tl;dr

A savage wound of a novel.

opening remarks

I have a number of hard copy books sitting on my bedside table.  They’ve become quite the teetering pile.  My wife suggested I put them in the garage with the rest of my unread collection before the tower of paper falls and smothers me in my sleep.  I had the better idea of reading a book a month off the pile starting with Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz (translated by Sarah Moses and Carolina Orloff).

knee-jerk observations

This is as angry an opening to a novel I’ve read.

Die, My Love is a story about motherhood but one where the tone is bitter and nihilistic.  There’s also an unsettling eroticism; our narrator fantasises about the next door neighbour with his throbbing motorcycle.

And when it’s not cynical and bitter and erotic and angry Die, My Love is fucking heartbreaking.

I don’t know how to describe this scene other than confronting and unsettling.  Our narrator spies on her next-door neighbour – the one with the motorbike – who is caring for his disabled child.  Her thoughts here are upsetting, callous, made all the worse that all she can think about is fucking this man.

I really need to read Mrs Dalloway.  Every second book I read* seems to be in discussion with it.

* exaggerated for effect.

The Gist Of It

Die, My Love is a savage wound of a novel.

The opening sentence — “I lay back in the grass among fallen trees and the sun on my palm felt like a knife I could use to bleed myself dry with one swift cut to the jugular.” — sets the tone of what’s to follow.  Language that’s raw, violent, unrelenting describing the troubled mind of a woman – we’re never told her name – who is struggling with motherhood and marriage.  For Ariana Harwicz it’s important not that we understand this woman, there are times where her thoughts are an incoherent jumble, or that we feel pity for her, but that we pay witness and acknowledge her pain.  It’s not voyeuristic or gratuitous.  Rather, it’s deeply uncomfortable, taken to a point where the narrator’s anger, her self-loathing, her destructive nature is difficult to read.  When she’s forced into treatment, her ferocity is replaced by delusions that reveal deeper anguish and isolation.

I can’t say I liked this book.  I’m not sure it’s meant to be liked.  But I do think it’s an astonishing piece of sustained, uncompromising prose – brilliantly translated by Sarah Moses and Carolina Orloff.  Kudos also to Charco Press for publishing an English translation in the first place.  I hope we see more of Arian Harwicz’s work.