He’s peeled me like an onion. Surrounded by the leavings of my own sallow skin, I’ve dwindled to nothing, and my eyes smart.
Well, this broke me. Magma may be short (it’s about an hour’s read), but debut Icelandic author Thora Hjörleifsdóttir hits all the slow beats of an increasingly manipulative and abusive relationship that threatens to destroy a young woman; body, mind, and spirit. Twenty-year-old Lilja returns to Reykjavík from a solo backpacking trip through Central America to start a relationship with an older student who had been engaging her in romantic email exchanges while she was away. Although he doesn’t want to be thought of as her boyfriend, this Derrida-quoting, grey-eyed hunk will become ever more jealous and controlling, isolating Lilja from her friends and family; and the more time he spends with other women, the more Lilja believes that if only she could be more perfect — assuming his vegetarian diet, loosening her sexual boundaries, accepting his close relationship with his perfect Ex — maybe then he will finally commit himself to her. For anyone who wonders why women stay with their abusers, Hjörleifsdóttir unspools a plausible narrative of someone who makes a series of increasingly larger compromises until she has utterly betrayed herself; and with backstories that go some way to explaining why each of the partners in this couple act the way they do, Hjörleifsdóttir evokes the heat and pressure of her title that bubbles beneath all of our controlled facades. Brief but brimming with painfully relatable truths, this was an outstanding read. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
I felt really guilty. I’ve been with him so much lately that I’ve completely ignored my own friends. But there are so many things I can’t tell them. If you talk about what happens within a relationship, everything gets tangled, and it’s easy for an outsider to judge — I don’t want them to write him off completely. They don’t know what it’s like to be as in love as I am now.
Magma is written in a series of short chapters — from a few sentences to a few paragraphs — and with this breezy, mostly declarative (mostly non-contemplative) storytelling style, it reads like a much younger girl’s diary. And that apparent immaturity made me feel very protective of Lilja; Hjörleifsdóttir earns a real emotional investment from her readers as we inhabit Lilja’s mind and can’t stop her from acting against her own interests. An early chapter (my e-ARC doesn’t have the pages numbered but this is at the 15% mark) reads:
When I shower at his place, he always wants to get in with me. We’ve showered together so often that he seems quite hurt if I say I’d like to shower alone. The shower is really tight with two people, especially when I wash my hair, but he thinks it’s cozy, and I want to make him happy. Sometimes when we shower, he asks if he can pee on me. Urine feels strange when it runs down your body; it’s colder than the water, and the smell that cooks in the heat and steam isn’t especially pleasant. He usually wants to piss on my back. But sometimes he wants me to rest on my knees while he pees over my head. Once, he peed in my mouth. I didn’t like that. But I don’t mind the other times as much, as I’m already in the shower and can rinse it right off.
This brief chapter ([ironically?] entitled “Hygiene”) shows not only how Lilja starts off with “small” compromises but also demonstrates how she’s a willing participant in her own degradation — she’s not financially dependant on this guy, they have no children together or other tricky ties, Lilja simply wants to prove she’s good enough to earn this man’s focussed devotion and nothing will be good enough for him. And as I wrote above, each of these participants will have events in their background exposed that underpin their behaviours — I don’t think we’re supposed to think of him as a monster, even if he’s no good for Lilja — and while men in general aren’t presented in the best light (the man’s father was an alcoholic jerk, neither a male psychiatrist or ER doctor will give Lilja adequate care after she starts harming herself), there are also women (the man’s mother and Ex) who give the man’s behaviour a pass and who participate in the gaslighting and otherwise mistreatment of Lilja. It’s all so plausible (right up until a maybe not-so-inevitable ending) that I found the whole thing simply heart-breaking. I’d love to read more, especially something longer, from Hjörleifsdóttir.
