, sexual abuse, abandonment and survivor’s guilt, yet despite these dark themes, a ray of light shines brightly through the book, though while some are lucky enough to catch a glimpse of this ray, it comes too late or too dim for others to embrace.
I believe much of the tale is based on a true story, and that the author may have based the key supporting character in Hanna’s journey her grandfather (Papa) Andy Collins on a retired Professor of Psychology or a like figure. Working at the highest levels of education, Andy offers a professional overview, along with fellow professional Alexa Muybridge, Hanna’s psychiatrist, of the personal interactions which will either make or break Hanna. But in some ways, true story or not, Hanna is merely a metaphor for the toxic contagion of mental illness, which is growing to pandemic levels; indeed, the book frequently refers to a post Vietnam War mental health crisis, and looking at the world now it is difficult to argue with this. But with the advent of social media, and the globally reaching influence of peer pressure, as fuel for increasingly catastrophic rhetoric in the development of young people, it’s looking increasingly likely to have laser focused the long foreseen crisis on a much later generation maybe we resisted long enough to kick the can down the road, but no one can resist the immense phenomenon of the instant and global propaganda era. Indeed, Hanna herself doesn’t really appear except very briefly in the prologue until about a quarter of the way through the book, indicating that her story is a thoughtful choice for how the overall message is imparted; after all, there are many young girls like Hanna. What a tremendously relevant way to do so!
The Gentling of Hanna Johansen is superlative. It is as good and as qualified a study into the intertwining influence of conflicting and complementary mental health factors as you will read. A satisfying, utterly comprehensive sum of all its parts human, professional, academic and emotional. You will be very unlikely to read a better book this year in any genre and written in such a good, narrative format, semi fictionalized mental health study, ever.
About the Book
Unique Narrative Style: Co-authored by Hanna’s step-grandfather, Andy Collins, and his teenaged step-granddaughter, Hanna Johansen, this soul-searching multi-generational, multicultural novel plumbs the depths of the post-COVID Adolescent Human Condition by using the characters actual internal “voices” to moderate their innermost feelings about psychological trauma: the “how” and “why” it occurs and the painful, perilous path to either recovery or drowning in a whirlpool of endless self-destruction and eventual self-annihilation. Either way, there’s a lot at stake in the experimental process of gentling Hanna, as evidenced by her psychiatrist’s “cautiously guided inquiry” into the intimate details of the traumatic insults of her betrayal and Andy’s remarkably insightful and creative mentoring style which gradually renews Hanna’s trust in “human nature,” beginning with Andy and extending to her Native-American boyfriend, Nyke Roundhill, and eventually to her overly-protective father, Will Johansen. In that sense, beyond the co-authorship, this is an intensely collaborative narrative evolving from multiple points-of-view into an intricately woven story about four main characters desperately trying to keep Hanna from “closing the door” on her Self.
In addition, the 1:1 private Zoom tele-video therapy sessions hosted by Alexa between herself and Hanna are transcribed verbatim in the novel, as are the marriage counseling sessions between Andy, his wife/ex-wife, Kenzie and Dr. Nordyke, and discussions between Alexa and Hanna’s parents immediately after the suicide of Hanna’s best friend and lover, Sara Devereaux. These expose an additional level of intimacy but also transparency in revealing the many emotional complexities that are seldom surfaced in relationships where the very lives of family members are at stake.
Unique Counseling Approaches: The effects of psychological trauma—whether from passive (social media) or active (sexual assault) sources—have a profoundly devastating effect on the developing minds of our youngest netizens, often resulting in a variety of anxiety-related disorders including post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD), which has recently been reclassified under the heading of “Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders.” In so doing, the American Psychiatric Association moved PTSD out of the “Anxiety Disorders” category to underscore that PTSD is a disorder “directly connected” to an external event and not just a fear-based illness. This is precisely the point made about “the betrayal” in The Gentling of Hanna Johansen: it’s not due to some inherent “phobia” but is in fact spawned by a specific event or a series of events over a period of time that can later create a variety of “phobias” that actually mask the underlying source(s) of the stress disorder, such as Hanna’s andro- beikon- and claustro-phobias.
One of the newest therapeutic strategies for engaging teens and tweens suffering from current or past traumatic stress is displayed in this novel as “gentling,” a term borrowed from the equestrian manual for “taming” a wild horse rather than “breaking it.” The distinction between the two (taming vs breaking) goes to the heart of this heartfelt and heartwarming collaboration between Andy Collins (Hanna’s step-grandfather) and Alexa Muybridge (Hanna’s psychiatrist) who “double-team Hanna” in their care of and concern for Hanna’s survival and ultimate wellbeing. Their approach is experimental in that it’s a trust-based risk-sensitive model that includes deciphering “Hanna-code” (her “linguistic camouflage”) and interpreting the meaning behind Hanna’s remarkably insightful collection of original songs, the lyrics of which are imbedded as soundtracks in this novel.
