People say they won’t suffer fools. I, however, will not suffer a bad book. And I won’t make you suffer one either.
Welcome to The Post’s July book review.
This month, from author Angharad Candlin, comes “The Anatomy of Domestic Violence: Emily’s Story”, a real-life Australian tale detailing the complicated realities of family and intimate partner violence.
Angharad is an author, speaker, consultant, and coach with a degree in Psychology and Business Studies, and a graduate certificate in marketing. After years working as a community psychologist, Angharad has garnered a wealth of knowledge on the complexities of domestic violence. Always having wanted to write a book about the subject, Angharad approached her dear friend, Emily, whose distressing domestic violence story became what is today “The Anatomy of Domestic Violence”.
To kick off, I will speak briefly on the prose and writing style. Angharad writes in a beige, staccato fashion—short, almost harsh sentences, devoid of overly flowery language. As such, the tale is not dramatised for the audience, and this communicates effectively to the reader the brutality of the conditions Emily’s lived through.
With her punchy writing style, the book is confronting without being graphic—there is no overt descriptions of gore or violence which might cause a particularly queasy reader to not stomach the retelling. This way, the book becomes accessible to a wide audience, which was the purpose of the book. She writes, ‘With this book, I have endeavoured to provide a framework to understand, broadly speaking, the impact and nuances of domestic violence.’
In terms of the research, statistical data, and information about Australia’s current legal system, Angharad provides a cursory glance sprinkled in around the retelling. It is artfully done, as it both provides a reprieve from Emily’s distressing experience, and cements the idea that this is not a work of fiction, this is fact. Emily lived through this, and many others do too.
Anatomy was informative, instructive, and highly emotive. Those who have never been in direct contact with domestic and intimate partner violence would find the book an eye-opening asset to the pernicious nature of perpetrators, the lifelong effects on victims, and the continued failures of Australian health and legal systems.
However, there were a few passages I took umbrage with, namely any that referenced religious institutions. Though Anatomy does not go into much depth about religious communities, it does however make the claim that there is a connection between domestic violence and women not being faith leaders in their respective religions, or domestic violence and the Abrahamic religion’s notion that women are to submit to their husbands.
I will interject here: Ephesians 5 says, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.” But, and this is the vital pinch point, the verse goes on to read, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” and later, “Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” Anatomy does not directly quote this passage but still invokes this sentiment. Without proper assessment of religious texts, it is clumsy for the book to bolster the notion that this incorrectly interpreted verse is somehow connection to domestic violence.
Despite my critics, the book is a must-read for all Australians, for all those who work in the domestic violence prevention and support sector, for all health and legal professionals. Truly, all people, everywhere.
Find Angharad Candlin and her book here, www.angharadcandlin.com
