I discovered Leigh Stein via her Substack, specifically this post, which hit the nail so solidly on the head that I had to see what else she had written. Land of Enchantment is the novel/memoir version of that post, sort of – it’s a thoughtful, uncomfortable look at her youthful abusive relationship with her ex, Jason, for whom she moved to New Mexico, hoping that if she changed herself enough, he would stick around. Things with Jason in Albuquerque, however, are not great:
Once we were in the Land of Enchantment, Jason refused to teach me how to drive stick, which meant I couldn’t drive our only car. I was confined to the apartment, and places I could walk to, but no one walks in Albuquerque. On Meetup, I found a writing group, and learned how to take the Route 66 bus there. I walked across the highway to my job as a waitress at a diner that served green chile cheeseburgers and chocolate malts; I could always get a teenage bus boy to give me a ride home at the end of the night, if Jason refused to come get me.
GIRL.
The thing about this book is that if you’ve ever been in a similar relationship, the red flags start waving almost immediately, and they don’t stop. And if you have any experience with any sort of relationship like this, Stein’s words might make you wince: “I wanted to be protected from Jason while also staying with him.” She sees how awful he can be, and is, and yet cannot seem to stay away from him, cannot make herself leave. Even when she does leave, she comes back, and it is only with the care and love of some caring and savvy girlfriends in NY, months later, that it finally clicks, she finally sees him for the abusive leech that he is.
The memoir is told chronologically, sort of, although some things in the timeline get confused, because her emotional state is confusing. It’s tough to read because you just hate Jason, and you’re rooting for Leigh, but you understand, thanks to her prose, that there is an emotional Rubicon that she must cross before she can grow enough to be rid of him. It’s excruciating, and Stein’s soft prose almost blunts the pain too much.
Stein’s discussions of her own pursuits, her love for Georgia O’Keefe and her literary hobbies, are so charming and interesting. She shows that she is a wonderful, interesting, vibrant person – it is obvious to everyone but her that Jason is the ball and chain.
I often wonder if hearing a story like this would have changed my enmeshment in my own similarly insane youthful relationship – would I have read this and thought “Aha! this dude is my Jason, I will steer clear!” I don’t think so, because I was young and cocky; I would have forged ahead because ROMANCE! You just DONT UNDERSTAND!
But it was a book that broke the spell for me (Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth), which I read in the quiet of my own home and my own mind, and thought, wait a minute…wait a minute…other women have thought about this, other women are on my side. This guy might not be the only thing I have going for me.
I hope that this book is the claxon for other women, the announcement or reminder that men like Jason will always be there, but there are also so, so many women who have been in the exact same place and want to see you, genuinely, live your best life.
