One of my absolute favorite things about doing the podcast with Dawn is the rush of excitement I get when I discover that the dumpster fire of a movie or TV show we’re watching is based on a book, and when I realized that Netflix’s miniseries Obsession came from a novel titled Damage by Josephine Hart, I damn near had a heart attack. Dawn and I both had SO MANY questions about what we were seeing in the show, and now here was (potentially) a way to get some answers. I immediately went to my public library’s online catalog and was stoked to see an electronic copy was present. However, when I went to hop on the waitlist, I was shocked to discover that the estimated wait time was TWENTY-TWO WEEKS. Hell no. So then I went to Amazon in a fit of rage and disbelief and purchased a paperback copy for $10. Was it worth it? Let’s find out.
The main questions Dawn and I had throughout the miniseries were as follows:
What the hell made Anna so damn special that all these men were losing their minds over her?
What was the deal with Anna’s brother? Why did she pursue a relationship with Jay if he looked identical to the brother who abused her? Was there more to that story?
And just generally, what the fuck was wrong with William? The man unhinges so completely and so suddenly. Why did that happen?
So I began reading Damage with the hope of finding answers to these unanswered questions. (We’ll never learn to love the questions; if we did, there would be no use for our podcast.)
Damage is written from the perspective of “William,” and I am using quotations here because in the novel, this character is never actually named. He is called William in the show, and I have a theory as to why they decided on that name in particular. In the very first pages of the book, “William” is reflecting on his father and their somewhat contentious relationship. He describes his father as highly motivated, someone who believed in setting firm goals and working hard to achieve them. His father says a person’s will is their most valuable and important quality, and that through the sheer force of will, they can achieve or attain whatever they have decided they want. So, to me, William feels like an apt choice on the part of the screenwriters for this character with no name.
Something that Damage does pretty immediately that doesn’t translate very well to Obsession is establish that “William” is quite unsatisfied with his life. He spends several pages lamenting over how he is simply going through the motions, making objectively “good” choices in terms of his career and his wife, Ingrid, but none of it makes him feel complete or fulfilled. He describes himself as constantly wearing a mask, playing a part, understanding that this life he has built should be enough but struggling with the reality that it just isn’t. In short, “William” is deeply depressed and feels empty.
It’s also worth noting that the novel begins on a meandering, philosophical discussion about soulmates, and how most people can live their entire lives without ever meeting their counterpart. Soulmates don’t even necessarily have to be romantic partners; they can be your relative, your child, your best friend; a soulmate is simply someone you connect with on a much deeper, chemical level. It’s as if each person’s soul was created from a single entity that was split in two, and we will only ever feel fully alive and realized when we encounter our other half. When “William” meets Anna, it is abundantly clear that he believes Anna is his soulmate. Anna seems to acknowledge this “strange” connection as well, but she is nowhere near as obsessed with “William” as he is with her.
So, with that context, I am going to attempt to answer our burning questions. Let’s start with what makes Anna so damn special. And the answer is…nothing. While it might make SLIGHTLY more sense in the book given what we know of how “William” views soulmates, it’s still not enough for this reader. It doesn’t explain why every man Anna seems to meet falls victim to her charms, including her own brother. How can she be EVERYONE’S soulmate? She is surrounded by death and tragedy, and we’re asked to accept that Anna is worth all of that trouble. The book also feels like it’s hinting that there is more to her than meets the eye, but as with the show, it’s never directly addressed or resolved. But this leads me to our next question -- Anna’s brother.
The book handles this differently from the show. The show portrays the situation as assault and rape. It is made clear that Anna’s brother Aston forced himself on her when they were children and that she was deeply traumatized by that, more so even than by his death. This led to puzzlement on my end about why she would be attracted to Jay (by the way, Jay’s name was changed from Martyn for the show for some reason), who apparently resembled Aston to a startling degree. Yes, he was her brother and so there are bound to be complicated emotions involved, but he was also her abuser, and I had difficulty accepting that she would choose to be with a man who looked just like someone who had caused her immense pain. This all makes more sense given how the relationship is handled in the book. In a letter to “William,” Anna goes into particular detail about what happened with Aston. It’s clear that Aston fell in love with her when they were growing up (what’s still unclear is why), and as they got older and went off to school where Anna started building her own life without him, he took the rejection incredibly hard. He tries to put distance between them to make it easier, but when they are reunited on their school breaks, it becomes unbearable for him. When he sees Anna go on a date with another boy and realizes that he will never be able to have her in the way he wants, he basically loses his fragile grip on his sanity and commits suicide. I definitely had more empathy for Aston in the book, since it seems like he was just confused and didn’t know how to deal with it. And also, he never forced himself on Anna, so he gets credit for that. But in light of that portrayal, I can understand a bit more why Anna would be drawn to Martyn (who is said to resemble Aston, as Jay does in the show). Obviously, her feelings toward Aston are still tied up in trauma and guilt, but PTSD from sexual abuse was not part of it in the book. Why make this change in miniseries? My guess is that, primarily, they wanted to make Anna a more sympathetic character, but I also suspect that they were concerned about portraying Aston’s incenstual tendencies as anything other than abuse. The book is alarmingly casual about what is objectively a very bizarre scenario, and I could see audiences potentially being upset by a similar approach in the show.
And finally, can I answer the question of why William loses his goddamn mind over this whole thing? Yes. But do I like or accept the answer? No. Since the novel is written from his perspective, we are privy to his internal dialogue and get a deeper sense of how obsessed he is with Anna. The knowledge that he has essentially been unhappy and going through motions for his entire life reframes the situation a bit. I think if the miniseries had been more aggressive about showing us William’s chronic and long-standing unhappiness, an affair with ANYONE would have made more sense. I do think it would have been difficult for that to come through in the show regardless because the book refers often to “William” wearing a mask all the time and putting on this act of content complacency. It’s not supposed to be obvious that William is unhappy. Still, I think that missing piece creates a lot of disbelief and confusion.
All in all, I felt that the miniseries did a fairly decent job of reproducing the source material. A few things got lost in translation but the plot unfolds in much the same way with only a few alterations. Sally does not make any discovery of “William’s” affair nor does she attempt to blackmail him into admitting it. I was unsurprised to find the novel’s version of Sally to be in a perfectly storybook heterosexual relationship; once I discovered the novel was written in the 90s, I suspected the adaptation had likely made adjustments towards diversity and inclusion. (Indeed, Ingrid is described as blue-eyed blonde.) Anna’s friend Peggy does not exist in the novel. Anna lives in a house of her own (not with a drunk mother), and that’s where she and “William” meet for their sexual encounters. Anna’s family, in general, is a different beast. Her parents are divorced and both got remarried. Neither are dysfunctional as it is implied her mother is in the miniseries. It is actually her father who notices “William” and Anna’s inappropriate dynamic and warns “William” to be careful.
On that note, however, “William” is a bit smarter about covering up his affair in the novel. While he still follows Martyn and Anna to Paris as he does in the show by claiming he has a conference to attend in Brussels, there actually is a conference in Brussels that he attends first. And, by the way, his trip to Paris is exactly the same in the book, except instead of sexually assaulting that poor throw pillow, he masturbates and ejaculates onto a lovely chaise lounge. It’s described very clinically and matter-of-factly, like this is just something everyone does when they’re obsessed with another person. In fact, if you decide to read this book for saucy sex scenes, be warned: this book is about as evocative as dishwater. It’s almost as though Josephine Hart really didn’t want to write about sex but she had to in order to tell the story properly so she just closed her eyes, quickly jotted a few lines about it, and moved on. “William” does at one point make a very throwaway comment about how he doesn’t like having sex on beds, which hilariously (and expectedly, at this point) both provides an answer to a question and yet explains nothing at all.
Another sort of interesting plot line that they abandoned in the show is an ex-boyfriend of Anna’s named Peter. The night that Aston killed himself, her parents brought Anna to a family friend’s house, and Peter was their son. In a desperate attempt to cope with her grief, Anna ends up losing her virginity to Peter, and then they basically date on and off for several years. Their relationship was serious enough at some point that Peter wanted to get married, but Anna rejected his proposal, saying that he would not be able to give her the freedom in the relationship that she needed. Still, they kept in touch, and it’s implied that they hook up randomly from time to time. In fact, when “William” finds out about Peter, he becomes insanely jealous, because of course he does. When Anna flees London after Martyn’s death, she apparently goes straight to Peter, who is living in Paris, and in the very last pages of the book, William spots her in an airport with Peter and two kids, insinuating that he finally convinced her to settle down and start a family. This is an absolutely insane ending because if we know ANYTHING about Anna at this point, it’s that she doesn’t want to be tied down by any one man. Maybe we’re supposed to believe that the tragedy of Martyn’s death has changed her, but it’s too abrupt to feel totally genuine, and the show seems to confirm this by suggesting Anna will go on to destroy more lives, starting with her new psychologist. Personally, I would have traded this subplot for the Sally blackmail one we got in the show because the blackmail ultimately did not come to anything whatsoever and only introduced more confusion stemming from how weirdly Anna handled explaining it.
Also, Martyn never becomes suspicious that “William” is up to something. He stumbles upon them having sex entirely by accident. After Martyn and Anna become engaged, Anna intends to sell her house and buy a new residence with Martyn. So she and “William” have to find a new sex pad. This is when they obtain the apartment, which actually turns out to be Peter’s old London residence. When Anna’s stepfather suffers from a heart attack, she and “William” are at the apartment fucking, and Martyn, being the wonderful fiancé he is, goes to the ends of the earth (i.e., calling up her ex-boyfriend, Peter) to find out where she might be. Peter tells him about the apartment he sold, and that’s how poor Martyn ends up walking into his worst nightmare and ultimate demise.
Due to this book’s incredibly manageable length and readability, I am going to recommend that anyone who has watched the Obsession miniseries and is curious to know a little bit more should read Damage. I wouldn’t say that it will completely change your perspective or even leave you feeling more satisfied than the show did, but it’s interesting to see where the ideas came from and how they were modified for better or for worse. It seems that our unanswered questions were never meant to be answered. Josephine Hart had a specific story to tell and entertained nothing else, and it’s kind of crazy to think that her little book turned into a Netflix sensation over 30 years later.
Thanks for reading along with me! I’m already looking forward to next time.
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