Merritt Tierce’s LOVE ME BACK is gripping. I wouldn’t use that word unless I really meant it, because it’s a word that gets used a bit too much when describing books. But LOVE ME BACK IS gripping; it’s violent, emphatic, and the narration of its protagonist, Marie, will consume you.
The powerful thing about this book, and about the lives of young women everywhere, is the tension between the looks of things and what’s going on inside. Marie is the kind of person who doesn’t always know why she does things, and as she lives her life, we follow her. We follow her, not only because of her sensational actions, but because of the delicacy of the connection between them and the face she hides from the world. We alone get to see inside her mind, we’re her only friends. Her loneliness is compelling, yes, but what truly drives the momentum of this book is her attempts, time and time again, to break free of it but not knowing how to. Marie is unable to admit to either her loneliness of her wish to escape it.
Time and again she does something the reader will beg her not to do. How can she be so self-destructive? We want her to be aware of the consequences of her actions, not even externally, other characters are besides the point, but we want her to foresee the ripples her actions will cause for her own well-being. Marie is self-aware, though, and even if she doesn’t know the specifics of how, she knows she’ll be hurting. She almost wants to, she thinks she deserves pain, and if no one else causes it, she creates it.
Tierce’s is able to intertwine these two age-old stories (the shock and the sadness) into one modern novel. Marie’s promiscuity is sensationalistic, titillating. But that side of the story is a thin gloss over the depth of Marie’s confusion, because Marie doesn’t know her own heart or mind. Tierce shows how these two sides of womanhood coexist by staunchly putting them together, and by writing each one evenly. Even though they may seem opposed, both are very very real.
