Die, My Love, by Ariana Harwicz (translated by Sarah Moses and Carolina Orloff), is a raw and unflinching journey through the mind of a new wife and mother whose feelings of entrapment are driving her over the edge. Her thoughts are brutal and increasingly desperate as she seeks to find a way to satiate her personal needs. The mind-numbing banality of her day to day existence is proving more than she can take. Her erratic behaviour verges on the dangerous, including for her child.
Over the course of eighteen months the woman struggles through each day in a state of rage against her circumstances. She rails against her husband’s inability to satisfy her, including sexually. She hides in woodland near their home leaving the child with his grandmother or, at times, abandoned. She screams into the void when unable to articulate her needs in a way those close to her find acceptable. She recognises that her actions are beyond the pale but cannot quell the demons stifling her from within.
The narrative exposes the grotesque in the actions of people going about their quotidian lives. Observations of the ordinary are harsh in their candour. The woman displays little moral compass as she searches for a way to survive. She cannot retain the composure needed to present herself to the world as is expected, frequently angering or embarrassing her husband and then proving incandescent at his reactions.
The woman knows that her behaviour is unacceptable and yearns to act in the way others do when confronted with the needs of family. She observes her husband with their son and ponders if they would be better off without her. She suppresses the longing she feels for the freedom this would give her. There is pent up anger towards the man she chose to share her life with for coping whilst her needs remain unmet.
Although competently written this is not a comfortable book to read. Its prose pierces the armour most people don in order to maintain the illusions of happy families. Occasional thoughts, quickly suppressed as horrific, are here given free rein. A passionate, intense and disturbing acknowledgement of the stripping of self that parenthood can bring.
Die, My Love, is published by Charco Press.
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