Higgie's story opens in 1885, a year before Dadd's death, and chronicles the experiences, both actual and imagined, that shaped his life. He is, he admits from the start, an unreliable narrator: "Where have I come from to arrive at this place? My recollection changes with every retelling. For the moment, this is the story that slips from me." He's also a mesmerizing one. For example, his chronicle of 1842 begins, "I have heard the heat there is so great it inhibits the singing of birds. I have not slept for days. My head is filled with infinite lists. Sir Thomas speaks as if he were eating boiled eggs....Something must account for the way he forms his words. They meet resistance at every word and wobble into silence." Higgie's striking prose and brief, taut chapters capture Dadd's inner life before and after the patricide he describes as "the fulcrum of my life."
I love Higgie's two previous books, nonfiction studies exploring art, inspiration, and identity (The Mirror and the Palette, Pegasus 2021, and The Other Side, Pegasus 2025). Her focus in both was often-marginalized women artists, and Bedlam displays the same interest in art and culture's edges; here, however, it's mental illness rather than gender that pushes—in this case, explosively propels—her subject out of the "mainstream." Much of what Bedlam depicts is tragic, yet—like Higgie's previous books—the novel is ultimately affirmative. Treated unjustly by others or, like Dadd, by their own brain chemistry, Higgie's subjects nevertheless make art. Bedlam is a depiction of the mind's fragility, but it is also a story about the strength of the imagination and the sometimes ferocious will to create.