Lea's Reviews > Raj

My mother says I read only depressing books so she gave me this romance for my birthday, with sincere wishes that her daughter starts to read more normal books.
Even novel having close to 700 pages, this seemed like a quick, very light and amusing read. I usually don’t read romances but I was not mad at this book, even being a stereotypical love story between an outrageously rich, perfect, slim, blue-eyed blonde and an immensely tall and muscular dark-haired guy that starts poor but becomes even more outrageously rich. The author toying with the ancient archetype of lovers and interesting storyline made a perfect novel for summertime when your brain barely functions due to ruthless heath waves and you want to entertain a few remaining neurons with reading.

However, I have to comment on the father figure in this story. Meredith, the protagonist, is raised only by her father, who has the worst mixture of being the most controlling, narcissistic, misogynic, tyrannical and manipulative father I’ve read about in the literature, and some of the author's psychological descriptions were unexpected for the genre and I was pleasantly surprised.

“He had given her life and then tried to direct every breath she took, every day of that life. No one could ever accuse him of not caring for her, or of neglecting her, for he had hovered over her like a hawk since she was a child. He had spoiled so much for her, and yet he had acted out of love—a possessive, strangling love.”

The emotionally incestuous relationship her father has with her unables Meredith for a long time to form a quality relationship with a man and influences her self-esteem and sexuality as she struggles with a romanticized version of frigidity and other emotionally damaging consequences of that relationship.

“Now that she was eighteen, he appeared to be tightening restrictions instead of loosening them. If Meredith had a date, he personally met the young man at the door and subjected him to a lengthy cross-examination while treating him with an insulting contempt that was intended to intimidate him into never asking her out again. Then he set a ridiculously early curfew of midnight. If she spent the night at Lisa's, he invented a reason to call her and make certain she was there. If she went out for a drive in the evening, he wanted an itinerary of where she was going; when she came back home he wanted an accounting of every minute she'd been gone. ”

Much of the novel is not about the struggle in Meredith's romantic relationship but her struggle of separation from the controlling and rigid father - the psychological damage of the relationship on Meredith is immense but she remains blind and forgiving to it and the resolution of the internal conflict is maybe too shallow and predictable, but I still appreciate the author of giving a spotlight to a very prominent psychological issue for some women. Her father obviously had a very negative, bigoted perspective of women that made him irrationally jealous and paranoid about women's sexuality (both his wife’s and his daughter's) which probably reflected his own repressed sexual desires that were expressed as a form of hatred and repression towards women. I often find myself discussing with women the damaging effect their father's negative perspective on women’s sexuality had on them (growing up with their dad calling attractive women all kinds of derogatory terms) - resulting in various forms of sexual or dysfunctions in relationships with men. Also, the hostility towards the female child is still a prevalent issue and deeply rooted in the Balkans - especially in some rural parts - where is it a shame when a woman births a girl, and not a boy - and the emotional damaging effect of that internalized hatred towards women is enormous.

“Lifting her chin, she added, "I used to think you loved me. I knew you wished I'd been a boy, but I never realized you didn't give a damn about me because I was merely a girl. ”

But I have to admit the end is a bit naive, in Meredith finds the perfect peace with her father that magically changes despite the fact he was psychologically and emotionally abusive his whole life, Madeline finds a fine line between attaining her own individuality, autonomy and freedom, without completely cutting out her father and hating him - a fine line that is very hard to reach in reality for most people. It is also interesting that both Matt and Meredith have absent mothers, Matt due to the mother's illness and death, and Meredith due to the parent's divorce, and they did not have a gentle, soft, maternal relationship to balance out the damaging father aspects - which is oftentimes the case in reality when there is abusive father, the mother is maybe not physically but is psychologically absent in her passivity and enablement of father behavior. Matt also has problems with his father’s alcoholism, making him for a long time the prime authority figure of the family, but even being an alcoholic, Matt's father is emotionally available, much warmer and softer than Meredith’s cold, repressive and distant father, pointing out that even parents addiction is sometimes less damaging than parents personality structure. I also appreciated that putting their physical perfection to the side, Meredith and Matt were not psychologically black and white characters, but characters with tints of complexity, with their flaws and sometimes stubborn, amoral and even manipulative behavior, having a lot of good, honorable qualities nevertheless - making them somewhat similar to real-life human beings.

Also, the book could raise a discussion about the power imbalance in romantic relationships and how it affects and plays out in the couple's dynamic. Meredith is 8 years younger than Matt, she was 18, and he was 26 when they first meet, also she is a virgin, sexually experienced, and insecure, compared to him, who had a lot of sexual partners in the past, and there is a last power imbalance, Meredith being from an upper-class, old-money, and Matt starting in a lower class, being raised on a poor farm, and later becoming the new money American dream wonder - but not being accepted in Meredith social class. The couple did not succeed when Meredith was the one having the most money but succeded later on when Matt is the one that has the upper hand in the financial department, giving a hint that the women’s wealth can influence the man’s sense of being overpowered and inferior, in psychoanalytic language - castrated, even though he had an upper hand in more than one area- of psychological maturity, sexuality and life experience. The relationship began to function when Matt had more power in every department, as they were never equal which makes me think about relationships I know dissolved when a woman began to make more money and got to a higher position than a man - a situation that will be more and more prevalent in the modern world but still may be shocking in the more traditional and conservative world of my area. Book also comments on a deeply embedded misogyny that is prevalent in the corporate world, and points to the fact that neither the world, nor the father figure finds powerful women exactly desirable nor acceptable, and a lot of women’s appeal has to come to the archetype of a fragile, naive, blushing girl that has to be protected (and dominated) by the power of masculinity, the stereotype of femininity much less endearing to power structures. Meredith is beautiful, capable, intelligent and wealthy - it would be too much of a sin that she was also sexually experienced, with high self-esteem and independence - all of that is permitted for her male companion Matt to be at the same time.

But Matt and Meredith balance each other out stereotypically, but quite nicely - Meredith makes Matt softer and more emotionally open, and Matt actually helps Meredith to become more self-assured and confident in a battle with prominent women's issue - having a gist to please everybody and make everybody happy.

“You can alter the words slightly if you think you should, but the point is that you can't live your life to suit other people. The harder you try, the more restrictions they'll put on you just for the fun of seeing you jump through their hoops.”

Being in the romance genre and being written in 1991, I appreciate this novel touching in a light-hearted way a lot of prominent issues of womanhood. If you know about more novels touching on the complex father-daughter dynamic please do recommend them in the comments.