Reviews with content warning for Gaslighting - Magma

“I didn’t think any of it was really important. Just two pieces of meat kneading each other, trying to find an orgasm that would make them forget, if only for a fleeting second, how empty their lives are”

An account of a toxic relationship in chapters that are like flashes, written a sparse, magnetic prose that does not hesitate to call thing by their own name.

20-year-old Lilja falls for a young man a few years older than her. He seems to tick many the boxes: smart, well read, a vegetarian, does work for a charity. Yet their relation exudes toxicity from the very first lines, with humiliation as a key word: Lilja got chlamydia from someone else while travelling before they got together and he thinks she is a slut (never mind he will openly sleep around multiple times). This should send her reeling, yet she feels guilty and undeserving. Her sense of guilt increases as, enumerating the partners she could have got it from, she loses count, and we understand that she is a fragile, confused being desperate for connection who has found someone ready to take advantage.

The introductory episode sets the tone for a novella in which the anonymous boyfriend will debase Lilja in a number of ways, including gaslighting, openly cheating on her (even as part of a game), ignoring, exposing or isolating her her, comparing her to his idealised ex and forcing LIlja to meet her and listen to her anecdotes filled with graphic sexual details. As the narration progresses, we witness Lilja's spiralling down and falling apart as she tries to save him from his callousness, drowning in demeaning acts of self-denial and feelings of worthlessness. The narration in flashes focusing on single significant moments is particularly effective.

It always takes two to tango or to build a co-dependent relationship, and this is particularly true in this subtle, powerful investigation of female fragility -- a condition that makes Lilja the perfect prey for an equally fragile man who hides behind a facade of self-confidence and righteousness and fills the void of his life with fleeting, strong, violent emotions and may be playing out on her his repressed anger and trauma. An insightful exploration of prevarication, of the power imbalance between men and women and the anguish, vacuity, and emptiness that can pervade social and affective relationships (in our time and other times as well), in which sex is a perfunctory, empty act, sleeping around an empty game to kill time and communication is close to zero, replaced by a harsh physicality and rough sex the protagonists don’t seem to enjoy: anything “to shake me out of this deadness”.

The ending, strangely hopeful and open, leaves it up to us to imagine what future awaits Lilija.
A graphic, shocking novel that, in its cold lucidity, reminded me of the lost youth and moral vacuum brilliantly depicted in Bret Easton Ellis’ early novels.

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violett_k's review

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

4.5

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sophiesticatedselections's review

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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definebookish's review

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dark informative sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Magma is a slip of a book – 200 pages and almost as much white space as text – but an intense one. It’s the story of twenty year old student Lilja, who finds herself in a controlling relationship with an older man.

Icelandic author Thora Hjörleifsdóttir has previously published three poetry collections, and this shows in Magma, translated into English by Meg Matich. Lilja’s narrative is presented as a series of diary-like vignettes, each a chapter with its own title, ranging in length from a single sentence to a few pages.

The writing is sparse, often visceral, as Lilja loses herself to please her partner. I didn’t find the language as poetic as other reviewers. I’m torn on this; I don’t speak or read Icelandic, so I’ll never know how it feels to read the original text. There are some striking turns of phrase (“The pills flatten me, make me into a thin scum on the surface of still water.”) At times, though, it feels a little on the nose, like dialogue from an educational film about emotional abuse.

That’s not to say that Lilja’s plight doesn’t feel true, or urgent. It would be hard to read Magma without feeling empathy for her – or fury towards the man so carelessly destroying her. However, it’s a big ask for a book you can read in an hour to convey the insidiousness of coercive control. For me, the immediate emotional impact is there, but beyond that it didn’t have the weight I’d hoped for.

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