Who is “She”? The enigmatic title of Claire Harris’s seventh book of poetry refers to a Trinidadian immigrant living in Calgary named Penelope-Marie Lancet. We learn of her tragic life in a series of erratic letters she writes to her sister Jasmine in Trinidad. Penelope is haunted by the memory of another sister, an infant, who slipped from Penelope’s arms and fell to her death. At the time Penelope was only six years old; as an adult, she develops an obsessive need for a child of her own, which she believes will repair her life once and for all. The effect this obsession has on her fragmenting personality gives new meaning (or old) to the word “hysterical.”

It’s refreshing that Penelope’s madness is portrayed as a condition, an illness merely aggravated by tragic circumstances. In some narratives that depict insanity, characters are driven mad by some malevolent force outside of themselves, which often allows an author to stand on a soapbox, pointing fingers and laying blame. There are no villains in She, however, no cut-and-dried struggle between good and evil – just a moving and tenderly rendered portrait of mental illness. The book demonstrates how the afflicted, their loved ones, and our society in general can be ill-equipped to effectively cope with such a problem. And Harris, thankfully, offers no convenient solutions.

She is a daring and complex novel-in-verse, as challenging to read as it must have been to write. As Penelope’s multiple personalities become more and more assertive, her letters take on their voices with increasing strength. From academic English to various Caribbean dialects and patois, from ragged prose to surgically precise and playful verse, Harris displays startling versatility in both voice and form. Ambitious and pulled off with heartbreaking flair, She is a virtuoso performance from a player who has earned her place in the spotlight.