Just Jennifer

Hating Olivia by Mark SaFranko (Harper Perennial, 2010)

Max Zajack’s life as a struggling writer and musician is pretty much a disaster; he lives in cheap, roach-infested rooms & he can’t ever keep his dead end jobs long enough to make ends meet, but when he meets Olivia at a club one night, he thinks his life is taking a change for the better, when in reality, Max’s life begins a downward slide, about to spiral completely out of control. Max is completely obsessed with Olivia, and she with him. Olivia becomes domineering, controlling and emotionally manipulative leaving Max no way out. There is frequent, rough sex, volatile arguments, threats of leaving and then rough sex again, to prove, each to the other, that they can’t live without the other. As these two lost souls navigate life together, there is violence and unhappiness, but there is also a strange kind of love that you feel you will die without, if you don’t die in the living it. Not angry in its telling, Max relates an intense and visceral tale, exploring a love so obsessed it is ultimately destructive. The writing is edgy, the language raw, though there are carefully constructed, gentle sentences “…late summer passed like a lilac-scented dream…autumn had tossed its longer nights over the world like a soft blanket…” remind you that this is a love story after all.