neko cam’s Reviews > Datura > Status Update

A strange little exploration of the space between reality and illusion. The narrative follows a journalist for a fringe magazine, presenting a series of fantastical vignettes that explore one self delusion after another while the protagonist herself losses her grip on shared reality.

Yep, I think that's it. I think the slow slip into madness had finally reached its Rubicon.

Each chapter has been, for the most part, a brief vignette showcasing another form of paranoid delusion or conspiracy theory. These are tied together by exploration of the protagonist's relationship with her work and her boss. It makes for convenient bite-sized reading sessions. The protagonist is also growing progressively less reliable a narrator, and has begun to realise this herself.

I'm enjoying the procession of weird ideas that the protagonist is being subjected to - each ridiculous but with perhaps an inner core of philosophical insight and truth.

There is poetry to the words here, when they aren't made awkward by translation. In fact their being translated may actually add to the air of strange, dank otherness that clings to the narrative so far.