Browsing through notes in a commonplace book this morning, and ran into a reminder of relationship traps that I've gone out of my way to avoid in my personal life. Anyway these few lines from early on in Dennis Lehane's novel
Since We Fell rang true to me in remembering a few situations from which I chose an early exit:
"Do you know what it’s like to fight with someone every day? Someone who claims to dislike conflict but who in fact lives for it?” Rachel cocked her head at him. “You’re really asking me this?” He smiled. And then the smile went away. “It scours the soul, damages the heart. You can feel yourself dying."
Yep. If you're an adult and insightful or just lucky, maybe you can bail from a setup like that before succumbing to the subtle upsides of life in unending, soul-crushing but potentially addictive drama. In real life of course it may help to be a person of some independent means, and willing to work hard with a shrink.
That book fell apart for me in a few places, and (surprisingly) more steadily towards the end. I felt like Lehane suddenly lost interest and just wanted to wrap it and maybe get on to the movie rights negotiations. After all he's the author of novels that found their way to film like
Mystic River and
Gone Baby Gone, not to mention his work on episodes of
The Wire. Anyway I felt he kinda blew up
Since We Fell in some kind of hellbent rush to conclude it --not the writing there but the underpinnings-- for whatever reason, but the front end of it was exquisitely drawn and plenty of us could think we're looking in a mirror in a few of those chapters.
