When her husband discovers he has never brought his wife to a satisfying sexual climax, the two grow distant. Ramona imagines him as having secret lovers whom he can satisfy. She imagines she smells their perfume. In one instance, she is convinced she actually sees his lover in their home.
Repeatedly, her husband denies these accusations but Ramona persists. He adds to her mental delusions by claiming she is insane, hallucinating. This verbal barrage deepens her feelings of worthlessness and despair.
The Lie is a fascinating story to read. Author Wagman does her utmost to make her tale flow seamlessly along as several continuous thought streams in Ramona Smollens’ troubled mind.
The tale is highly charged sexually. When Ramona’s husband mounts her, she describes him as a “great chugging, puffing, huffing, locomotive … tearing down the tracks.”
I liked the fact that even Ramona’s surname, “Smollens”, had a sexual overtone. By changing one letter and dropping the “s,” it becomes Swollen, a word that describes over and over again on almost every page, her husband’s swollen penis-like fingers, not to mention his own phallic, “private business” part.
The surname also reminded me of Ramona’s swollen, deeply injured self-concept which repeatedly attempts to deal with sexual reality in the imagined personhood of Rita Hayworth. As the book nears its end, the reader will finally see exactly what The Lie refers to.
This book is not for the faint-hearted. I would recommend it as an intriguing read to anyone wanting to learn more about the undisguised effects that child abuse has on the human mind. The Lie takes the reader into the distraught, sometimes hallucinating, psyche of a woman who, to me, is more emotionally disturbed than sexually inadequate.
Psychologists and psychiatrists alike always warn of the damaging effects sexual abuse can have on the developing psyche during childhood. Without early counseling, an abused child cannot mature adequately. Fredrika Wagman’s fascinating book, The Lie, paints just such a cautionary picture.
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