THE DARK PATH by Michelle Sacks (BOOK REVIEW)
(Trigger Warning for this novel: Child abuse, Domestic abuse)
Sacks was born in South Africa, and holds a master’s degree in literature and film from the University of Cape Town. Her fiction has been shortlisted twice for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and for two South African PEN Literary Awards.
“There were no rules. There are still none. I don’t know who did what or worse. It was all interchangeable parts. Love and hate. So entwined you can’t tell one from the other.”
Michelle Sacks’ 2019 debut thriller The Dark Path immerses the reader into the down-trodden and humdrum life of an over-controlled housewife and mother, whilst highlighting not only what an abusive marriage can do, but how the toxicity of life-long friendship might ruin you and everything you thought you were, or potentially set you free. Sacks confronts themes of obsession, depression, childhood trauma and heteronormative expectations, throwing suburban worries into your face and unpicking every worry or anxiety you have about your body, your behaviour, and your position as a woman. Sacks exposes the reality of not only what might happen behind closed doors, but also somewhere deeper, behind your eyes and in the very depths of your psychi. What extent would you go to be the perfect woman, the perfect wife, the perfect mother or the perfect friend?
“He does love to educate me. He is very good at it. Filling in the blanks. I think perhaps he considers me to be one of the blanks, too, and slowly he is filling me in. Do this, wear that. Now you should quit your job. Now we should marry. Now we should breed.”
The story follows Merry and Sam, an American married couple who have recently moved to Sweden and had their first son Conor. From the perspectives of Merry and Sam (and later, Merry’s childhood friend Frank) we see their lives from a variety of perceptions and points of view. At first, Merry and Sam sell us a lie. The perfect house, the perfect country, the perfect marriage, the perfect child. Everything in their new life is simply ‘perfect’ and beautiful, and both narrators are desperate for us to believe.“He believes I am a good mother, the very best kind. Devoted and all-nurturing and selfless. Without a self. Perhaps he is right about the last part. Sometimes I wonder myself: Where am I? or: Was there anyone there to being with?”
Sacks slowly drip feeds doubt, grappling with concepts of expectation and identity, the glossy veneer of Sam and Merry’s perfect Swedish family life is shattered. As we learn more about Sam and Merry’s relationship, the true reasons behind their sudden relocation, and what really lies behind that perfect curtain of ‘family bliss.’ Merry is struggling with motherhood, and the alarming signs of post-natal depression scream out of the page. She hears her baby cry and feels nothing, she behaves as she believes a mother should but she wants nothing more than to accidently (or purposefully) be rid of the small boy. She is desperate to feel something and to please Sam and everyone else around her,
“Please, I urged again, I coaxed, I begged. But inside, like always, there was only emptiness. Cold and hollow. The great void within.”
but she just keeps performing her duties as mother, secretly harbouring her emptiness and lack of feeling towards the child.
” I watch the baby through the bars of his crib. A little prison, to keep him safely inside. He watches me. He does not smile. I do not bring him joy. Well. The feeling is mutual.”
Whilst you would not be blamed to presume that this novel is about a marriage, a mother with postnatal depression and a narcistic, misogynistic husband with a reputation of cheating on his wife, you would be wrong. This novel deals with so much more, and echoes of one of the first abstract reads I ever came across. ‘Sin’ by Josephine Hart. Hart’s striking novel plays with concepts of power and compulsive obsession, following adopted sisters Ruth and Elizabeth, and the toxic, callous, and heart-wrenching tale of how one destroys the other through jealousy, revenge, love, sex, death, grief and deceit. All culminating into an abstract and thought provoking look at what extremes one might go to to achieve what you believe to be power and place. Like ‘Sin,’ ‘The Dark Path’ makes you feel uncomfortable and unnerved as you a plunged into a story that gets darker and more heart-wrenching with every page.
“Payback.
Revenge.
Or the same old games.
Mine”
Merry’s oldest friend, Frank comes to visit, and Merry is desperate to ‘win’ in life, trying to showcase her portrait perfect family life upon her arrival. It becomes apparent that their relationship is anything but stable, and whilst they continuously state that they are ‘best friends’ and ‘sisters,’ there is something undeniably negative about their interactions.
“We brought out the worst in each other. Envy, anger, deceit. It’s only later when you learn to hold that impulse to hurt with your fists. You discover words and silences are the real killer. The withdrawal of affection, the sly planting of rumours and half-truths, the deft salting of the wounds you know cut the deepest. This is where the power is. A different kind of violence.”
I have purposefully left out most details about the narrative, (what actually ‘happens’ when Frank comes to visit), so I do not spoil it. However, it is important to note that you will not like the characters. In other thrillers or horrors one tends to root for the protagonist, the narrator or even the obscure neighbour who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and seems to need your pity, but no. All the characters within this novel start off toxic, and the toxicity infects each character, each page, until you feel they all deserve each other (with the exception of the neighbour’s wife, who does not seem to do anything wrong). The relationships within this novel insist upon each other, are purely performative and focused on competitive and heteronormative expectations. This obsessive need to ‘seem a certain way’ leads to extremely unlikeable, unrelatable and actually quite disturbing characters.
“we’ve always been sisters, haven’t we? Interchangeable parts. You bleed, I bleed. What you love, I love too. What you need, I must give you. This is love. This is how it goes.”
Sack’s first novel is spooky, disturbing, and genuinely upsetting in parts. Sacks makes you question your relationships, how far you would go for those you ‘love,’ and what that love actually looks like. As a debut novel, I am impressed, and keen to see what Sacks does next.
“you’ll be friends for life, she always told us. Your first friend is the only one you’ll ever need by your side. You’ll look after each other.”
