The Chain - A Review

The most powerful book I've read in a long time

If you only read one thing this year, let it be The Chain by Chimene Suleyman. I read it a couple of weeks ago and cannot stop thinking or talking about it.

It is Suleyman’s memoir. The opening few pages document her journey to an abortion clinic to have an abortion she was unsure about having, but had been coerced into by her boyfriend. It was touch and go as to weather he’d make it to the appointment, but he showed up at her apartment just in time to take her. At the clinic, he says he’ll wait in the waiting room while she has the procedure. She comes out to find he’s gone. He left her there. While she was having this painful procedure, he left her, went to her apartment and moved all his stuff out.

Suleyman’s realisation of what is happening as she emerges into the waiting room is the stuff of nightmares. For someone to leave you in one of the most vulnerable moments of your life is incomprehensible. The way Suleyman writes this section will have your heart beating hard and tears streaming down your face.

It is truly stunning.

And that’s just the first few pages!

It’s no spoiler to point out that ultimately, as she tries to pick up the pieces and figure out what happens, it leads her down a path to realise he has done this to dozens of other women. Through journeying down various internet rabbit holes, they find each other, compare notes, find solace and sisterhood. They form a chain (hence the book’s title).

I resonated with this book so much because as I stood in the embers of having left an abusive relationship back in 2021, I discovered my own chain - other women who had virtually identical experiences to mine with this exact same man. One of these women has since become a dear friend. The power, comfort and healing that took place in just knowing I hadn’t imagined it all, this really happened, every painful part of it being completely, implicitly understood by these other women was incredible.

The book is an amazing story of the web the author’s abuser weaved and the carnage he left in his wake. But Suleyman writes so beautifully of how he was able to do that within the framework of masculinity - how it was all so calculated and socially acceptable, how that makes us feel so powerless.

“Physically attacking a woman wouldn’t fly in the male circles he was mixing with. And so it was there he would draw the line, unable to continue under the radar if he did so. It was then, in the eyes of other men, in the laws of masculinity, he might become an abuser. But to be a man who lied to women about loving them, who collected women sexually then discarded them when they got ‘too much’, replaced them with a new one - that was some shit men could brag about. This was fuckboys, and players, and locker-room talk; it was high-fives in the bar over a cold beer; it was ‘running’ girls, manly, virile, godly, a thing to envy, a thing to respect, well done, bro.

How easy it is to abuse women, then celebrate it by another name.”

It is hard to not feel rage as you read it. It’s hard to not see how ‘boys will be boys’ allows men to protect their peers, to ignore giant red flags in behaviour because they are so normalised in masculinity, to watch them so easily flaunt their lack of care for women.

And it is rage inducing and heartbreaking because we see it every day on micro and macro levels. We live it. We breathe it. We feel the effects of it.

Suleyman is able to masterfully put together the puzzle pieces of how an abuser like hers comes to be, how social norms enable and uphold it and how bro culture, maddeningly, laughs it all off.

This book makes you feel seen, confirms you’re not crazy and leaves you feeling fired up and grateful for the power of sisterhood.

Get it, read it and encourage the men in your life to read it too.