The Chocolate Debacle

Fiction about mental illness sometimes reads like a case history, a busman’s holiday for mental health professionals. This is not true of Karen Winters Schwartz’s The Chocolate Debacle, a well-written thriller and page turner. The book deals with the stigma of mental illness and the continuum between normal human experience and the symptoms of severe mental illness. Each short chapter deals with one character at a time and makes you feel like you know the person. All of the characters are survivors of partially failed relationships, and their characteristics are skillfully fitted together with their corresponding weaknesses, like interlocking pieces in a puzzle. This fascinating plot, with a lot of great visuals, would make a good movie script. The author did her homework so her descriptions of the symptoms and behaviors of severe mental illness ring true and convey the real experience of one affected young man. Schwartz gives us a view inside and makes his psychotic symptoms and actions seem almost rational.

Florence Loughton, a 58-year-old newly widowed successful lawyer, and Trey Barkley, a 26-year-old man with serious mental illness, are two lonely people who bond over Ms. Loughton’s dog Hector. Both are in love with Hector. Ms. Loughton “worked ridiculously crazy hours,” and Trey is Hector’s dog walker. An unfortunate incident results in Trey’s being accused of Ms. Loughton’s murder, which he may or may not have committed.

Schwartz has her own story. She is the president of the Syracuse branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and she is an advocate and speaker who has “experienced the joy of the recovery of a loved one.” Her writing exquisitely elicits empathy for Trey and all of the other characters. She describes the complexities and contradictions of human experience and mental illness. Trey is in his own world, yet keenly aware of the world around him, sensitive to how he is perceived by others, and aware of the consequences of his actions.

We can identify with Trey’s family. His father was a thoracic surgeon, his mother, an artist, and his brother, a surgical resident. Trey went to Brown University and dropped out because of mental illness. The sensitive description of his initial symptoms are ambiguous—is this a psychotic state or a variant of normal adolescent experience?

The similarities between the detective and the killer highlight the presence of the murderous thoughts, feelings, and impulses in all of us. The book also deals with small-town life, where everybody knows everybody and initial perceptions become embedded and resistant to change. Trey experiences “visual hazing,” where everyone is silently saying “you crazy murderer”—there is no anonymity of an urban environment here.

I would recommend this book to mental health professionals as well as to the general public, who could benefit from more knowledge and understanding of severe mental illness to reduce stigma—perhaps our major barrier in caring for people with mental illness.