6 reasons not to like My devotion, by Julia Kerninon

Whew. I got through it because I didn't realize it right away, but this book has an overwhelming number of elements that tend to get on my nerves. Given the success of this book (4.16 / 5 on Goodreads, generally glowing reviews), it seems that instead the average reader like these elements charm the average reader. But don't worry, I'll still make my case. Sometimes it's good to have a little dissenting opinion in the homogeneous tide.

Voici ces éléments :

The "with benefits" friendship relationship that only satisfies the guy

Helen and Frank's relationship boils down to Helen doing everything for Frank, following him everywhere, supporting him in everything, loving and respecting him unconditionally, while Frank does his charismatic freedom-loving artist act, does whatever he wants with girls, alternately treats Helen as a good pal or as his housekeeper, and when he has no one else, he goes to her for sex.

Anyone reading this realizes that Helen is clearly madly in love with Frank and not very happy with her situation, but either Frank is too stupid to realize this or he decides to ignore her and preserve the status quo because it suits him. I choose the second option. You don't stay that stupid your whole life.

Relationships like that make me very uncomfortable, but maybe because people confuse pain and ambiguity with passion, it still hits home. Unfortunately.

The idea that first love is the one true love

Helen and Frank met as teenagers, and from then on it was over for Helen. She eventually marries someone else, but her marriage doesn't last long, and the next thing she knows she's back with Frank. Frank is the man of her life, no matter that they never really dated or that their relationship is (very) asymmetrical.

And that, I don't find romantic : I find sad. And not very realistic. Because in life, normally, people move on, and if they don't, you feel sorry for them. I don't see why in a book it should be different.

The beloved man who doesn't deserve it

The narrator says it in the book, but without enough conviction: Frank is an asshole. He lives in Helen's apartment for free (or really cheap, I don't know), he never cleans, he never cooks, he never shops... He just doesn't do anything. He expects the woman of the house to do it, and that's exactly what she does. From time to time, he goes to her room to have sex. The next day, he brings in groupies and fucks loudly. He gets one of the girls pregnant and leaves her when he finds out. Falls in love with a girl half his age and fucks her in every room in the house, while living with Helen and raising his child with her..

My reaction to this is not to meditate on the cruelty of love. It's to get angry at the macho men who do stupid things with impunity and at the society that manages to pass off such a relationship as a touching love story.

The glorification of art and the figure of the artist

The two main characters work in the art field. Helen is more serious, she teaches, she works in magazines, etc. But Frank is a real artist. He spends his days in his studio making his big baby and doing what he wants when he wants because he is so enamored of freedom. And yet, all is forgiven to him, because he sees things like nobody else, his mind is a jewel, everything he produces is precious, etc. Not a word about the fact that the work of artists is just that, work, and that many people have to be productive to live (like Helen, for example).

But Frank is above all that. He's rich and famous. And anyway, he has a woman who works for him.

The shocking and gratuitous twist

At the end of the book, Frank's son, who has just learned that his mother was a heroin addict and that his father had left her when he learned she was pregnant with his child, commits suicide. He was 17 years old. Nothing prepared us for this, he seemed well adjusted and quite happy. Really, the cherry on the sundae. A pathetic relationship that ends in a tragic suicide that is difficult to explain... Hmmm, I wonder what emotion the author wanted to convey. Her process is so subtle!

A dubious morality

What is this book supposed to teach us? That love is difficult? That human relationships are complex? That we don't choose who we love? That when you're an asshole, your child can commit suicide? Really?

People found the writing pretty, the love story touching. For me, this is yet another book that comes to play in the outdated conceptions of love that have made countless women suffer, represented by Helen in the novel. There would be a way to claim a more modern and feminist point of view, but to please the mass, this point of view, if it exists, has been camouflaged by a kind of artistic blur.

Needless to say, I am not fooled.