THE MARKS LEFT ON HER

A nameless narrator explores her own trauma and the expectations that face women in different cultures in Lebowitz’s novel.

“Why does [men’s] learning have to involve our pain?” the author asks in the introduction to her novel, which was inspired by events in her own life. The protagonist, referred to only as “the girl,” grows up in late-1990s Hong Kong, raised by an erratic mother and devoutly religious grandmother after her American father abandoned them. The girl recounts the first “tiny invasions” of her body when she was young, including the stares of creepy men and a swimming instructor’s unwelcome touch. She experiments with sex and alcohol as a teen, which causes some of her peers to label her “the ‘cool chick’ ” while others call her a “slag” or “frigid.” After she moves with her mother to Paris, she quickly gets caught up in a world of wealthy, international teenagers who party without consequence or supervision. Her first boyfriends expose her to predictable teenage heartache before “The Incident”—a devastating sexual assault that she struggles to name and that had a profound effect on her psyche. As an adult in London, she experiences failed relationships and encounters with men who try to convince her that she deserves abuse for being a “tease” or a “psycho.” It takes a while for Lebowitz’s work to find its rhythm, but when it does, it delivers emotional, thoughtful insights about male aggression. The first half of the book feels like a somber but unremarkable memoir despite its rich multicultural settings. The adulthood chapters, however, are more intriguing, as they often skip years at a time, throwing readers in the middle of the narrator’s struggle and making her painful memories feel universal. At one point, for example, Lebowitz describes the end of a marriage with little context, giving readers everything they need to understand the situation in just three exquisite, heartbreaking pages.

A work that, after a slow start, delivers powerful scenes in dialogue with the #MeToo movement.