The premise of SUNDAY JENKS is simple: what does it mean for someone to fall in love with a monster? The setting is California, and Sara is a poet in her late twenties. She finds work at Al’s hair dye sales business, and is immediately intrigued by the strange contradictions of his life—here a ridiculously poky and down-at-heel office, there a brand-new Porsche—as well as his capricious personality: his snarky comments to his girlfriend contrast with his warmth towards Sara. Before long, they are something like an item; but when Al stages a fake fire in the office to avoid paying creditors, Sara realizes his dealings are less than above-board.
Sara is a complex protagonist. Despite her depth of experience—she has a good social life and is recently divorced when the novel opens—the best word to describe her is naïve. On multiple occasions in the first half of the book, she has the opportunity to detach herself from a man who is, from very early on in the narrative, a transparently manipulative and unpleasant human being—and does not do so. “Let it go,” she tells herself after enduring some threatening remarks from Al. “Forget it, he’s not always this way. Things will get better. They have to.” There is not an abuse survivor in the world who has not rationalized the abusive behavior of their partner similarly. Author Nellie Hill carefully outlines Al’s plays, designed to control and coerce: the cutting off of Sara from her friendship network; the comments (sometimes offhand, sometimes cuttingly direct) about her appearance, which are subsequently internalized; the abrupt changes of emotional tone; the guilt-tripping—all leading up to physical assaults. It’s excellently portrayed and cleverly paced; Sara doesn’t know how deeply in trouble she is until it feels too late to extricate herself.
Yet there is also a part of her that doesn’t want to. Taking on the pseudonym Sunday Jenks (all the better for taking part in Al’s shady deals) has a double purpose, turning Sara into someone else: the sort of person who rejects the dull life of Al’s more respectable business partners and wants something more exciting—even if she lets Al pull her strings, as she puts it. Hill’s achievement is to bring all of these contradictions into sharp focus—to show how those who are abused really can continue to love the person abusing them, even as their relationship destroys and obliterates what they hold dear; how they can desire the tender words and mind-blowing sex enough to bear the beatings and denigratory comments. As a story of self-discovery in the face of personal adversity, this novel can hardly be bettered.
Nellie Hill’s SUNDAY JENKS is a first-rate exploration of a woman’s struggle to escape from an abusive relationship.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader