The jacket copy of Hannah Pittard’s If You Love It, Let It Kill You prepares us for a story about a novelist whose ex-husband’s debut novel contains an “unflattering” portrait of her. As recursive as that sounds, it undersells the book’s concentric circles. Her ex-husband’s novel isn’t the first time he has maligned her in fiction (an earlier story has her knifed to death by a homeless man), and — here’s the doozy — she has already written about the ex in a memoir and a novel of her own. If his new book is an unwelcome surprise for her, well, perhaps it’s a turnabout that falls in the category of fair play.
Readers unfamiliar with the conventions of autofiction — a genre that uses fictional techniques to tell a version of the author’s life — might find it coy to refer to “the novelist” and her “ex” rather than using their names, but keeping them nameless distances Pittard from her creations. Both Pittard and her literary alter ego (occasionally “Hana” or “Prof P”) live in Lexington, Ky., teach at the state university, and cohabit with a long-term boyfriend (“Bruce”) and his 11-year-old daughter. Curious readers may google Pittard to discover the identity of her ex (or read the New York Times article about their divorce), though I urge you to read the novel first. Its appeal lies in its witty prose and the protagonist’s zany misadventures, notin its fidelity to real-life events.
If You Love It, Let It Kill You follows the novelist as she confronts a series of crises — some minor, some grave, all of them self-inflicted. She is surrounded by family, including divorced parents who live blocks away and a sister across the street. She loves them but wishes they would give her some space until they do so, whereupon she feels left out. Bruce puts up with her eccentricities but would prefer her to be less hostile about their domesticity. “I hate that we have cotton balls,” she tells him. “I hate that we have a fully stocked first-aid kit.” As a teacher, she tries not to show favoritism to the handsome older student, but the other students aren’t fooled.
Instigating further chaos is the reappearance of a former lover, “the Irish man,” with whom she might have had a one-night stand seven years ago while still married to her ex. The Irish man begins sexy-texting (she weakens when addressed as “hot stuff”), and she responds, hoping that he will shed light on what really happened in their earlier, drunken encounter. The narrator’s justification for indulging in his attentions sounds entirely sympathetic: “Arriving now, as I am, seven years older, less elastic, seven years closer to female invisibility — these texts erase that lingering uncertainty, making me feel alive again, desired, important, powerful, feminine.”
The protagonist’s antics often occupy the gray area between lovable quirkiness and mental disorder. With Bruce she pretends to be a dead body, a game that starts playful but turns dark. “You’ve killed me and I’m dead and now you have to get rid of me,” she tells him. She finds a wounded cat in her garage and tries to nurse it back to health. It’s not strange that she begins talking to the cat; what’s disturbing is that the cat begins to respond, extensively.
Keeping the protagonist tethered to reality is her friend Jane, an English professor, who acts as the Greek chorus. When the narrator whines in a text, “what if this isn’t my life?” Jane responds, “Maybe … you have a creeping feeling your troubles are frivolous.” The narrator’s complaint, “What if contentment inhibits my writing?” is met with abrupt recalibration: “your boredom is From a Place of Privilege.” If Pittard writes a sequel, here’s hoping Jane reprises her role.
A novel about writers has a built-in meta-element, a layer of self-reflexive commentary that Pittard threads through the narrative. The narrator tells her students, “Never name a character who isn’t pivotal to the plot,” leaving readers to conclude that her ex-husband is not “pivotal,” or that her novel has no plot. (Both conclusions may be true.) She also tells a student that he shouldn’t use stories to make “false accusations about living people. It’s unethical. Fiction isn’t a platform for revenge.”
Pittard lives up to that standard: None of her characters appear villainous, though her alter ego comes close. She wonders if she can be trusted not to cross the line with the Irish man or “have I already gone too far?” She confesses that her ex’s portrait of her — “Smug. Narcissistic. Vaguely unhinged.” — is perfectly accurate. For all her flaws and cringeworthy mistakes, though, we hope for her happiness. She may be the bête noire for her ex, but she remains the heroine of her own story.
For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.
The annual event takes place Oct. 18-19 at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, the Tennessee State Museum and the Tennessee State Library & Archives
