In every form of media you can think of — across all genres, but especially in horror — a common trope is for villainism and mental illness to go hand in hand. Rare are the instances when a character in a movie, TV show or book is introduced and described as having anxiety, depression, OCD or any other number of difficult to manage disorders where that character is not later revealed to be a catalyst for some sort of problem needing to be solved. But in "Holly," Stephen King's latest notch on his ever-growing bibliography, there's a noteworthy shift in this unfortunate standard in that the main character, Holly Gibney, is the one solving problems, not causing them. And in his writing, he makes it so easy to see how this can, and should, be absorbed as a new norm in culture.
Often referenced as one of King's most beloved characters, dating back to when she first appeared in "Mr. Mercedes" — the first in his Bill Hodges trilogy, released in 2014 — Holly Gibney was initially depicted as a reclusive chainsmoking eccentric who takes Lexapro for her anxiety and struggles with extreme OCD. Seeing something of himself in her — and mentioning in various interviews that other people would likely as well — King took what what he originally envisioned as being a one-off character and stretched her role, revisiting her in "Finders Keepers" (2015), "End of Watch" (2016), "The Outsider" (2018), his short story collection, "If It Bleeds" (2020), and now a book all her own. Clearly seeing something in the character worth fleshing out, he does something rare — especially for a horror writer — by not twisting her mental illness into that of the stabby kill-y variety, which he's certainly been guilty of doing before.
