Rachel Cusk (2012) Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation. London, Faber & Faber. 978-0-571-35164-0

 

Aftermath is the story of exactly that – the aftermath of Rachel Cusk’s separation from her husband and the setting up of a new home for herself and her daughters and a new life for herself, despite the trauma.

When Rachel Cusk published the novel, it provoked a huge backlash over the honesty of her description of the emotions that accompanied the breakdown of the marriage and her feelings about her daughters.

For me, it provided interesting parallels and contrasts with the trauma experienced by women leaving marriages and relationships due to domestic abuse. Neither is pleasant or easy and the escape from an abusive marriage still contains all this trauma alongside the issues around domestic abuse.

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.