This review could easily consist of three intense all-caps sentences, which would cover every emotion possible. Part of me is angry that I ever set eyes on the book, and another part is grateful that I have this mess of a protagonist to distract you all from my hiatus from this blog and…fiction reading. For both of these things, it is what it is.
I picked up Deborah Kay Davies’ True Things About Me: A Novel
I was in Los Angeles for a long weekend, scoping out the city for a possible move (I decided to stay in New Orleans, by the way), seeing some friends, and really being honest about where I was in life. I’m not making excuses but, hey, I was vulnerable enough to read the back cover and think, “I need this.”
True Things About Me hurtles through the terrain of sexual obsession and asks what it is to know oneself and to test the limits of one’s desires.
Are we closer now?
Seriously, enough of the dramatics. If the book were actually horrible I would’ve set the thing alight. In reality, Davies is an incredible writer. The story is told in short chapters with first person titles that add to the introspectiveness of the novel. Dialogue isn’t weighted down by pesky quotation marks, making the whole thing vaguely stream of consciousness. But not.
Overall, Davies does what I often struggle to: writes succinctly. She uses short sentences and observations that somehow work to move the story forward. Some things may appear to be unnecessary, but every detail is being added for a reason. I found myself underlining particular lines, marking them with hearts and checks, hoping that one-day I’ll get on her level.
In a chapter focused on touch, taste, and a very physical experience, I swooned at the simple line:
The wine was warm, perhaps at blood temperature.
Thus I feel compelled to rate Davies’ writing separately. Crazy, I know. 4 stars.
The plot. Here’s where things go downhill. While you’ll find checks and hearts in my copy of this novel, you’ll also find angry remarks scribbled aggressively in the margins. “Idiot” seems to have been my word of choice. The main character, our protagonist, is nameless. A device commonly used to make a character more relatable. If she doesn’t have a name, I can see myself in her shoes more easily? Perhaps that’s not what Davies is trying to do here, but I didn’t like it, mostly because of the aforementioned “idiot” thing. I found it easier to distance myself from the character.
I don’t usually struggle to summarize a story without giving too much away, but there isn’t much going on here. A bored office worker enters into an abusive relationship with a criminal and can’t let go…for some reason. We spend most of the novel trying to understand why while a mini-cycle of idiocy repeats in an impressively unentertaining way.
At a point, I began writing the word “pathetic” so many times that I wondered if it were a real word. But that’s enough stalling with irrelevant facts—I’ll try to share what I ultimately think this novel is about.
Talking about abusive relationships broadly would be irresponsible of me. For one, I haven’t been in one. Two, all of them are different. However I think the relationship that Davies’ True Things About Me centers around can be explained by one major question posed by the nameless protagonist:
Was there anyone else like me?
She seems to have internalized everything horrific, sexist, and subservient that society has imposed upon women and taken it to heart. Despite the lackluster examples of healthy relationships she sees through her friends and parents, she goes to a completely unrealistic extreme in a backwards way of trying to fit into an “afflicted woman” narrative. To be a part of something dangerously not…lackluster, but still mundane in many ways.
I cook for my man.
I wait for him to come home.
I neglect myself.
Perhaps I disliked the story so much because I know relationships like this exist and, in frustration, know I can’t put the blame all in one place. So, as much as I’d love to call our nameless, unfit protagonist every rude name I scrawled in my copy… I can’t.
In the end, the story melts into an abstract mush of dreams or hallucinations amid some very big issues that are all pretty predictable. Davies’ writing never ceases to impress. After finishing the book, I held it up and stared at the seemingly harmless baby pink cover as I mulled over the degree of genius I may be missing here.
Did Davies want to frustrate women readers into never taking any shit from a man?
Did Davies want to frighten male readers into never being a piece of shit man?
I don’t know. At this point, it doesn’t matter. I’ll donate my copy to the local library in the hopes that an impressionable teenager will pick it up and read it as a cautionary tale, improved only by the entertaining curses of a frustrated writer who reads.