There are many books about what it’s like to live with mental illness and the aftermath of child sexual abuse. Most of them, though, fall into that deeply off-putting category of ‘misery memoir’: greyscale covers and cloying titles such as ‘The Child Who Everyone Hurt’ and ‘When the Darkness Never Lifts’. You’re unlikely to want to read 300-odd pages of pain porn when healthy, let alone find yourself looking forward to the next page if, like me, you end up reading the book when you’re depressed too.
I Never Said I Loved You isn’t like that. It’s funny. It’s not egregious: every time Rhik Samadder tells us more of the repeated sexual abuse he suffered when growing up, or of the graphic things he did to himself or to small creatures such as snails and bees as he was trying to comprehend quite how much mental pain he was in, he carefully flicks us away to something lighter. His obsession with death moves straight to a remark that ‘the average lifespan is 1,000 months, less in fact, and I have spent at least four of them trying to persuade the website LinkedIn to stop emailing me’. As his father lies dying, Samadder realises he can’t work out what to say, and ends up wittering about the boiler. You are, from page to page, wincing with horror, and then smiling wryly again.
His relationships as an adult are messy but lovely. It’s as much a memoir of his life with his mother as it is of suffering from illness. One ex-girlfriend whom he thanks at the end of the book for being present in every page decides that they should hold a breaking-up ceremony with their family and friends.
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