Love Me Back

Tierce’s debut allow readers to glimpse into the mind of a young Texas woman intent on harming herself. Her poor decision-making is a self-imposed penitence for abandoning her daughter. Marie, the novel’s narrator, gets pregnant at 16. She tries to do what she believes is right and marry the father, but they just can’t make it work. Five-plus years as a hard-living waitress follows. Marie flees her family for the Dallas restaurant scene, gets drawn in by the wrong men repeatedly, self-mutilates, and sleeps with whomever will have her. With the drug-fueled restaurant world as a backdrop, Tierce’s pages catalogue the joyless and degrading sex to which Aimee submits. The novel feels flat at times, and the number of Aimee’s partners rises steadily without much change to her situation. But the depths of her self-loathing, related bluntly and almost offhandedly, give the book a weight and a resonance that defies its matter-of-fact voice. (Sept.)