The Damages reminded me of many novels I've read recently about American or Canadian women returning to their school or college pasts to figure out why things are the way they are in their lives right now, and whether justice was done back then: Rebecca Makkai's I Have Some Questions For You, Jessica Knoll's Promising Young Women, Jenny Hollander's Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead. But Genevieve Scott makes a very brave choice: her book is about somebody who really is completely unremarkable. I've long thought that the general moral standard of fictional protagonists is too high, probably in the pursuit of 'likeability'; most people, in real life, don't behave as well as made-up people do, and this especially wouldn't be the case if we had access to the insides of their heads. Ros, the protagonist of The Damages, is pretty shallow and self-centred, but she is realistic. At nineteen, she does wrong but is punished for it beyond anything she deserves. In her early forties, she tries to do right but probably doesn't actually help anyone at all, including herself. There's no big redemption arc for Ros, only the acknowledgement that being told you're a bad person in your teens really can get in the way of you becoming a better person, and I loved it.

I also loved the first 40% or so of The Damages, which is set during an ice storm at a small university east of Toronto, modelled on Queens. I was a kid in the 90s, but I felt that Scott perfectly captured why it was so horrendous to be a teenager in the 90s and the 00s; how you weren't allowed to care about anything, how coolness was all, how any hint of being different was aggressively punished. Ros is absolutely a part of this culture, but she also suffers because of it. Scott also properly evokes the atmosphere of the ice-bound campus and the rising tension when a girl goes missing. The next 60% of the book, which flashes forward to the Covid-19 pandemic, is less gripping (it could have been shorter) but largely necessary. I've read plenty of #MeToo novels, but Scott really picks apart how we handle changing social mores, and how unacknowledged wrongs are still important. It also made me reflect on, despite how times have changed, Ros still doesn't have the language for what was done to her. Other characters rightly call out racism and sexual assault on campus, but Ros's systematic social shunning, which led her to drop out of university, is difficult to voice. A reminder that you don't have to like a character to feel their pain. Another hit from Verve Books (the UK publisher for this Canadian novel), who are fast becoming one of my favourite indies.

One of those then and now books - then, the main character is trying to fit in at university, making some duff choices but then most people try on a few personalities at university, and they generally aren't ones that we stick with for life. Unfortunately her flat mate disappears for a period of time and this leads to the main character being effectively cancelled by the university community.
Now, she is partnered to one of the students and they have a child together. Turns out he is not the super catch she thought he was at 18.

I found the first part of the book set in the university to be enjoyable, the characters are not particularly likeable, but how many self obsessed 18 year olds make for good company? The second half was interesting, forcing the reader to examine the dynamics of the relationship - how much of it was engineered by the male? Maybe I read the last part too quickly but I am slightly baffled as to what happened, or maybe it is realistic and not much happened, they all just kept bumbling along.

Comparisons with My Dark Vannessa will be inevitable but The Damages does an even better job of capturing the zeitgeist of the sexual politics of the 1990s. Like the characters themselves, the reader starts as an innocent bystander and increasingly feels complicit as the layers reveal themselves.

The Damages by Genevieve Scott is a good fit for people who are interested in reflecting on the complexities of human relationships, memory, trauma, and identity, and how these themes can be shaped by societal expectations and power dynamics.

Genevieve Scott's "The Damages" is a haunting and emotionally resonant exploration of trauma's enduring aftermath. Scott wields her pen with remarkable deftness, peeling back the layers of her characters' psyches to expose the raw vulnerabilities that linger beneath. Her profound insights into guilt, grief, and the human capacity for healing elevate this novel into a poignant meditation on life's cruelties. With lyrical prose and a masterful command of pacing, Scott deftly navigates complex emotional terrain, crafting a narrative that burrows under the skin and takes up permanent residence in the reader's consciousness. It's a gripping and cathartic triumph.

An utterly compelling story of secrets, lies, trust, and perceptions of consent.

"What I remember best about that week in January is trying to keep track of all the lies I told."

SYNOPSIS

"1997. Ontario has been hit by a days-long, life-endangering ice storm, and on Regis University campus, with classes cancelled, the students are partying. In the midst of it all, eighteen-year-old Ros's roommate Megan goes missing. As a panicked search ensues, Ros is blamed for not keeping a closer eye on Megan, and the incident casts a shadow over the next two decades of her life.

2020. Ros's former partner, Lukas, the father of her eleven-year-old son, is accused of sexual assault. The accusation brings new details of an old story to light, forcing Ros to revisit a dark moment from her past. Ros must take a hard look not only at the father of her child, but also at her own mistakes, her own trauma, and at the supposedly liberal period she grew up in."

MY THOUGHTS

- A book of two halves/two timelines following the main characters in the late 90s to 2020s from their time at university to the present day as stories from the past come to haunt them.

- A very interesting exploration of sexual assault, and consent between the 90s and 2020s with the #MeToo movement

- I loved reading the conflicting thoughts and relationships between uni friend, wife and husband and their perceptions of assault.

- I really enjoyed the two different timelines which are pretty much the two halves of the book.

- I found the storytelling gripping and it was a brilliant page-turner of a read, it felt very much like a literary thriller.

- I am still processing the ending which felt very realistic but I still don't know what to think.