Cul-de-Sac by Eleanor Limprecht review – a powerful and timely novel about domestic abuse

Limprecht explores male violence without succumbing to tropes, bringing the monster into the room and forcing us to really look at him

Eleanor Limprecht’s fifth novel, Cul-de-Sac, about the lengths a mother will go to in order to allow her children to be free, is troubling but compelling reading.

When Jacquie meets Brandon, he’s sweet, charming, a little vulnerable; easy to love and be loved by. So easy, that Jacquie barely notices when his anxious need to know her turns to something darker. By then, they have a child and another on the way, so it’s simpler to just bend to his will. And when Brandon suggests that they leave Australia, and Jacquie’s family, to move back to his home in the US, it seems only fair. Jacquie doesn’t realise how much of her identity has been eroded until some years later, when she takes her children to Australia for Christmas. It’s meant to be a short trip to see her family, but once there, she starts to see just how bad things have become.

Limprecht nudges at the line between an unhappy relationship and an abusive one. At first, it seems as if Jacquie and Brandon are just a couple who have grown apart. But there are red flags in Brandon’s behaviour: the way he showers her with expensive gifts in the early days of their courtship, his expectation that she plan their meals a week in advance, his desperate need to constantly know where she is.

But Jackie isn’t entirely without agency: she has a job that makes her happy, and while Brandon has rules (like no eating or drinking on their overly expensive couch), she breaks them when she’s alone or with her children without signs of extreme anxiety or fear. Jacquie hides her fear so deeply, it’s not even visible to the reader at first. “It makes Jacquie nauseous to know they want bruises and black eyes, the stereotype of the battered wife,” Limprecht writes.

This is what Limprecht does brilliantly: she refuses easy stereotypes, even when writing a man who is violent and possessive. This isn’t a book that succumbs to tropes. Instead, it’s grounded deeply in the complex humanity of its characters, the kind of book that brings the monster into the room and forces us to really look at him. She paints Brandon as a man capable of kindness, vulnerability, even love and, in doing so, challenges the idea that it’s easy to leave an abusive relationship, or even to recognise one. Underpinning all of this, is the bigger picture, the way their lives fit within a larger institutional framework that permits male violence and fails to support the women trying to escape it.

For all the ways this may sound like a harrowing read (and at times it is), Cul-de-Sac isn’t suffocated by its exploration of trauma.

Away from Brandon, Jacquie’s journey is one of self-(re)discovery, as she reconnects with her brother and her mother. She is able to see the kind of life her children could have, and considers what it really means to protect them.

At home on the south coast of New South Wales, Jacquie grounds herself in the familiarity of the beaches and rivers of her childhood, and finds comfort in the daily care of the alpacas on her mother’s farm: “Should he come looking, let him find her in this creek, tea-coloured, water flowing constant around her. Branches above, below, stones at once slippery and sharp and solid beneath her feet.” Away from the hypervigilance that marks her days with Brandon, Jacquie is able to slow down and think, perhaps for the first time, about who and how she wants to love. The sharp, liberating tang of possibility lifts a narrative that might otherwise be too bleak to bear.

If there’s a good time to publish a novel that calls for a greater understanding and awareness of intimate partner violence, it’s now, in a year where one woman is being killed, on average, every 11 days in Australia alone. Limprecht does an extraordinary job of mapping both the evolution of violence within a relationship as well as the ecosystem that enables it. Better still, by placing Jacquie at the heart of a network of (mostly) women who step up in various small but significant ways – offering money, bearing witness and naming the abuse, Limprecht not only draws attention to the problem, but also responds to the question – what can we do about it? The result is a timely, powerful novel.

Cul-de-Sac by Eleanor Limprecht is out now in Australia (Ultimo Press; $34.99)