SWEET BABY MINE

A couple crippled by family trauma and mental illness finally air out their sins in Daversa’s debut novel.

Ana and Tony DiSalvo are a middle-aged couple living in Paris, dysfunctional as can be. She’s a recovering addict with borderline personality disorder, and he’s a narcissist; Ana, a therapist, calls them the “yin and yang of the asylum elite.” They’ve both had affairs, and their eldest daughter, Chloe, a heroin addict, has recently reached out after seven years of estrangement. The couple quickly spiral into further problems, unable to have a conversation without screaming at each other. Ana and Tony narrate in alternating chapters that display a toxic codependence for which neither will take responsibility. Chloe’s paternity is at the heart of their trouble; Ana had an affair around the time Chloe was conceived, and she and Tony can’t move past it. Part of the suspense involves whether their estrangement from their daughter will end, but Chloe is so skimpily fleshed out that Ana and Tony are far more compelling, given their abusive childhoods and personality disorders that affect many aspects of their lives. But the focus on Ana and Tony comes at the expense of the other characters, particularly the couple’s younger daughters, Evelyn and Meadow. Tony’s one-dimensional lover, Didi, resembles a therapist more than a romantic interest, and it’s unclear why such a self-possessed woman would stick with a man as repugnant as Tony, who at one point physically abuses Ana. Daversa, a psychologist, says in an author’s note that she aimed in the book to explore the dynamics of BPD, which may help to explain why it succeeds less as a novel than as a character study of two mentally ill people in denial. Still, anyone in a troubled partnership may relate to some of its lines, especially Ana’s comment that “it’s hard to describe how it feels to turn yourself inside out to discover you can’t find anything good”: “It fills you with so much self-contempt that you lash out at everyone around you, especially the people who love you most.”

An intriguing exploration of a virulent relationship hampered by underdeveloped characters.