Book review: If You Love It, Let It Kill You by Hannah Pittard

If one can believe the OED – and I refuse to countenance a world where this is not a given – then the frequency with which the word ‘autofiction’ crops up in written English has multiplied by 125 since 2010. Presumably, people are thinking and talking so much more about autofiction because people have decided to produce so much more of it, and given that this is the second full-length book that Hannah Pittard has produced about the same infidelity-induced marriage breakdown (though, to be fair, the first one was a memoir), events that have also spawned a novel by the ex, and short stories and essays and interviews by both of them, then there is clearly more auto-ness at play here than one can readily dismiss. The questions are, why should we care? And does Pittard succeed in making us?

The novel’s narrator, Hana P. is a creative writing professor at a university in Kentucky, in a long-term relationship with a bald fellow-professor who the narrator chooses to call Bruce because that’s the name her ex gives him in the novel she learns he is about to publish about their break-up. Hannah Pittard is a creative writing professor at the University of Kentucky, in a long-term relationship with a bald fellow-professor upon whom her ex based a character called Bruce in his debut novel which came out last year. Hana freaks out upon discovering the existence of the forthcoming novel because, with knowing irony, she hates the idea of being a character in someone else’s fiction, something which brings out her fear of being a woman in her mid-forties, as she thinks this places her on the verge of invisibility and insignificance. Consequently, she dwells upon her dissatisfaction with a life in which she is a professional success, surrounded by family who both care for her and provide a trove of material for her writing, in a loving and stable relationship, with a sort-of-step-daughter who clearly loves her, and still possesses enough sexual allure to be semi-stalked/booty-called by two very handsome creeps.

If that sounds self-indulgent, that’s because it is. Why should we care? I don’t really think we should, unless we want to encourage the kind of egotistical mania that is doubtless behind the efflorescence of autofiction as a genre. Does Pittard succeed in making us care? Yes, actually – at least in parts. The writing is often sharp and witty, there’s some self-awareness and mockery to offset part of the mopey solipsism, and the ending resolves into a tender acceptance that sheds the cynicism of much of the book and lets us know the narrator/writer isn’t quite as blind to her blessings as she seemed. Essentially, Pittard’s a good enough writer to make what would otherwise have been a deeply annoying book more enjoyable than irritating. Which is a compliment if not an unreserved recommendation.