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)

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.

Hanya Yanagihara (2015) A Little Life. London, Picador. 978-1-5290-6124-6

 

This is an epic, magnificent book focusing on the lives of four male friends who meet when they are in college and continue their friendships through the ups and downs of work, art and the relationships between themselves and people who join and leave their circle. It starts with them in their late teens and continues through to late middle-age.
 
[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]
[Spoiler alert]
 
The domestic abuse in this book occupies a relatively small part of what is a huge book, and is somewhat overshadowed by the self-harm and abuse the main character suffers, but it is significant in it’s brevity but intensity.
 
Jude forms his very first consensual relationship with an artist, Caleb. The relationship very soon becomes both physically abusive and mentally abusive as Caleb humiliates Jude at every opportunity. Finally he rapes him and throws him downstairs, leaving him for dead.
 
Despite the abuse being a discrete part of the book, it is difficult to separate from the main story as tolerating the abuse for as long as he does, illustrates how abuse has characterised Jude’s life and how poor his self-esteem, despite his outward and worldly achievements.
 
Awards:
 
·        Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015
·        Finalist National Book Award for Fiction 2015
·        Winner of Kirkus Prize for Fiction 2015
·        Shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction 2016
·        Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016
·        Shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award 2017

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

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.

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

Swati Avasthi (2010) Split. New York, Random House. 978-0-375-86341-7

Swati Avasthi uses the voice of a 16-year old boy to tell the story of family violence. Jace is the son of a respected high court judge who regularly abuses his wife, causing significant physical injury and, as we come to discover towards the end of the book, taking away her capacity for self-determination.

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]

[Spoiler alert]

At the beginning of Split, Jace has been thrown out of the house as a result of standing up to his father, protecting his mother, and fighting back. He flees across the US to his older brother who had made a similar journey a few years previously. His brother has changed his identity and set up a new life to protect himself from a father not ready to relinquish control or tolerate being disobeyed.

Jace’s contact with his brother threatens the safety of both of them, and Jace comes with a secret – he is already guilty of perpetrating violence and abuse towards a romantic partner. The story unfolds with both brothers taking steps to free themselves of the cycle of abuse and understanding the boundaries and limitations of all those involved.

I found the book a really compelling read. It is a YA (young adult) novel and good that issues like this are explored with people who might be embarking on their first serious romantic and sexual relationships. The abuse does very much focus on extreme violence, however, and it might have been helpful for some of the controlling aspects of abuse to have been been explored. Jace’s involvement in violence is portrayed as a loss of control and an anger management issue, rather than the more complex aspects of domestic abuse displayed by his father’s patterns of control. Violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Swati Avasthi worked with survivors of domestic violence for three years through her co-ordination of a legal clinic and has said that during her time she spoke with thousands of survivors and spoke out, in lectures, about some of the issues.

In this story she wanted to explore what it would be like for a child growing up watching your father hit your mother, while still admiring aspects of your father. She hints at, but doesn’t develop, the emotional abuse the father uses to manipulate his younger son.

Split won several awards:

• The 2010 Silver Parents Choice Award

• The 2010 New Mexico State Award

• The 2011 International Reading Association Award

• The 2011 Cybils Award.

http://www.fwiwreviews.net/2010/10/before-split-blog-tour-guest-post-by.html#.X61YE2iwnIU

Roddy Doyle (1996) The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. London, Mandarin Paperbacks. 0-7493-9599-0

 

Roddy Doyle's book The Woman Who Walked Into Doors a story of domestic abuse told by of a 39-year-old woman, now an alcoholic, who is suffering from domestic violence. The book is set in a working-class suburb of Dublin where domestic violence is unacknowledged by those around, despite evidence to the contrary. 

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]
[Spoiler alert]

The book takes us on a journey from the narrator's - Paula's - childhood, through first meeting the man who later abuses her, to their marriage and his increasingly violent and controlling behaviour. Although abuse is obvious throughout, the character holds back on her description of the physical violence she suffered until the last third of the book when it all comes pouring out. 

Paddy Doyle says "It's a list of some of her injuries and what he did to her. In that passage of the book, that's where the bulk of the violence takes place. The rest of the book has the sense of the threat, and it's always there. But I wasn't interested in the violence and I got it out of the way quite quickly." (1)

The narrator, Paula, pleads a number of times "Ask me" in the numerous situations where her bruises, breaks and burns are obvious to people who could have intervened - but didn't. Finally, when her husband eyes up their eldest daughter, does she find the strength to throw him out.

I thought the book was a moving portrayal of domestic violence but to me fell into so many of the stereotypes of the "type" of woman who experiences domestic abuse - working class, lack of formal education, living in poverty (although this is partly due to the abuse). Although other aspects of abuse were present (financial abuse, coercive control etc), it was the violence that was shocking and most prevelant.

I was curious to know if the book had been shocking at the time - twenty four years ago, which might somewhat explain the stereotyping. It was written after the 1993 United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women and the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, but even in this century commentators would suggest that Ireland lagged behind in addressing domestic violence.

Paula McGovern in The Journal in February 2013 said "The issue of domestic violence is virtually invisible in Ireland and we lag far behind other western countries in how we deal with it in our social systems" (2) and Orla Muldoon, professor of psychology at the University of Limerick, writing in the Irish Times in March 2019 after the murder of Clodagh Hawe, said "It is often deemed inappropriate to intervene in what are seen as ‘private family matters'" (3). 

It is, however, an incredibly moving and shocking account of domestic violence - and of course, written by Roddy Doyle, it is beautifully paced and written.

(1) https://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandcompany/man-booker-prize-winner-roddy-doyle-on-domestic-violence-writing-from-memory-and-the-lure-of-irish-culture-1.4789071

(2) https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/v-day-one-billion-rising-794059-Feb2013/

(3) https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/irish-culture-is-facilitating-the-domestic-abuse-of-women-1.3812813