Many nov­els are told from mul­ti­ple points of view, but few fea­ture more than one char­ac­ter speak­ing to us from the same phys­i­cal human form — as they do in Lisa Williamson Rosenberg’s new nov­el, Mir­ror Me. 

Eddie is the bira­cial, adopt­ed son of Jew­ish par­ents, who also have a bio­log­i­cal son, Robert. Grow­ing up on the Upper East Side of New York City, the broth­ers had a strained rela­tion­ship, with Robert some­times pro­tect­ing Eddie and some­times bul­ly­ing him. Com­pli­cat­ing this pic­ture fur­ther is the exis­tence of Pär, Eddie’s alter­nate personality.

When we meet Eddie, now an adult, he has just turned him­self into the Hud­son Val­ley Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal. All his life he has suf­fered from black­out peri­ods, times where he has expe­ri­enced or does things that he can’t remem­ber lat­er. The lat­est inci­dent has brought him to the hos­pi­tal: Eddie fol­lowed Robert’s fiancée, with whom he is also very close, to the sub­way sta­tion. His next mem­o­ry is of a woman falling under the train as it comes through the sta­tion. He is hor­ri­fied at the infer­ence that he has killed Lucy.

As Eddie tries to explain his sto­ry to the renowned psy­chi­a­trist Dr. Richard Mont­gomery, Pär keeps inter­rupt­ing to tell the sto­ry from his point of view. Both are unre­li­able nar­ra­tors, and the com­plex, intri­cate plot unspools slow­ly. Eddie and Par are two dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties in the same body, fight­ing to see who is stronger, who can push the oth­er one out. Mean­while, Dr. Mont­gomery tries to fig­ure out who is in con­trol. Read­ing this psy­cho­log­i­cal roller­coast­er, you must sus­pend belief to believe in all the ways char­ac­ters become con­nect­ed as it progresses.

Nev­er­the­less, Mir­ror Me is a mind-bend­ing thriller. In this nov­el, Williamson Rosen­berg explores issues of men­tal ill­ness, mul­tira­cial prej­u­dices, and fam­i­ly dynam­ics from a unique angle.