Goodbye, My Love by Yumna Kassab begins with a departure. Amina is leaving her childish, controlling husband, believing this will be the start of a new life and a new self. But as the novel unfolds, it becomes clear that these things are seldom so simple.
A Life Shaped by Expectations
Within the first few pages of Kassab's sixth book, it becomes evident that much of Amina's life has been dictated by the expectations of those around her. The name we know her by is not truly hers; Amina is actually an echo of her husband's name, Amin, who once declared they should change their names to match. She agreed, ever so agreeable. Even after their divorce, we continue to know her by his moniker.
Much is withheld in Goodbye, My Love: we do not know where Amina lives, where her enormous wealth comes from, or the details of her family background. The circumstances that led her to choose Amin in the first place are hinted at but never fully unpacked. We never learn her real name. She has almost entirely become Amina, the matching half to the man she tries to leave behind.
The Training of a Biddable Wife
What we do know is that Amina has been trained from a young age to be the pacifying, biddable wife. Troubles are buried, failures are hidden and never spoken of, and the mask must always remain in place. Amin, by comparison, had not learned about saving face. In her memory, he shouts and bullies her. He is aggressive, though not violent. She has learned to cover herself, to smooth things over before he lost it. She spends her married days drifting unhappily through liminal spaces: spending money in shopping malls, riding escalators.
Fortunately for Amina, she is fabulously wealthy. So when she finally decides to leave, it is logistically easy. She flies overseas, not thinking about the cost. She checks into a favourite hotel, buys herself new things, and tells her servants to organise her belongings. Because she did have the money, did have choices, and she made a choice.
The Paradox of Freedom
By any external measure, Amina has the means to build a new life. And yet, now that she has them, freedom and independence terrify her. She is not trapped by her relationship, but by her own mind. The story takes place entirely through Amina's eyes, and we see little of the world outside. She is self-absorbed and detached, and it is clear she is often an unreliable narrator.
In the weeks after her divorce, she finds her friends and every member of her family asking the same question: what have you done? They insist she must go back. She and Amin seem obviously ill-matched, similar only in their flaws and superficiality. But were they always at odds? How did they get here? While some of these questions are answered, others remain unresolved.
Experimental Form and Poetic Fragments
Kassab is known for experimenting with form, and Goodbye, My Love follows this practice. Told through a series of vignettes and poetic fragments of just one or two pages each, the novel has a drifting, dreamlike quality. Loosely structured around Amina's life after her divorce, we learn more about her life as memories surface. From the outside she is a perfect woman; on the inside she is deeply insecure. There was no point introducing her proper name, she tells the reader. She calls herself she of the weak spine, and persists in changing herself to suit others.
But I found her weak spine mystifying. Amina never lets anyone close to her, not even the reader. While this occasionally vexing obliqueness befits Amina's character, some of the impact of the work is dulled by a lack of specific detail. I found myself with more questions than answers. Amina is loosely cast as Lot's wife, that biblical woman who was punished by God for looking behind her as she fled the sinful city of Sodom. Amina is constantly looking back; does she believe she is being punished by God for her choices? The answer is never quite clear, and the religious and mythological imagery that runs through Goodbye, My Love remains more of a suggestion than a coherent narrative thread.
A Book About Choices
In many ways, Goodbye, My Love is a book about choices. For Amina, choice does not always equate to agency; her choices are shaped by environment and circumstance, the particulars of which are sometimes frustratingly unclear. Despite this, Kassab's biting reflections on the dissolution of a once-committed relationship, and her characterisation of a woman deeply consumed by her own mind, are absorbing. Even when the details do not quite land, Kassab's refreshing willingness to play on the page makes her a writer to watch.
Goodbye, My Love by Yumna Kassab is out now in Australia (Ultimo, $34.99).
