Our 20s: is there any other part of the human lifecycle so rich with bad relationships, dead ends and the solemnity of first abortions? I think not. In her second novel, Stacey May Fowles (along with artist Marlena Zuber) crafts not so much an ode to, but an exorcism of, early-adult angst through heartbroken narrator Marnie.

Marnie spends much of Fear of Fighting putting her identity back together after a breakup with self-centered musician Ben. She’s neurotic, masochistic and stuck in first-person paralysis, able to describe her condition and analyze it but showing little desire to change. Fowles lightens such a potentially dour character with moments of black humour, as when Marnie is holding onto her purse in the midst of a snatching only to realize the purse’s contents (receipts, $6.80 in cash and an old Depeche Mode ticket stub) are monetarily worthless.

The title could be an ironic nod to Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, but the emotional terrain Fowles hikes through is closer to Phoebe Gloeckner’s Diary of a Teenage Girl. Fowles is intense with diary directness in her cataloguing of the unique ways a woman’s heart can be squashed. “The bliss I felt in meeting (and fucking) him was destroyed as soon as I peed on that store-bought test,” Marnie laments. “Suddenly I detested him and his lack of hygiene, his Kierkegaard and bass guitar…I was hoping if I stared at it longer the likelihood that it was wrong, or a joke, would increase. That the plus sign would become a minus sign, and Ben and I could go back…Back to spending long, naked days in bed with take-out and Back to the Future on DVD.”

The confessional tone has its strengths — Fowles’ writing is emotionally generous — but it also has its weaknesses. Such over-sharing feels self-satisfied, while Fowles should risk more complex structures and try teasing the reader’s expectations. As it is, a sense of surprise doesn’t arrive until a final act of dog-napping and a Bound-lite turn.

Paired well with Zuber’s drawings, Fowles words are simple and elegant. She has perfectly bottled the ennui and cruel narcissism of people old enough to have bad credit but still young enough to puke outside of bars. Even if you’re comfortably past that age, Fowles’ book is worth the sobering read. After all, we’re never as far from our worst years as we think we are.

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