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Oh wow you all, this gusty searing novel has saved 2023 for me. Post-Traumatic follows Vivian, a Black Latinx lawyer who advocates for mentally ill patients at a psychiatric hospital in New York City. Even though she seems ambitious and put-together on the outside, in private she struggles with intrusive memories and overwhelming emotions from her dark and difficult childhood. For years Vivian coped with these difficult thoughts and feelings through obsessive infatuations with men, relentless dieting, dark humor, and smoking weed with her best friend Jane. But when Vivian takes a scary, bold step in relation to her family, all the other parts of her life start to crumble, forcing her to decide just how much she wants to try and heal from her past.

This freaking book. So sad, so dark, and yet so funny at the same time. Vivian, our protagonist, makes the wittiest observations. The book’s official blurb accurately describes Chantal Johnson’s prose as “razor-sharp�� which makes Vivian’s humor land like that of a lovingly neurotic yet self-aware friend. Vivian is so problematic throughout most of the novel too; she constantly compares herself to other women and critiques other women’s bodies (even while fiercely identifying with feminist politics on an intellectual level) and does everything she can to appeal to the (often white) male gaze. I imagine readers will feel frustrated with her, like with this passage: “Vivian felt rapturous in Matthew’s bed, high on a drug that couldn’t be bought, only earned: oxytocin! His attention gave her permission to exist. She was desperate not to lose it.�� And yet, she’s such a compelling character and Johnson’s writing is so precise I couldn’t stop reading. As a reference point, Vivian’s wit is similar to that of the television show character Fleabag.

I marked over ten passages where I either laughed out loud or smiled and giggled to myself. Here’s one from page 14, when Vivian reflects on not receiving male attention:

“Ambiguity, though central to aesthetic greatness, was horrifying in real life. When a man inflicted it upon you in a romantic context, it highlighted his cowardice and your abjection. They did it casually, like flinging a toddler into a body of water and walking away, insisting calmly that it will swim. Huey Lewis was right, man �� if loss of interest is inevitable, just get it over with and leave me, already.��

(The “flinging a toddler into a body of water�� literally made me lol. So good, and there are so many other examples!)

At the same time, Chantal Johnson does an excellent job of showing how Vivian’s problematic, women-hating and self-hating tendencies stem from her trauma. Through vivid flashbacks and non-sentimentally heart wrenching conversations with the people in her life, we see how Vivian has suffered through her constantly critical mother and her constantly critical mother’s abusive boyfriends, her sibling who died and her currently-living sibling who faces severe mental illness exacerbated by anti-Black racism, and her attempts to set boundaries and how her family tries to trespass them anyway. All of these personal stressors intersect with Vivian’s identity as a Black Latinx woman residing in the United States. Again, Johnson really shows Vivian’s hypervigilance and the dysfunctional ways she tries to protect herself. I felt right there with her, entertained by her wit while also hoping and hoping for her healing.

And the best part: there is hope at the end of this story, and Vivian does grow as a person. She hits her rock bottom and decides to pursue therapy and make amends with her best friend. Also, can I just say as a former recipient and current provider of therapy, the therapy scenes in this book are so freaking well-written! You may think that an author writing about a character talking to another person about her feelings would be boring, but Johnson’s prose is so impressively taut that she makes those scenes feel so alive and gripping. I’m so grateful that Johnson didn’t just portray Vivian’s suffering and that this book can join the slowly growing set of books that describe therapy both accurately and enthrallingly, like the memoirs What My Bones Know and I’m Glad My Mom Died .

Anyway, wow, 2023 really made me wait for over a month for a five-star read and yet it feels so worth it. As a survivor of trauma and PTSD I resonated with Vivian a lot, not all the specifics of course but the planning, perfectionism, and emotion dysregulation �� I’ve been there too! Some of those therapy scenes felt lifted right from when I sat on my first long-term therapist’s couch circa 2015-2017, lol. Johnson disclosed about coming from a violent home in and I’m so grateful to her for writing this book. I wouldn’t be surprised if other PTSD survivors feel the same. Vivian has already secured her place as one of my favorite protagonists ever: her sharp wit, her big heart, and her growth. I get teary-eyed and feel warm and hopeful just thinking about her.