First Love by Gwendoline Riley

First Love tells the story of Neve, and her older husband Edwyn. Theirs is a marriage rooted in threats and humiliation. Page after page illustrates Edwyn’s tyrannous barrage of insults aimed at his wife, targeting everything from a past moment of drunkenness, to her Northernness. I winced my way through this novel, frustrated by Neve’s attempts to find reason behind her husband’s astounding aggression.

First Love is an examination of the human need for love and all that is associated with it. Edwyn’s attitude to his wife is paired with a pathetic desperation for her. He falls repeatedly into baby-talk and nicknames moments after unleashing a torrent of abuse. Plagued by illness, he is not the looming bully caricature, but a scared and feeble man, lashing out with his failing body. In this novel, love becomes not a blissful goal, but a claustrophobic necessity, the pain of which is preferable to isolation.

Despite the frequency of violence in the novel, Neve is never painted as a helpless victim. She is often composed, analytical of her situation, and judgemental of relationships beyond her own. It is through these eyes that we are introduced to her Mother, who having lived though her own traumatic marriage, now flits between partners, unaware of her daughter’s scorn for her. Her simpering, ignorant nature is certainly a source of humour in the novel, while working to shine a light on Neve’s own flaws. Abrupt and cold, Neve shuns any attempt to build a relationship with her mother, remaining completely unsympathetic to her years of abuse.

I found the mother-daughter relationship one of the most fascinating elements of First Love. At one point the novel muses “Considering your life requires a horribly delicate determination, doesn’t it?”. It is a determination that seems to fall short on Neve’s part, as she insists on viewing herself as victim to her mother’s narcissism. However her consistent criticisms seem jarring. On closer reading the mother comes across not as the pig-headed figure Neve describes, but as a woman desperate for a relationship with her daughter, whose approval she craves. Ultimately Neve’s fear of repeating her Mother’s experience manifests as fierce condemnation, unaware that her own attitudes are already echoing those of her Mother’s.

This is certainly not a book about the heady romance implied by the title. Instead it is a bleak study of harm that the differing forms of love can bring, and one definitely worth devoting time to.. I loved this novel for its truthfulness, for its lack of judgement, for its accuracy in depicting a harmful relationship. Most of all I adore the balance in this novel. Riley could easily have tipped this into a story of the emotionally abused woman suffering at the hands of her powerful husband. yet this a far more nuanced, accomplished analysis of a relationship.

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