Damage by Josephine Hart is one of the most disturbing fiction books I have ever read. About a physician and minor politician, long married, with two grown children established in their careers, this book is all about the horror and havoc that lust and betrayal can bring into someone’s life. This guy starts messing around with his son’s fiance. He feels himself to be consumed by her, he feels he cannot help himself. It ends horribly, with his son catching them, naked and pounding, together. In shock he topples over the balcony and breaks his neck. He dies.

This book creeped me out on so many levels. It was heartbreaking. I am glad I read it, though, because it captured perfectly the harm and, well the damage that can result when people cheat and betray other people. Fucking around has become so common and accepted nowadays, the fact that this guy cheated on his wife seemed minor, almost incidental. Everyone cheats on their spouse, seems like. But to betray your own child? How monstrous.

This book challenged me to consider my own moral compass. I have a set of rules, a code of ethics I live by that makes my interactions with other people much more simple than when I didn’t live by a set of standards. For example, I don’t hit my kids. It will never happen that I lose control and beat them to death, because I won’t hit them in the first place. Another example, I don’t cheat on my husband. I simply don’t believe in having sex with other people. What happened in this book would never happen to me because I simply would refuse to entertain the thought of messing around. It has always seemed to me that destruction would follow. This book is a good example of what could happen.

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