Obsession

The novel explores the dark mystery of obsession, arguing that such emotional overload, such toxicity, in the end defies explanation. Obsession is an emotional glitch, a bug in the body’s otherwise normal emotional system, that, if survived, scars without kindness, without providing any rationale. Unlike love which leaves behind a sweet tangle of regret and memories, obsession leaves only the stunned numbness of a survivor. The narrator acknowledges as much. Before her chance encounter with Ciaran at the art exhibit, the narrator believed that “each human life has a narrative and a destiny” (15). That faith in explanation and the logic of a life-plan is upended by Ciaran who becomes for her an ideal without whom she cannot conceive of her day-to-day existence. “He looked like an illustration of superiority, like propaganda for the idea of a man” (23). His body is a “site of prayer” (32). His...