Gwendoline Riley

Neve is a writer who lives with an older man named Edwyn. Their life together is not exactly loving—more of a co-existence of mutual tolerance. Neve is pragmatic. For much of her life she's been doing what she must in order to survive, and one of the things she must do is put up with Edwyn’s neurotic episodes. They do “cuddle,” and from time to time enjoy one another’s company. But as if a switch has been flicked, Edwyn turns on her with paranoid, often nonsensical accusations (for instance, he claims she is out to “annihilate” him), and shrill, belittling insults. His problem seems to be with women in general: he sits in front of the television and spews similarly irrational complaints at female screen characters. Neve’s voice as she tries to talk him down from his mounting rage is calm and measured, but also ineffective. Their life together consists of cheerful periods of intimacy followed by days of icy, combative silence, times during which Neve questions her own sanity for staying with him. The narrative also delves into Neve’s past, her family life with a bullying father and an emotionally disengaged mother. Gwendoline Riley deliberately holds her reader at a distance: the novel is tersely written in clipped prose that generates almost unbearable tension. We observe Neve going through her days, but we never get close to her, never get the opportunity to really understand what makes her tick. But the novel fascinates for precisely this reason. Though it’s her story and she’s narrating, Neve remains elusive: indistinct and unknowable. Reading the book is like following someone through zigzagging streets, someone who keeps to the shadows, who, just as we catch a glimpse of her, slips out of sight, and who remains—constantly, tantalizingly—out of reach.

In First Love, Gwendolin Riley’s brilliant, disturbing fifth novel, she presents a marriage as a minefield or toxic warzone, seething with hazard, a place where there are no winners, only losers.… (more)