The beauty of the husband Book

What is it that binds one person to another?
Why does beauty have such sway?

How is it that one is bound to someone who is
destructive, or
faithless, or
fickle, or
deceitful, or
who constantly disappears, or
who can never love you the way you want or need? Or
all of the above, and
yet the bond persists:

Why?
How is it that you can not escape?
What cruel trick of fate or nature can give you over to such a creature?

"Don't call it my choice,
I was ventured:
by some pure gravity of existence itself,
conspiracy of being!"

"and I do not apologize because as I say I was not to blame, I was unshielded in the face of existence
and existence depends on beauty.
In the end.
Existence will not stop
until it gets to beauty and then there follow all the consequences that lead to the end.
Useless to interpose analysis
or make contrafactual suggestions."
Is this convincing? Not as such, but the book is convincing, but also, like the beautiful husband, seductive and intoxicating. The protagonist, she loved him so. Despite everything, and we understand why she can't move on. Sure, the husband, he's an asshole. Deceitful, destructive, disappearing, faithless, fickle, and unable to love her as she needed. But his appeal wasn't his physical beauty, but in the way he created worlds, wove words into stories (or lies), and how those worlds and words spun dependence and love, and how with those worlds and words he pushed her boundaries, but all in a way that was tied to her; that tied her; that ties us: we and she, enthralled, entwined, enraptured.

What is it that binds one person to another?
Why does beauty have such sway?
How do people get power over one another?

This book is a stab; an attempt to understand how love works its spell. The book stabs at the phenomenon of obsession and love from different directions; using different rhythms, styles, meters, techniques. It's a painful book that draws blood from old wounds. Your old wounds. And yet, when the wounds recur, does that help illuminate the invisible ties? Does the new blood glow? Or do we just remain wounded; simply reliving the pain of broken love? And those old wounds, they just throb. And hurt. But at least in this book they hurt beautifully. A whole world of pain, but a whole world that is created in lies and love; that tie us, we and she: enthrall, entwine, enrapture.

In the end, Carson gives no real answers, and maybe it's useless to interpose analysis or make contrafactual suggestions. In the end love binds; beauty has sway; and there is no escape, just wounds after bloodletting.