“[The] unapologetic portrait of a woman cutting a precarious path through early adulthood.” sums up Merritt Tierce’s Love Me Back rather well. Marie is a young single mother whose existence is defined by her ever-shifting jobs as a restaurant server and is consumed by relationships with fellow employees. Diving in with a brutal power, the novel never relents in the raw emotions of its narrative.

–

Already unfairly derided by conservative critics for glamorizing an ‘immoral’ sexuality and drug use, Love Me Back is not so banal or simplistic, despite appearances of its plot or protagonist. One wonders whether some of the more vocal critics have even read it. And as usual, these critics would refuse to permit portrayals of reality that they’d rather pretend doesn’t exist.

–

To me, Marie recalls the suffering saints featured in some of my favorite works from Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc to Bernanos’/Bresson’s Mouchette to the Dardenne’s Rosetta. The name itself reflects this trait, though here the character has no connection to any religion, just that aspect of devotion that religion can hold. Marie represents the ideal worker in the serving industry. Throughout the novel she is giving herself completely, most obviously in her body, but also through her mind and position of power. She gives herself to society, to individuals, to drugs, not for pleasure, but for the mere reason that she is just so good at it. Almost like this is what she is naturally inclined and meant to be. Paradoxically by losing herself in self-destructive behavior, she is also fulfilling her self purpose or servitude, of giving into the desires and whims of others. She loves them in that she sacrifices everything of herself in their service, and any wish of being loved back seems remote and unattainable.

–

Tierce does not pain Marie’s existence as glamorous, nor judge the acts of sex, drugs, abortion, or childcare in any way. They just are presented as aspects of her character, and reflect powerfully the actual reality of people all over the world and the jobs that are held in the food service industry. Marie can be seen as a victim at the hands of those around her who take advantage of who she is, yet there is also the sense that victimhood doesn’t fully define her, for she apathetically accepts and even pursues her predicaments.

–

Short, but perhaps difficult to get through due to the intensity of subject matter, Love Me Back is a complex and finely written literary work that may not be an ‘enjoyable’ read, but certainly is a significant and worthwhile one that will impress in its unflinchingly frank honesty.

–