THE OTHER CHEEK

In Danbury’s debut novel, a marriage begins to crumble under the stress of abuse and mental illness.

Rich Bryson is a freelance cameraman working in television production. He has steady work, and he’s excited to be marrying Tami Matthews, a beautiful aspiring actress who can also sing and dance: “It was just a matter of time before it was her turn to shine,” she thinks to herself. Early on, Tami shows signs of an alarming temper, as when she gets a parking ticket and loudly curses the entire city of Anaheim, California. After a wedding that Tami has carefully orchestrated—but which still fails to satisfy her wish for perfection—she and Rich settle into their new life as a married couple. Soon, Tami begins flying into rages and taking it out on her husband—hitting him and pulling out chunks of his hair. When she discovers that her sibling is pursuing acting, she hits a new level of fury, screaming, “I hate my brother!” As a result, the abuse escalates, and Rich starts to fear his wife. The physical and psychological tolls then start to interfere with his work. Meanwhile, Tami’s mental health seems to be eroding: She starts talking to herself, repeating the phrase, “It doesn’t go with that”; she hears voices and grins maniacally; and her words and actions become stranger and more alarming. Rich gets help from his siblings, who formulate a plan to save him from Tami, but she has no plans to make it easy for him to leave. The novel’s short chapters move quickly, wasting little time on the relationship’s halcyon days. When moments of abuse occasionally give way to intimate moments of reconnection, Danbury shows how the protagonist rekindles his hope for a loving relationship: “Rich never knew what to expect anymore.” The author has a good sense of pace and tension, which he ratchets up during scenes of domestic cruelty. He also has a knack for rendering vivid action. But when the prose gets more figurative, it struggles to maintain the same clarity. For instance, when Rich and Tami return from an idyllic anniversary weekend, a tragic discovery exacerbates Tami’s fragile mental state: “Instantaneously, a glacial chunk of her remaining sanity had cleaved away and was ripped to smithereens, and what was left of her fragile world crumpled like a house of cards in a hurricane.” The general aim is apparent here, but the metaphors are too mixed to mean very much. Tami initially seems like an unlikely abuser, but her behavior becomes far less surprising as Danbury shows the extent of her mental illness. It’s not always clear what her disorder is, however; she shows signs of narcissism, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and mania. The author never makes Tami a sympathetic character, but the evidence that she’s unwell saves her from seeming cartoonishly villainous. One highlight of the book is the soundtrack: Numerous mentions of songs pepper the novel, sometimes reflecting and sometimes belying the feelings of the characters.

An intense, sometimes-brutal novel about acknowledging and escaping an abusive relationship.