THE GIRL IN THE GREEN DRESS
Jeni Haynes
By Human Library Creator- Michaella Voss
Welcome to the final Bellbird Book Club of 2024. The Girl in the Green dress is the sixth book of the year that we have digested together over good company and even better coffee. For those of you who have contributed in anyway to this community over the last twelve months, I firstly want to thank you for your ongoing support and presence in this space. The Bellbird Book Club is certainly less about the information we digest and far more about the company we keep. It has been an absolute pleasure to hold space for you all and I look forward to the thought-provoking conversations that will arise as we celebrate the year that is now soon behind us moving into 2025, let’s get into it!
Our final suggested read for 2024, is The Girl in the Green Dress by Jeni Haynes. This psychological thriller explores themes of memory, trauma, and identity. The novel follows the story of a young woman named Katie, who is struggling with the aftermath of a traumatic event in her life. As Katie works through her emotional and psychological struggles, she becomes fixated on the mysterious figure of “the girl in the green dress”—a person who appears in her fragmented memories. The novel comes with a heavy trigger warning for a reason, this read is certainly not for a wide and varied audience, talking in some detail around surviving sexual abuse.
The novel examines the difficulties of coping with repressed memories and the process of recovering from trauma. Katie’s journey to piece together her past and understand her own identity forms the emotional heart of the story. As she attempts to uncover the truth about the girl in the green dress, the novel reveals the complexities of trauma and how it can distort one’s sense of self. Katie as a character develops multiple personalities as such, which are explored throughout. These different personalities are seen to be developed as a way for Katie to protect herself from the trauma locked within her own memory.
This novel, although fictional, is inspired by Haynes’ own experiences with trauma and memory. It explores themes of abuse, trauma recovery, and the long-lasting impact of difficult experiences on one’s life. The book offers a rare glimpse into a subjective experience of dissociative identity disorder and is certainly a valuable read to gain a sense of empathy and understanding around the condition as a whole.
I commend the way The Girl in the Green Dress works to gently challenge and shift our understanding around what society considers as maladaptive coping strategies. I feel this book really demonstrates to us the deep power of the mind and the ability our brains will go to in order to protect us. At times, the protective strategies may appear extreme, or we may move into a phase of our life where these once, important strategies to manage emotion, no longer serve us but hinder our existence. As social workers, to fully have empathy and understanding for those we work alongside, I think holding an understanding of the origin of a behaviour is vital, and also a great sense of understanding around how all of us respond to trauma in different ways.
The second theme that I really enjoyed throughout was this unwavering sense of strength in the human spirit. Rather than Haynes focusing solely throughout the novel on the traumatic event itself, the focus is instead shifted to the process of healing, self-discovery, and coming to terms with one’s past. The themes of resilience and self-empowerment are woven throughout the book, giving it depth and offering hope despite the darkness surrounding Katie’s journey, there was light for her at the other end. I think the author herself is an inspiration, showing literally and figuratively how in any situation we are still the authors of our own lives and with the right supports, anyone can re-write their story, claiming it as their own!
