My Darling Dreadful Thing

Set in the 1950s Netherlands, the novel is narrated by Roos Beckman, a young woman whose story unfolds in two interwoven strands: her own first-person account and transcripts of psychiatric interviews conducted by Doctor Montague, a psychiatrist tasked with determining whether Roos is mentally fit to stand trial for the death of her employer.

Since childhood, Roos has lived with a woman she calls Mama, though Mama is not her biological mother. Roos's real mother died young, and her sailor father paid Mama to raise her before dying at sea during the war. Mama runs fraudulent séances, exploiting postwar grief for profit, and forces young Roos into a cramped space beneath the séance room's floorboards to pull strings that create supernatural effects. In this terrifying darkness, Roos encounters Ruth, a spirit whose body was preserved in a bog centuries ago and whose appearance shifts unpredictably. When Roos's blood accidentally splashes onto Ruth's face, Ruth speaks for the first time, declaring them bound as helpmeet and yokemate, a devoted helper and a partner spiritually yoked to another. Ruth becomes Roos's protector and the only genuine spirit in Mama's séances, possessing Roos's body during performances to impersonate clients' dead relatives.

Mama starves Roos to keep her looking childlike and dresses her in thin gowns designed to appeal sexually to male clients. Roos endures groping and beatings. A wealthy patron named Mr. Mesman sexually assaults Roos; Ruth, possessing Roos, bites into his throat so violently he flees. Mama forbids Roos from ever speaking of it.

Everything changes when Agnes Knoop attends a séance. Agnes is a recently widowed young woman of mixed Scottish and Indonesian heritage who married Thomas Knoop, heir to the Rozentuin estate, and seeks to contact him nine months after his death. During the séance, Ruth possesses Roos and impersonates Thomas, but Agnes responds in English, nearly exposing the fraud. Roos improvises and kisses Agnes, who seizes her and kisses her back passionately. Roos sees a wolfish face in the windowpane; Ruth chases the apparition and reveals it was a male spirit.

Agnes returns and negotiates to take Roos away as her paid companion, effectively purchasing her from Mama. Agnes feeds Roos properly for the first time in memory, buys her new clothes, and takes her to a hotel. There, Agnes introduces her own spirit companion, Peter Quint, the same wolfish figure from the séance: an ancient, mummified spirit named after the ghost in Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. Agnes met Peter years earlier at a French convent school, where she fell and struck her head against a burial mound during a hazing ritual; her blood seeped into the earth and woke him, just as Roos's blood woke Ruth.

Agnes brings Roos to the Rozentuin, a once-grand estate now severely dilapidated. The household includes Agnes's sister-in-law, Willemijn Knoop, who has terminal tuberculosis. Willemijn is imperious and unsettling, masking deeper hatred beneath a cold smile. The estate bears marks of the Knoop family's fanaticism: a chapel filled with plaster saints that Thomas's grandfather treated as living people and a wardrobe carved with scenes of damnation. Roos settles in, deepening her attachment to Agnes, whose casual physical affection awakens feelings Roos has never known. Willemijn plants a seed in Roos's mind: If Roos wants to make Agnes truly happy, she should dig up Thomas's body and rebury it in the bog so he can return as a spirit.

Roos exhumes Thomas's coffin alone at night and drags his well-preserved body to the bog by wheelbarrow. When the body floats, she ties it into the wheelbarrow and pushes both into the water, but the ground gives way and she plunges in, breaking her hand. Ruth drags her to safety. Roos develops a severe infection and spends days delirious with fever. Agnes nurses her and discovers Ruth's bottle of powdered glass, a substance Roos has kept as a psychological safety net, believing it lethal if mixed into food. Agnes puts the bottle away.

Roos later visits Mama, who is dying of heart failure. In a vicious confrontation, Mama claims she is Roos's biological mother, that she tried to abort Roos by drinking turpentine but failed, and invented the sailor father to secure financial support.

Back at the Rozentuin, police arrive because Thomas's engraved watch was found near the road, dropped during transport. Agnes covers for Roos but is horrified: She never wanted Thomas back. Agnes reveals the truth about her marriage. Thomas forced her to take pills that made Peter disappear, leaving her emotionally numb. When wartime medication shortages restored Peter, he revealed Thomas had been having an incestuous relationship with Willemijn. A baby born from this relationship died within hours. When Thomas demanded a divorce and threatened to have Agnes committed, she pushed him out a window. The police ruled it an accident.

Agnes and Roos become lovers, but Thomas returns as a spirit, visible first to Willemijn and then to Roos: well-preserved but radiating malevolent hatred, the back of his skull gaping from his fatal fall. He lays siege to the Rozentuin for 33 days, trapping the women inside while moving the plaster saints across the lawn like a besieging army. Food dwindles. Willemijn dies. Thomas hurls pieces of a statue through the windows, shattering Agnes's resolve.

Agnes proposes they take the pills Thomas once forced on her, medication that makes spirits invisible. Roos is devastated, knowing this means losing Ruth forever. Ruth begs her to refuse. Roos tearfully chooses Agnes, and Agnes grinds pills into powder. Ruth begs for one last night; Agnes grants it.

The next morning, Roos finds Agnes unconscious and vomiting blood. Ruth has mixed the powdered glass into Agnes's food to prevent Roos from being separated from her. Thomas, who crept in during the night, whispered threats that drove Agnes to consume the pill-laced food in a frantic attempt to make him vanish. No pills remain for Roos. She performs binding rituals over Agnes's dying body, dripping her own blood into Agnes's mouth and commanding her to return as a spirit. Peter carries Agnes's body to the bog. Roos buries Willemijn, then confronts Thomas with total indifference to his cruelty. Without a victim who cares, his malice has no purpose; he relinquishes his hold over Roos and vanishes. The police, alerted by a poacher who spots Willemijn's remains, find Roos filthy and incoherent.

At trial, Doctor Montague testifies that Roos has a mental health condition, not malicious intent. Defense lawyer Lindelauf dismantles the prosecution's case: The powdered pills would have made food inedibly bitter, so Agnes consumed them knowingly; bite marks on Agnes's body do not match Roos's teeth; and three specialists confirm powdered glass cannot kill. Agnes died from a massive pill overdose, not glass. Roos is acquitted.

Montague helps Roos find an apartment and arranges typing work. In his 1958 book, he classifies her as a trauma survivor who constructed an alternate reality to cope, expressing hope she will one day abandon what he considers delusions. As custody medication wears off, Ruth gradually reappears. Roos does not acknowledge her for a long time, the betrayal of Agnes's death still raw, but eventually confesses she cannot be happy without Ruth. They reconcile. Roos waits for Agnes to wake as a spirit, sensing a faint presence: a hand on her neck, whiffs of Agnes's scent, a voice straining to be heard. The novel closes with Roos certain Agnes is stirring, declaring she will let the memory of Agnes possess her until they are reunited.