Margo Lanagan: Tender Morsels

***SPOILER ALERT!!!***


This is a brilliant book, gorgeously written, completely engrossing. I stayed up half the night to read it because I couldn't put it down. Yes, there are lots of ugly things that happen in this book, just as they happen every day in every town. Anyone who thinks these things don't go on all around us is kidding themselves. But what I wanted and didn't get was for the heroine, Liga, to achieve happiness anyway.

It's far too common for victims of abuse in literature to be punished by everyone and everything long after the abuse is over. It happens in movies, tv shows, everywhere. It's almost like we are unable to imagine coming back from things like rape and incest and living a happy life. But again, people do it every day.

I was so wrapped up in this book that it was a complete shock to my system when Liga did not hear what she (and we) expected from Ramstrong near the end. Liga does not get even the most basic happily ever after. In fact, in a sick reversal of the original incest that begins the book, the man she loves marries her daughter. It's grotesque and cruel beyond belief.

And what it says is: if you are a victim of rape and/or incest, you do not get to be happy. No one will love you because you are damaged. Is that really what people think? Is that what you want to say to others? Is that what you would say to the millions of people who have suffered these outrages? Of course not. So don't do that to a beloved character, either.

Liga pulls herself out of the worst misery over and over, only to be smashed down again. She grows up with horrific emotional, sexual, and physical abuse. She gets the same treatment after her abuser dies. She falls in love and then gets that brutally taken away from her, too. The ending is so very wrong, I'm pretty much scared to pick up another book for a while because of that betrayal. I feel like screaming at the author: but I thought you loved her! Why would you do that to her?

Another reviewer wrote that the men aren't important in this book, which is an interesting point of view. They aren't important as people, but they are crucial negative forces, which makes them important. But then this thing with Ramstrong. He's important to Liga and then gets taken away, cutting her to the heart. So what are we to make of that? Men = pain? Even the good ones will kill you dead because they don't even notice you're alive? Is that the point of it?

I would like to believe that this isn't true. But then, after all that, I kind of want Liga to go back to her dream world heaven, too.