Another Place

Finished Doyle's The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. The final quarter, detailing the beatings, is extremely powerful. It's an odd comparison but I was reminded of Stephen King's Rose Madder. Charlo, the abusive husband in Doyle's novel, is, in the final analysis, something out of a horror story. The problem is that these horrors are only too actual. I suppose that's why Rose Madder sticks in the mind - the supernatural elements are, finally, irrelevant.

I remember once listening to a conversation between two perfectly average young women in which being hit by a boyfriend was discussed as if it were somehow a normal part of existence. Years later I remain bewildered by that, and deeply disturbed. I'm hoping this doesn't sound self-righteous - it's surely the way things should be, the sense of horror at such enormities I mean; but having spent the best part of an afternoon in a world suspiciously like the one the women mentally inhabited, in which things are simply not this way, it feels hard to be sure anymore.