Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls

Starred review from February 24, 2020
Aron debuts with a disturbing, richly conveyed story of dysfunction and warped love. Aron, who always wanted “to be someone’s everything,” met K as a teenager; they dated briefly before he dumped her. Aron went on to marry a stable man with whom she had two children; then K resurfaced years later, and the two began an affair. “Obsessive, unhinged love was simply more love,” was how she saw it. She left her husband to be with K, whose heroin and alcohol use she both enabled and hoped would stop. Aron spellbindingly details her thirst for mayhem (codependents get “bored and antsy” when there is none) and her fixation on K—who depleted her bank account and was physically abusive—around whom her own drinking escalated. Along the way, she discusses the roles women have historically played as caregivers to troubled men, citing such figures as temperance activist Carrie Nation and Lois Wilson, wife of Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson. Avon’s account ends with her leaving K and getting sober. “Love is still my drug,” she admits. “The thing I have renounced... is suffering.” Aron’s dark, gorgeously narrated memoir of destructive codependency will captivate readers.