She taught me that girls are not as helpless as men want us to be. That being a girl playing the part of ‘girl’ next to a man who got to play the part of ‘man’ was a performance too, that the world conditions us to participate to the point that it just feels natural.”
With a neglectful mother suffering from the sickness (a loaded and contested word here) of addiction, Smidge raised herself. And, at 16, she becomes a teenage runaway. Although are you a ‘runaway’ if nobody is running after you? Smidge finds somebody to run away with in Violet, a young transgender girl who has her own history of abusive parents and being misunderstood. Together, they forge a new way of girlhood, one that is attempting to subvert all that has gone before. They are independent, they are artists and they attack the world before the world can attack them. Yet, when travelling America’s underbelly with their performance art piece leads them to somehow join a cult, Smidge starts to question if they are really in charge of themselves or if this sense of power is being manipulated. So desperate to be taken seriously, to be the threat and not the threatened, the predator not the prey, Smidge does not want to leave Violet, her sister in solidarity and the person who makes her feel empowered. But life in the cultish circus as ‘living dolls’ is starting to feel not so subversive anymore and Smidge feels the pull of home for the first time in her life. She’s left her mother all alone and she needs to go back.
For a novel of only 300 pages, Jennifer Love’s debut packs one hell of a punch. It is a raw and complex exploration of gender through the lens of how we perform it, how others perceive it and how those things can become a war inside of us. At the same time, there’s an interesting exploration of mother/daughter and parent/child relationships here and how, in the face of addiction, these roles can end up reversed. The guilt Smidge feels around leaving her mother who didn’t care for her is heart-wrenching and, without giving too much away, the ending of Please Fear Me broke me. This is a story that has really stuck in my psyche and I would hugely recommend to anyone who likes literary fiction but especially those interested in themes of girlhood, gender, family ties, addiction and survival. With gorgeous prose that had me underlining and tabbing every other page, this was a delicious mix of eyeliner and sisterhood but also had it’s fair share of shame, secrets and guilt. It made my heart hurt and soar in equal measure. A triumph of a debut that I expect big things for in the literary prize world. Jennifer Love is one to watch for sure.
Review by Abi.
Please Fear Me was published on 05/09/24 by Fairlight
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