Once I started reading
this book, I could not put it down. I had plans to do some shopping and maybe go
see a movie today, but I decided to use this sudden cold front as perfect excuse to not leave the house so I could keep reading.
And yet, the story is so disturbing. I've been reading a lot of romance novels lately - stories about good, tough women and men who may struggle with their feelings and have great sex and eventually live happily ever after. This book is not that, this book is the exact opposite of that. Maybe I was in need of some variety in my reading. There are no lessons learned, no sign at all
that there is some end to this woman's downward spiral. If anything, I suspect my interest in the
story is some sort of voyeuristic appeal.
It’s like watching a train wreck, a really well-written train
wreck. It’s gruesome and horrible, but
you can’t look away. Marie’s life and
her behavior is so incredibly self destructive: drugs, sex, cutting. And there isn't even the typical story of a bad
childhood or abuse to explain it. She
chose all of this. She had a supportive
family, and a husband who loved her.
But she didn't want that. She
walked away from it and entered her own personal hell.
While Marie clearly seems to love her daughter, she doesn’t
love being a mother. In fact, it was
the realization that she didn’t want to be a mother that prompted
her path of self-destruction. She was a
good girl who got pregnant shortly before graduating from high school. Instead of going to college, she got
married, had the baby, tried to live the life she was supposed to live and it
didn't feel right.
This is one of those books I would place in a category I refer
to as, "all their problems could have been avoided if only they'd had an
abortion." (I seriously considered making this one of my goodreads shelves
because for a while I felt like I was reading a lot of books about women who
were in terrible situation that resulted from unplanned pregnancies. Never do the characters mention abortion,
that’s simply my opinion upon reading the stories.) Let’s be honest, a lot of women’s problems are the result of
having unwanted children – in fiction and reality. I say this as someone who has always known that I didn’t want to
have children. My two attempts at
having a pet had me on the verge of nervous breakdowns. If a dog or a cat left me feeling like that,
I can’t even imagine trying to care for a child. Maybe that’s why this book was so appealing to me. Because maybe it isn’t so difficult for me
to imagine how life might fall apart when forced into a role that isn’t right,
a role that the rest of the world claims is great and wonderful, but feels so
wrong that a person will do anything, absolutely anything, to try and escape.
Another thing I really liked about this book was the
setting. The story takes place in
Dallas, a Dallas that was familiar to me.
I recognized the streets, the restaurants, the people – and I don’t mean
specific people, but rather the type of people. This was the Dallas I knew in the late 90s, early 2000s, when I
was in my twenties. There was so much
money in this city, so many men flaunting their money, new money trying to fit
in with old money, and the women wanting so desperately for a connection to
some of that money. Maybe that still happens in Dallas, but a few years ago, I left my job in Dallas and became a school teacher in the suburbs, so reading this book was a bit nostalgic. These people weren't a part of my world, but I saw them, they were at the clubs, entering the VIP rooms, and at the Mavs games - not in the cheap seats. I never set foot in any of the expensive eating establishments like where Marie works, but I was aware of those places (and now I’m really glad we never ate at any of those places because they don't seem all that special after reading about what happens behind the scenes). My friends and I were more the Café Brazil than Dream Café sort.
This book isn't for everyone and I suspect there are plenty of people who will hate it. I enjoyed the book and yet part of me feels like I shouldn’t
have. It’s wrong to view someone’s
disaster as entertainment, isn’t it? But
people enjoy horror stories, right? And
that’s considered acceptable. If some
sort of redeeming quality is necessary, view this as a cautionary tale. This is what happens when a person loses
control of life, tries to live a life others consider to be right and fails,
and then has to self-medicate to try and forget that failure.
I received a review copy of this book via NetGalley.
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