"Dandelion Angel: Poignant Novel About Borderline Personality Disorder"

[Celia]

Title: Dandelion Angel
Author: C.B Calico
Publisher: 4th Floor Press
Year: 2015

I have a lot of self-help books on BPD, but never looked at any fictional works on the topic—until I came across Dandelion Angel, a recent novel about daughters of mothers who are affected by borderline personality disorder. Dandelion Angel is poignant and interesting; so many of the scenarios author C.B. Calico describes hit close to home. According to the author, the novel was inspired by Lawson's Understanding the Borderline Mother, and Lawson's metaphorical borderline personality mother types: the hermit, the queen, the waif, and the witch. The episodic novel, which consists of short stories that coverage in the end, follows the lives of Caren, who is the "hermit's" daughter. Caren, a successful young professional, is enmeshed with her critical, impossible-to-please mother, Ute. Irja is the "queen's" daughter; a loving single mom, she terminates contact with her mother Ada to protect her young son. Jo is finally trying to set some boundaries with her needy "waif" mother, and Mandy ran away from her "witch" mother Petra when she was just a teenager. The title image comes from Mandy's story: she calls herself "Angel" and feels a close connection to a dandelion that has grown through a crack in the concrete on her terrace. The dandelion, I thought, is a beautiful symbol of hope and strength in the face of adversity.
As the stories unfold, we learn that the mother's illness was, in each case, most likely caused by childhood trauma. The daughters each reach, at different points, their pain thresholds; each symbolically breaks with the domineering mother figure, yet not all four daughters manage to actually go through with an actual, long-term break. What I loved about the book is that the characters, although they were based on Lawson's classifications, felt very real. I sympathized and identified with all of the daughters.
I must admit though that I found the book's length a bit disappointing—it feels like a collection of (very short) stories rather than a novel. Also, it's only available as E-Book, which isn't my favourite way of reading. However, the book's story lines, characters, symbolism, and overall focus on resilience resonated with me. I'd recommend Dandelion Angel.