A Butterfly Tethered to A Slug: The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

 

“My name is not Jane.”

This is the stuff of my nightmares. A woman is held prisoner by man and is compelled to comply with his every whim. If she attempts to escape, he will break her ankle, if she fails to obey an order, he will burn one of the few “personal” possessions she has left, effectively erasing her personal history and the inner life she clings to. He ensures she becomes addicted to strong painkillers in order to better ensure her compliance and her passivity. Her day-to-day existence is a misery of fear, loathing, housework, drudgery, and rape.

Somehow this is all made even worse by the fact that the man in question is the dumpy child of a drab culture whereas the woman is a living spark from a culture full of beauty and vividness, it is as if a slug had enslaved a butterfly.

I picked up distinct vibes here not only of contrasting differences between the sexes but between different ways of life. Is this a post Brexit novel? I very much think it is. The dull farmer with his flat life, bland food and unimaginative lovemaking seems to be the epitome of British cultural isolation. He also has all the prejudices inherent to those who voted for Brexit, the obtuse intolerance and misunderstanding of other ways of existence, the completely unmerited sense of superiority, the hatred and prejudice of everything and anything foreign.

This is a hard, hard novel to read, I found it unbearable in parts, but I could not put it down. If you have the stomach for it, you will discover it is definitely one of the best books of 2020 and probably even of 2021. 

Thank you as always to Netgalley for making an ARC copy of this text available to me.