She has been cast in maternal roles since her teens. Now, playing a mother for the first time since becoming one, she has chosen the part of a woman pushed past the edge of sanity.The novel “Die, My Love,” by the Argentinean writer Ariana Harwicz, is narrated by a wife and new mother who is living in rural France and seems to be losing her mind.
Motherhood has inserted an immersion blender into her psyche: lust, repulsion, pleasure, and doom swirl into a single mess. She calls herself a “sodomising rodent” with “bullet-wounds for eyes,” and thinks, “When I masturbate I desecrate crypts, and when I rock my baby I say amen, and when I smile I unplug an iron lung.” One night, standing in the cold, staring at her family through a sliding door, she thinks, “I’ll stop trying to draw blood from a stone. I’ll contain my madness, I’ll use the bathroom. I’ll put my baby to sleep, jerk off my man and postpone my rebellion in favor of a better life.” She’s joking.