Potent account of a toxic liar’s trail of deceit
THE CHAIN
Chimene Suleyman Weidenfeld & Nicolson, €18.99
In one of the dozens of crazy anecdotes making up this book, Chimene Suleyman listens to a recording of her ex at a comedy show. He’s telling the tale of a woman he knew, a terrible person who lied to get into America. Rather illogically, he says he did not report her to the authorities because he wanted to use her apartment for a party, later describing how he defecated in her kitchen sink.
“I know that party never happened,” Suleyman observes. “I know because the woman he was talking about is me.”
Suleyman’s ex abandoned her shortly after she had an abortion – or rather, as she was having it, when he dashed home to their apartment, packed his things and left. Subsequently, with the help of the internet, Suleyman uncovered his web of deception, an apparent vortex which unfurls throughout the book.
He was a liar and an arch strategist who used women to uphold his floundering career. Girlfriend after girlfriend had lent him money and never got it back. He brought women to stay in the apartments of others. He lost a job after stealing $70,000 of equipment from his employer. “Perhaps after this it was too difficult to get another job, or he no longer saw the point in it, but women, it seemed, were more profitable than his other options,” she writes.
The Chain is a heartfelt and powerful book in which Suleyman uses her experience to reflect on the broader inequalities between women and men. It offers a detailed portrait of the worst sort of masculinity, which, Suleyman observes, society tolerates and accepts. An award-winning poet, her limpid style lifts the account and transforms even the grossest tale into social commentary.
After the revelations of her ex’s infidelity, she reached out to his friends, to find that they were aware of his behaviour and considered it relatively normal. “‘As a male you think, I’ve been in a situation like that,’ one says. ‘I know people who’ve been in a situation like that. And I don’t want to dig too deep in someone’s trauma.’”
Suleyman’s personal story unfolds grippingly. Months after the break-up, she came across an Instagram post, which another woman had published in 2016 while Suleyman was still with her ex. It was a drawing of the man’s face and included his full name. “Unfortunately the guy in the picture turned out to be a psychopath,” the author had written wryly.
The internet enabled the man to pick women off dating sites, but it also proved his downfall. Dozens of his former girlfriends from multiple countries add their experiences, forming a delectably juicy narrative. They mock the ex, and share anecdotes about what happened. As well as cheating he had stolen about $100,000 from them in total.
Suleyman places her ex’s behaviour on a spectrum of abuse, populated by figures such as Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, the “Ernest Hemingways and Kanyes, the Sid Viciouses and John Lennons, the Johnny Cashes and Russell Brands”.
But she positions them alongside other more familiar types. “The man who resents you having male friends. The man who resents the time you spend with any friend.” Her list goes on.
Even as she eviscerates the flaws that masculinity allows and encourages, Suleyman places a stark spotlight on the experience of women.
She considers the ads for pregnancy tests showing women gasping for joy in the company of loving partners and wishes there were space for other realities — the delight of women who find they are not pregnant or the sadness of women who don’t wish to be pregnant but are.
With her abortion as a recurring theme, she takes pains to acknowledge how devastating it was. “True and fulfilling abortion rights will start with the procedure, and continue with a space carved out for women to talk boldly, confidently, brutally, about the contradictions that come from having complete ownership of our bodies. F**k it. I will say it – I am glad to be childless, and regretful to have had an abortion.”
To some extent The Chain is revenge in its purest form. The actions of Suleyman’s ex have given her a wealth of material which she probes and reworks for her own purpose.
But more than that, it acts as a starting point for multiple reflections about the lives of women, and the legacy of #MeToo, which forged a language to express what it feels like to “take the brighter route home, the longer route home, expensive cab you can’t really afford” and still feel fear.
Is there space for any good men in this indictment of masculinity? The answer is far from clear but when new victims of her ex begin to surface, women share their messages of solidarity.
“What is the chain?” Suleyman asks. “It’s many things, one of them being friendship. ‘I am sorry’ – we wrote to each other... And the voices came, and the chain kept going.”