Dragonslippers: This Is What an Abusive Relationship Looks Like

Rosalind B. Penfold

This is a stunning book.

Rosalind Penfold has created a piece of art that outlines, in the starkest and most blunt terms, domestic abuse. She drew most of it during a ten-year abusive relationship, and drawing in, or just after, the moment lends this book an immediacy, a power that cannot be overstated. Ninety, perhaps ninety-five, percent of it would land it at the top of my year's-best list. Rosalind Penfold's relationship is the stuff nightmares are made of, and she has done a perfect job of translating it into a nightmare that those of us who have thankfully never experienced these horrors can still identify with.

This makes the other five percent of the book-- all of it within the final few pages-- the more puzzling. It is when Penfold is out of the relationship and going through therapy, on the healing journey, where things fall apart. After the brutal, straightforward detail that comprises the bulk of the manuscript, life after the relationship is glossed over at best. Given the target audience, an argument can be made that this is, in fact, the most important section of the book, and it's neglected.

How minor a nit this is to pick depends on how important the reader feels it is that Penfold instruct the abused partner in what to do after getting out of the relationship. While I have to admit that the rather gaping hole in the narrative does nag at me, after mulling it over, it seems to me that the value there is to be found in the rest of the book well outweighs the problems with the end of it. The most important question to ask when judging a book is often "does it effectively get its point across without sacrificing its artistic integrity?" During the depiction of the relationship itself, Penfold succeeds perhaps better than any other writer about abuse ever has. A landmark achievement. It probably won't top my year's-best list, but it's a pretty good chance it will show up in the top ten.