Meena Kandasamy (2017) When I Hit You. London, Atlantic Books. 978-1-78649-128-2

 

When I Hit You is set in southern India – between Chennai, Kerala and Mangalore and is a fictionalised account of the brutally abusive four-month marriage the author experienced shortly after leaving college

 
[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence and Abuse; Rape]
 
[Spoiler alert]
 
The novel travels back and forwards in time to detail the main character’s life as a woman in society where the expectations of her are clearly set out, both by her family and society around her.
 
Having left home to study in neighbouring state, she returns to her family home to nurse a broken heart. Under some pressure to marry, the writer meets and falls in love with a university lecturer who describes a past as a revolutionary communist – and we are never entirely sure if his tales are true or fantasy. He takes up a lectureship in a coastal town where she accompanies him, intending to keep writing.
 
Once isolated geographically from her friends and family, he then isolates her further by taking over her on-line presence, deleting her emails and contacts and limiting her time on the internet. She is ground down physically and emotionally as he gas-lights and manipulates her until the abuse turns more and more violent as he attempts to break her spirit completely.
 
Finally, as the violence escalates, she is able to escape and return to her parents who now use the story of her degradation (she came back with lice in her hair, dirty and unkempt) to justify supporting her against the shame society would choose to identify her.
 
The mental manipulation is really well described and I found myself identifying with the actions in this book, despite the brutality of her experience and the setting in a different cultural milieu.
 
Awards:

• Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2018

• Shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2018

• Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2018

• A Guardian Book of the Year

• A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year

• An Observer Book of the Year

• A Financial Times Book of the Year   

Cherie Jones (2021) How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House. London, Tinder Press. 978-1-4722-6877-8

 

Set on the Caribbean island of Barbados, this novel highlights the huge inequalites between the White, foreign, villa-owning rich and the local poor Black and mixed-race population forced to hustle, hawk and sell their bodies to make a living. The stark inequality brings harms to them all.

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence and Abuse; Murder, Infanticide; Child Abuse; Elder Abuse; Incest; Rape]

[Spoiler alert]

The novel is not an optimistic one, filled with stories of child abuse, rape, incest, domestic violence and abuse, elder abuse and murder.

It tells the story of Lala, conceived through incest and rape, who marries a man she feels is strong and will enable her to have a happy home life and a family, while her childhood sweetheart is in jail. Adan is violent and abusive, and within an argument, shortly after he has murdered one of the rich men he was trying to rob, their baby is dropped and dies.

The story includes the machinations of the local police officer, angry at having officers brought in from outside handling the murder case. He is not easily fooled by the story of the baby being abducted and found dead on the beach.

The domestic violence and abuse between the two main characters, Adan and Lala includes coercive control, financial abuse - when he steals all the money she has saved and buried- physical violence and rape. Again, we have a perpetrator who is portrayed as consistently a low-life villain and a victim-survivor left with few options in life having come from an abusive childhood with her father and grandfather being one and the same.

Cherie Jones has said in several interviews* that she has experienced domestic abuse herself, not only personally as the victim-survivor, but also amongst her extended family. She has also said that the story of Lala is not her own story.

*https://www.essence.com/entertainment/cherie-jones-explores-race-class-and-domestic-violence-in-the-caribbean-in-her-debut-novel/

Awards:

·        Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (2021)

Mimi Thebo (2004) Hit the Road, Jack. London, Harper Collins 978-0-00-714278-1

 

A young adult fiction book about a teenage boy feeling a misfit at a school and beginning to clash with his mother, wondering if finding his father will help him find himself.

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]

[Spoiler alert]

Jack is a young teenage boy who finds letters from his father to his mother. He has only hazy memories of his father but has heard that he is now living on the streets. He blames his mother for rejecting his father and sets out to find him.

Breaking all the rules he sneaks out after bedtime and meets a cast of interesting characters who are drawn into his search, risking their own safety in doing so.

In finding his drug addicted and homeless father, he recovers memories of the physical abuse his father subjected his mother to – and as a small child he witnessed 

His search reaches a dramatic and dangerous end but cements his friendship with the people who he has met and enables him to find “his tribe”.

This is really heart-warming tale and deals with the recovered memories of the abuse in a way that would be appropriate for a young teenager to read without diminishing the horrific nature of the abuse.

Stacey Jameson (2019) Why Don’t You Just Leave Him? A True Story of Domestic Violence Self Published 978-1-7945-3217-5

 

This is a self-published book by the survivor of an extremely violent abusive marriage. She writes honestly about her account of how she became compliant and accepting as a result of her mother’s abuse of her as a child and how this fed in to her acceptance of a violent relationship and, despite getting up the courage to leave, returns on a number of occasions.

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]

[Spoiler alert]

The story is told by Stacey who details the development of herself as a child emotionally abused by her mother and how this prepared her for accepting a partner and then husband who was abusive.

Stacey meets her future husband as a teenager and goes on to live with him, have a child with him, marry him and have a further child while experiencing a very physically violent and controlling relationship. She is subjected to financial, sexual, physical, emotional and mental abuse. Finally for the sake of her children she leaves and goes to a refuge. Like many survivors she returns to her husband a number of times before she finally finds the strength to leave for good.

The book is an honest and raw account by a very courageous woman.

Donna Leon (2012) Drawing Conclusions. London, Faber & Faber. 978-0-09-955976-4

 

This is a crime novel, set in Venice, part of a series of Commissario Guido Brunetti novels, where an elderly woman has died and the Commissario investigates whether the death is of natural causes, an accident, or murder

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]

[Spoiler alert]

This novel is not directly about domestic abuse, but as Brunetti investigates the death of a very private woman, it emerges that there is a nationwide network of women who provide refuge to other women fleeing abuse, and was this connection a key to her death.

As it turns out, the death has a connection to other crimes, but is in essence a death of natural causes. There are some stereotypes used in the description of the women fleeing abuse, e.g. a consideration that the women coming and going might have been cleaners.

One diversion in the plot is a woman who has stayed in the women’s flat who was known to the police as someone who would “move to a city, start an affair with a man, either move in with him or have him come to her place. Then she’d start an argument with him, and she’d see that it got violent [my italics] and when the police came … he said that it was the most effective when the neighbours called the police… She’d be the victim, and the police would get in touch with one of the groups that helps battered women, and she’d be placed in a home, and she’d stay there until she had her own key and knew what was in the house. Then she’d disappear with as much as she could carry.”

Would a woman really consider subjecting herself to abuse; to pick a man who would abuse her and be violent; to go to all the time and trouble to be moved into a house where there may or may not be anything of value? Although it was an interesting path in the route of the story, it felt to me a little unrealistic.

The book itself was compelling and the outcome satisfying.

Bernadine Evaristo (2013) Mr Loverman. London, Hamish Hamilton. 978-0-241-14578-4

 

This book is about a loveable rogue, Barrington Walker. One of the Windrush generation having moved to London from Antigua in the 1950’s. The book is about prejudice and the consequences of fear.

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]

[Spoiler alert]

Barrington Walker is in his 70’s and has done well through business, although unwilling to identify quite how well, he supports many of his extended family, both in the UK and back in Antigua. He is married with two daughters but has been in an intimate relationship with his childhood friend, Morris, since they were teenagers.

Most of the book is about his coming out – to family and friends – and the fear and prejudice surrounding it. It does however, talk about domestic abuse in the generation above Barry. His wife’s father was physically abusive to her mother, but her mother was unwilling to leave, feeling it was something she had to “put up with”. His own grandmother was physically abused by her second husband and, again, at the time it was felt that women should accept that was how it was. This reflects Barry’s feelings about hiding his homosexuality, his relationship with Morris and his experiences cruising.

In one scene, Barry’s wife, Carmel, slaps him across the face, and there is a suggestion that this isn’t the first time this has happened. He also seems to accept this as his due.

Elif Shafak (2013) Honour. London, Penguin. 978-0-241-97294-6

This is a story of a Turkish-Kurdish family living in London and how the family’s sense of Honour is held by the “appropriate” behaviour of the women while the men live how they wish with approbation.

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]

[Spoiler alert]

This book is about violence against women and girls in an intimate familial setting in the name of honour. Set in the 1970’s, the main characters are twin girls, born in a village in Kurdistan. From a young age they are subjected to honour abuse as one is kidnapped in retaliation for an issue with the marriage of her older sister and , having been taken by men, is punished herself for then being tainted by any sexual abuse that may have been foisted on her. Her Turkish suitor marries her twin instead and they leave for Istanbul and then on to London.

Here, again, the men are free to have affairs, visit prostitutes, gamble, and the father abandons his wife and by now three children, to live with a lap dancer who he pursues to the Gulf when she leaves him for a wealthier suitor. But it is when the mother develops a platonic relationship with a kind, older man she meets accidentally, that the family’s honour is brought into question. The eldest son, despite still being at school, is now the head of the family and, ripe for radicalisation, is pressured to take action when the mother’s indiscretion is discovered.  His action has tragic consequences, and he ends up serving a long sentence in prison.

While there is a sense of growing, learning and redemption in the characters at the end, with one twin dying before her time, one twin murdered and the father dying by suicide, it is a tragic story.

 

Randy Susan Meyers (2014) Accidents of Marriage. London, Simon & Schuster. 978-1-4711-4044-0

 

This is a book about a family - the mother a well-respected social worker who is passionate about her work and the father a successful, leading public defender. The mother works with families where domestic abuse occurs and begins to look at her outwardly perfect marriage and question what she is prepared to tolerate.
 
[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]
[Spoiler alert]
 
The story follows the family as they navigate the complications of two working parents and three children. The mother, Maddy, works with women in abusive relationships, supporting them when they leave their relationships – and then goes home to her husband whose moods swing from the loving to the angry at a moment’s notice.
 
Ben considers his work to have primacy and claims less responsibility for the household and their children’s needs. This comes to a head when Maddy leaves for work early leaving him to drop them at camp and then rescue her when her car breaks down. In his anger he engages in a road rage incident which cumulates in a horrific crash where Maddy is thrown from the vehicle and ends up with horrific head injuries, leaving her in a coma and with long-term physical and mental disabilities.
 
Ben, who has also been having an affair with a trainee at his firm, avoids telling Maddy the details of the cause of the accident and revels in her neediness and devotion to him. His emotional abusive behaviour is directed towards their eldest daughter who finally cracks and tells her mother the truth about the accident.
 
Maddy begins to recover memories around his anger and abuse and cannot forgive him for reducing her life to how it is now – and for his deceit. She decides she can no longer live with him, but as he pleads that he can change, she is unable to close the door on their relationship entirely.
 
I really appreciated this book as it did, for once, focus on some of the more subtle forms of domestic abuse and less on the direct physical harm and abuse. It also resonated in that the protagonist didn’t recognise that what she was experiencing was domestic abuse, despite supporting other women in abusive relationships as they attempted to leave.
 
Although the centre of the book is about Maddy’s accident and recovery, the emotional and mental abuse is detailed in the early chapters and again towards the end. It also recognises the difficulties of leaving a marriage where you have invested so much.

The author is writing from her experience of working with women experiencing domestic abuse.

Nancy Werlin (2006) The Rules of Survival. New York, Speak. 978-0-14-241071-4

 

The narrator is the eldest of three children who live with their neglectful and abusive mother. The story follows her increasingly erratic behaviour as she pursues a man who has rejected her until a tragedy occurs.

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]

[Spoiler alert]

This is an interesting book as it is the first one which portrays an abusive female in a heterosexual relationship. It is interesting to see portrayed how a character – the woman in this case – who is less physically strong, uses violence through the manipulation of other people as well as being mentally and emotionally abusive.

The novel is primarily the story of the three children and how they develop techniques to survive their mother’s neglect and abuse. The eldest child, the narrator, involves a man he meets at the counter of a store. He doesn’t realise it at the time but he is connecting with an adult who has survived childhood abuse. Unwittingly he brings the man into their family and into an intimate relationship with the mother. It is when he experiences her manipulation that he ends the relationship, sparking an escalating pattern of violence, usually at the hands of her new lovers, and abuse towards him. It escalates to a tragic conclusion and he is then drawn in to gather together a group of people to support the children.

This is a young adult novel, with the main character, Matthew Walsh, writing a letter to his youngest sibling, Emmy, who would have been too young to remember the details.

 

Awards:

• Finalist National Book Award for Young People’s Literature 2006
• Finalist Los Angeles Times Book Prize 2006
• American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults 2007

Carmen Maria Machado (2020) In The Dream House. London, Serpent’s Tail. 978-1-7881-6224-1

 

This book is a personal memoir, reflecting on an abusive lesbian relationship framed in different narrative lenses. The relationship is detailed from the first meeting, through the abuse and after the writer had left.

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]

The story is told partly in the second person and partly in first person. It provides a really intimate portrait of the abuse told through many different narratives – some less than a page long – but each developing the story. It details coercive control in its clearest form – gaslighting, anger at saying or doing the wrong thing, being with the wrong people, it being the wrong time.

This is the first book I’ve read where the experience of the writer resonates with my own experience of an abusive relationship, despite my relationship being a heterosexual marriage and this being a lesbian relationship. All the other books have also been heterosexual relationships but nothing else has come close to my own experience.

Awards:

• Winner of the Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction
• Winner of the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
• Finalist for the Stonewall Book Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award
• Finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing
• Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

Best Book of the Year

• The New Yorker
• TIME Magazine
• Vogue
• Entertainment Weekly
• Harper’s Bazaar
• Paris Review

Best Memoir of the Decade

• LitHub
• Paste
• Autostraddle

Nicholas Sparks (2010) Safe Haven. London, Little Brown. 978-0-7515-4852-5

 

The story is one of a woman having fled an abusive marriage and establishing a new life with a new identity, all the time knowing that her husband might track her down.
 
[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]
[Spoiler alert]
 
The story is set in the present, with the main character looking back and reflecting on the abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband and constantly looking over her shoulder for any indication that he might have caught up with her. As she gradually begins to feel safe a relationship develops with a local widower and his young children
 
The story is told from two points of view – that of the main character and that of her increasingly deranged ex-husband – until the inevitable happens and he tracks her down leading to a violent, but ultimately “happy”, ending for the main character and her new life.
 
The book has a number of stereotypes, not least that of the police detective as the husband, and the main character having been brought up in a household where she witnessed violence and abuse. The domestic abuse is extreme, both in the elements of control, the violence and the way in which the abuser tracks down his wife.
 
There is a plot twist at the end where the woman the main character portrays is revealed as the ghost her new partners dead wife, guiding her in their relationship.
 
The book was made into a film – billed as a “romantic drama fantasy thriller” starring Julianne Hough as the main character and David Lyons as the abuser. The reviews were, on the whole, negative, described as "schmaltzy, predictable, and melodramatic”. The plot twist particularly came in for a considerable amount of negative criticism.

Angie Cruz (2019) Dominicana. London, John Murray. 978-1-529-30487-9

 

    Again, the main theme of this book is not domestic abuse, but it occurs as part of the marriage between the main character and the man twice her age she is persuaded to marry at 15 to improve the chances of a better life for all the family.
 
[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]
[Spoiler alert].
 
Ana comes from a poor family in what is now the Dominican Republic. The best chance for her family to have a better life comes from emigrating and moving to America. Ana attracts the eye of a Dominican who has already moved to NYC and marriage brings with it the prospect of the whole family making that move. Ana’s husband is violent towards her when he feels his authority over her is undermined or their precarious position is threatened by her actions. When, during political upheaval in Dominica, her husband returns home, Ana is left free to fall in love, make friends, and develop some financial independence. When her husband returns, she has to choose between duty and family, freedom and love.
 
The story is told to the backdrop of political events in Dominica and American intervention in those events and the murder of Malcolm X. It beautifully details the experience of immigrants in 1960’s New York and is based on the life of the author’s mother.
 
Awards:
·        Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020

Delia Owens (2018) Where the Crawdads Sing. London, Corsair. 978-1-4721-5466-8

 

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence and Sexual Violence]
 
The theme of this book is not about domestic abuse, but violence towards the mother and siblings of the main character and later in the book, the protagonist is subjected to sexual violence.
 
[Spoiler alert].
 
The story follows the life of a young girl, Kya, abandoned by both parents and her older siblings in the marshlands of North Carolina. The family is brought low by the father’s violence and alcoholism leading all the family to leave, until he himself disappears, leaving Kya alone to fend for herself.
 
Kya survives and eventually thrives with the help and support of a few particular neighbours, including the man she will eventually marry, who teaches her to read. The “Marsh Girl” does however suffer considerable negative attention and is shunned by many of the local townspeople. She is pursued by the local town “jock” and has an affair he keeps secret while making a more socially acceptable marriage. Meeting her later he wishes to continue the affair and sexually assaults her. When he is later found dead, she is implicated, tried but finally acquitted.
 
With the support of her friend, and later husband, Tate, she becomes a well-regarded naturalist, author and artist. Only after her death does her husband find out that she is also a published poet and did in fact commit the murder for which she was tried.
 
Awards:
·        The New York Times Fiction Best Seller 2019 and 2020
·        Listed as Barnes and Nobles Best Books of 2018
·        Sold more print copies than any other adult fiction or non-fiction title in 2019

 

Paula Sharp (1997) Crows Over a Wheatfield. London, Bloomsbury. 978-0-7475-3112-9

 

Crows Over a Wheatfield covers the story of two families affected by domestic abuse and examines the treatment of domestic abuse victims in court, but is a redemptive tale as women from both families use the experiences to make their lives, and the lives of other victims, better.

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]
[Spoiler alert].
 
The initial story is one of a family with a brilliant and well known lawyer who, at home, is abusive, falling into violent and unpredictable rages. After the death of the protagonist’s, Melanie, mother, he brings home and marries a girl with whom he has been having an affair and their illegitimate child, Matt. The two children and his new wife suffer from his abuse with a final act causing a mental breakdown for Matt and the boy’s mother finally leaving the marriage.
 
Melanie seeks revenge in succeeding in her own law career, while finding the rest of her life hollow and empty. One summer she goes to stay with her stepmother who lives close to her brother and meets the people who have befriended them. Melanie becomes friends with Mildred, a close friend of her brother and the daughter of a Minister who runs the half-way house where Matt lives.
 
Mildred is married to a charismatic character, Daniel, by whom she has a son, Ben. Daniel, behind his charming façade, is a deeply controlling and physically abusive man, both to his wife and child who is terrified of him. The courts, however, refuse to recognise the abuse and put Mildred in a positive where she feels she has to flee with her child and go into hiding.
 
In the ten years she is away she opens the route of escape to other victims of abuse, and sets in train a “railroad” in the manner of Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad for black slaves. In supporting another case, she comes out of hiding once her son reaches eighteen, and the families are reunited. Melanie decides to resign her position and follow her heart.
 
This has probably been the most difficult book for me to read to date. I found the scenes set in court where lies were told and actions carried out in contravention of the safety of the children involved, resonated with my own experiences and triggered my post-traumatic stress disorder. Having said that, there is something healing about reading that you are not the only person with these experiences of the western legal system.
 
I also liked the fact that the book included a victim of abuse, Mildred, who didn’t conform to the stereotypes I had come across in other fiction. However, the father figure being a high-ranking lawyer did!
 
The author has drawn from her own experiences of being a defence attorney and has said that her exposure to the drama in court influenced her writing.

Awards:
Editor’s Choice for the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle.
A notable book in the New York Times Book Review

Coleen Hoover (2016) It Ends With Us. London, Simon and Schuster. 978-1-4711-5626-7

 

Colleen Hoover’s book tells the story of a young woman concerned she may be repeating the cycle of being abused from one generation to her own.
 
[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]
[Spoiler alert].
 
Lily was brought up with an outwardly successful father who controlled and physically abused her mother. While Lily is at home she secretly befriends and supports a boy, Atlas, who is squatting in an abandoned house and as he discovers what is happening in her home, he supports her and a relationship develops.
 
Eventually Lily moves away for college and stays in Boston, working successfully in marketing. Her father has recently died of cancer and her mother moves to be closer to her. She decides to use the freedom provided by her father’s death to leave her marketing role and fulfil a Long-held ambition to open her own floristry business.
 
Around the same time she meets the wealthy neurosurgeon brother of her old flatmate and the attraction between them is instant. They are a good match and friends and family are pleased. Until Ryle hits her. The relationship goes through the typical abusive cycles of violence, regret and apologies on Ryle’s part.  Lily loves Ryle but knows that apologies and regret will not be enough to stop the relationship remaining abusive, and to stop the cycle of domestic abuse she painfully calls an end to it. Having met up with an older Atlas, who she is able to trust, he helps her move on.
 
This was a hard read for me as my daughter bought me the book, having read it herself. Also being the daughter of a controlling and abusive (although thankfully not physically violent) father, she found the book particularly moving and rang me to thank me for leaving when we did.

It has been suggested that the story is drawn from the author’s own experiences.

Awards:

Goodreads Choice, Best Romance Novel 2016
The Rights to the film have been optioned by Wayfarer Entertainment (2019)

Loretta Stimson (2009) Little Green. Portland, Hawthorne Books. 978-0-9790188-1-7

 

Loretta Stimson’s novel is a coming of age story about an orphaned 16-year old who runs away from her step-family and her experiences as a vulnerable-to-exploitation young woman.

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]
[Spoiler alert].

Set in 1970’s West Coast USA, the novel follows the story of Janie Marek who leaves home, family and school, following the death of both her parents and her alienation from what remains. She takes brave risks, being exploited, raped and abused along the way, while having an underlying resilience. She finds what she takes to be love with a man ten years her senior who becomes increasingly addicted to drugs and alcohol and, in the process, increasingly violent and abusive towards her. Janie believes that she loves Paul and that the glimpses she has had of a good relationship with him at the beginning can be the whole of the relationship if only she can change him.

While again, focussing on the violent aspects of domestic abuse, with extreme violence being the trigger to Janie leaving the relationship, it does portray well several aspects of domestic abuse, such as policing of friends and other relationships, dictating what is acceptable to wear, some instances of gaslighting over where he has left the car keys) and Janie’s torturous (for both herself and the readers) beliefs that she can make him a better person and the excuses she tells herself for the abusive outbursts. It also showcases well her reluctance to leave him while she loves him.

It is a compelling read with a “it will be a happy-ever-after ending” coupled with fairy-tale like relationships of some of the other characters. Those addicted to drugs are portrayed in a stereotypical fashion as are the gender roles of all the characters.

Writing about Leaving

 
In my last writing workshop with my fellow first year PhD students, we discussed “the uncanny” triggered by reading Bennett and Royle’s introduction⁽¹⁾ to it as a concept and analysis of Freud’s list of things that make us feel unwholesome/unhomelike. Perfect for Halloween.
 
I began to think about whether there would or could be instances of the uncanny in the book I have started. One incident, that happened to me on the day I left my controlling and abusive marriage stood out. My book is a fictional account of domestic abuse, and particularly coercive control, and while loosely based on some of my own experiences, weaves other narratives into the story. Sometimes I write in the first person and sometimes in the third, but eventually it will all be a third person perspective. I decided I would begin to write about that day.
 
It is interesting in that I have talked (to friends, counsellors, therapists, solicitors) about many aspects of my experience, to reduce the trauma and record events for the legal record, but I have largely ignored the emotional impact of that day, simply regarding it as a day that happened, was difficult, but achieved it’s aim. But of course it was both pivotal, the ending of one thing and the starting of another, and traumatic.
 
I found as I began to write about it, that my narrative sounded like something a child – maybe of primary school age - would write. It listed events – this happened, and then this happened, and then this… I went back to edit and fill in the details but it still felt like a black-and-white outline drawing waiting to be coloured in. I was intrigued that I was finding this so hard to write about and yet, why was I so surprised? It was a highly anxious and adrenaline-filled day.
 
Finally I had a discussion with a friend who is a writer and poet, who studied the MA in Creative Writing alongside me and is a survivor herself, and sent her what I had written so far. Her insight suddenly freed me up to write creatively about it. I felt like a block had cleared.
 
I am sure it will require considerable editing as time goes by and the project develops, but I now feel this piece is on it’s way and am content that it’s where it needs to be for now. Writing as therapy; it’s uncanny.

(1) Bennett, Andrew and Nicholas Royale (2016) Chapter Five: The Uncanny in An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory, Abingdon, Taylor & Francis Group.

Brianna Labuskes (2019) Girls of Glass. Seattle, Thomas and Mercer. 978-1-503-90228-2

 

This is a murder mystery written from the point-of-view of the Detective looking to solve the abduction and murder of a six-year old child. Her involvement and detachment in the case is constantly questioned as previously her daughter had been abducted and murdered when she was four years old.

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence, Child Abuse, Incest]

[Spoiler alert]

Although the story is told by the detectives (in the third person) involved in investigating the disappearance and subsequent murder of a six-year old girl, the story revolves round a wealthy and powerful but toxic family living in a small town in Florida.

The family is headed up by a charming, narcissistic District Judge, secure in his role with all the right powerful connections. At home he is a sexual abuser to his two daughters, his granddaughter and with clear intent on his daughter/granddaughter as she matures. His wife maintains a perfect, wealthy family façade while exerting iron control over the family at home. The abuse includes financial abuse, physical violence and close control of the movements of all four of the other female members of the household. The two daughters are in varying states of mental and physical collapse, coping with substance abuse and unable to parent their own children.

The book has an excellent plot as a murder mystery with twists and turns keeping you guessing until the final, unexpected, revelation and subsequent actions. However much of the writing is cliched and the characters two-dimensional. The abuse falls into the stereotypes of powerful, untouchable men (another US judge) abusing family members and getting away with it.

Rachel Cusk (2018) Kudos. London, Faber & Faber. 978-0-571-34672-1

 

Kudos is the third book in a trilogy about a writer, Faye, the people she meets, and the conversations that are had. In this book Faye flies to Europe to undertake a book tour for her recently published novel. 

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]

The focus of the novel is not on domestic violence, but it contains a conversation which describes coercive control in the context of a divorced couple and their son. The father uses his contact with the son to continue his abuse of his former wife, knowing that his poor parenting will cause her unease every time the son goes to stay with him. The husband also took all the photographs from the marriage – as if to take her history, or to ensure there was no evidence in the photographs which would contradict his version of how the marriage had played out. Either way – controlling the narrative and her past.

Jane Hamilton (1988) The Book of Ruth. London, Black Swan. 978-0-552-99685-8

 

The Book of Ruth is a lovely lyrical book but tells, with increasing tension, a horrific story. Ruth is the narrator of her own story - of being a girl, a young woman, a wife and a mother in a Midwestern small town in the US.

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]
[Spoiler alert]

Ruth starts her story after the events of the novel are complete and she is looking back, deciding where to begin her story. Her childhood was characterised by a controlling and emotionally abusive mother, who prefers her academically talented son, and an abusive father who leaves when the children are young.

Ruth’s development is inhibited by her mother but she finds solace in correspondence with her wealthier and childless aunt who encourages her love of books and stories. After school she joins her mother working in a dry-cleaning store.

Ruth describes meeting her husband-to-be, seen by all around as a loser. They marry but are too poor to afford their own home so stay living with Ruth’s mother. She sees only the good in him and ignores his inability to hold down a job, to contribute in any meaningful way to the household and to behave appropriately. Her pregnancy and the birth of her son brings some joy to the whole household but the tension and the underlying sense of impending violence increase until it explodes into extreme violence and murder.

Ruth’s voice is beautifully held throughout the book – a sing song way of talking and her lack of sophistication. The growing tension is so subtle it creeps under the radar until you are fully aware of it. I thought this was really appropriate in a story of domestic violence, where abuse may start small and unnoticed until it starts to escalate. The book does, however, still hold onto stereotypes of domestic abuse occurring in uneducated families in poverty.

 Awards:

• The Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for Best First Novel 1989

• Great Lakes College Association New Writer’s Award 1989

• Wisconsin Library Association Banta Book Award 1989

• Oprah’s Book Club selection for November 1996