Fear of Fighting

 
 
Fear of Fighting
by Stacey May Fowles

art by Marlena Zubar
Invisible Publishing

2008

 

 

Fear of Fighting is another book I've had on a to-read list forever, and can no longer remember what prompted me to seek it out. It's a novella or short novel narrated in the first-person by Marnie. She recently got dumped by Ben, her boyfriend of two years, and we watch her slide into depression.
 

Marnie pines for Ben, feels alone and lonely, feels invisible. She quits her office job, drifts apart from her friends and family, lets her cellphone lapse, stops leaving her apartment entirely. She spends the winter inside, getting everything delivered. She reminisces about her relationship, and cyberstalks Ben and his new girlfriend on social media. Ben is in a band, has a dog, and honestly doesn't sound that great.

 
Then, unexpectedly, spring arrives, and Marnie starts feeling better. She goes outside again and reconnects with people. Ben's new girlfriend comes over in tears because she's sure he's cheating on her. The two women get drunk, make out, and steal Ben's dog. As summer approaches, Marnie moves into a new apartment and a new phase of her life.

 

Fear of Fighting came out in 2008, and it's a lot like Radio Iris except with first-person narration. If I'd tried to write a literary novel in my early 20s, it might have looked a lot like these two. There are real limits to 'writing what you know.'

 
In fact, one of my main experiences reading Fear of Fighting was an acute awareness of how different I am now than I was then, and how books like this speak to me differently now. There was a different experience I could've had if I'd read it when it first came out, but it's no longer available to me.

 
I did appreciate following the narrator through her depression and out the other side. Sometimes in stories like this, the Sad Girl's life just gets worse and worse and then the story ends on that lowest point.

 
The book is illustrated by Marlena Zubar, whose art here reminds me somewhat of Carson Ellis. Each of the 40ish short chapters gets its own illustration, which slightly surreally depicts an object or mood mentioned in the narration