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‘The Chain’ Links a Male Predator to a Sisterhood Forged in His Destructive Wake
Chimene Suleyman's memoir of a toxic man's abuse blossoms into a story about how his victims banded together and examines the normalization of sexist behaviour / BY Elizabeth Renzetti / April 24th, 2024
I don’t think I’ve ever underlined a book as much as I underlined Chimene Suleyman’s memoir of abuse and healing, The Chain. Almost every page contains my scrawled notes: “omg” and “monster” and “what the hell.” I also underlined Suleyman’s poetic, haunting turns of phrase, like this one: “He stole the sky. How do you ever forgive someone for taking that.”
The bare bones of Suleyman’s memoir are staggering. A man she began dating in 2016 in New York City turned out to be a pathological liar, a thief and a raging misogynist (he’s never named in the book). He coaxed Suleyman into having an abortion, then abandoned her in the clinic, stole items from her apartment – while she was undergoing the procedure – and finally sent her a series of texts: “There is nothing good or human about you. No one should love you.”
That would be horrifying enough for a book, but it’s what happens next that elevates The Chain. A month after the abortion, while googling the man’s name, Suleyman discovered a woman named Zoe had posted a drawing of him on Instagram. Zoe had written, “Unfortunately the guy in the picture turned out to be a psychopath.” That’s the beginning of The Chain: a group of women, all harmed by the same man, find each other online, become friends – and eventually save and heal each other.
There was a lot to talk about when I reached Suleyman at home in her native London, where she’s now living again. The reception to the book has been gratifying but also shocking, she says, because of how many women have reached out to her to ask if it’s their husband or boyfriend she’s writing about. They recognize the behaviour. Suleyman writes back to tell them no, it’s not their partner, but she finds it depressing: “It’s just a shame that so many women can relate on that level.”
One of the main messages in The Chain, and our conversation, is that this is not a memoir about an individual man. It’s the story of how sexist behaviour is normalized in society. Suleyman, an author and poet, hadn’t even considered writing a book until she began interviewing the man’s friends. She was astonished that they condoned or ignored their friend’s actions (which included sending naked pictures of his sleeping partners, without their consent.) When he told them he drugged women’s drinks, or stole from them, the friends made excuses. He was exaggerating. He was just a ladies’ man, a player.
“When I spoke to his friends, I remember thinking: Oh, this isn’t about this one man. There are so many people who are complicit,” Suleyman says. “And there’s a whole society that’s complicit in this. He’s just a vessel through which I’m telling a much, much bigger story.”
Part of that story involves the complicity of the comedy world. Suleyman’s ex was a comedian, and on stage and on podcasts he would spew racist and sexist abuse under the guise that it was just material. “Comedy,” she writes, “is an invisibility cloak for men who hate women.” He would joke about drugging women, about deliberately getting them pregnant, about lying to them and stealing their stuff. And audiences ate it up.
“I think what did surprise me was just how many other comedians thought he was funny, or acceptable,” Suleyman says. “And how the audience was fine with that. … When you can’t get away with saying it in the office, you get on the stage and call it a joke.”
When Suleyman saw Zoe’s post about their shared ex, she felt a jolt of surprise – but also a sense of relief. Soon, dozens of women were in communication, all of whom had shared disturbing relationships with the same man. They met up, laughed, cried. They enjoyed each other’s company. “The only thing he got right is that he has excellent taste in women,” she writes.
So how did all these smart, vibrant, accomplished women fall for the same jerk? Suleyman offers a variety of explanations, some personal, some societal. For one thing, women are socialized to nurture, and to think they can fix broken men. Dating apps can be cruel, and kindness in short supply, so when this man began to pay attention and love bomb them, they were receptive to a guy who seemed genuinely affectionate.
Also, Suleyman notes, he had a predator’s gift for sensing vulnerability. Suleyman was reeling from a recent break-up, and new to New York, when she met him. Some of the other women were in similarly fragile states. “All of us were going through something,” she says. “And that made it easy for him.”
The women in the chain are still friends, and Suleyman is going to meet one of them in London soon. When they get together, they no longer talk about their ex, but instead about everyday things, “the things you talk about at the pub.” What Suleyman wanted, more than anything, was to tell the story of women supporting each other, even in the worst times.
At home in her flat in London, almost eight years after she first met her ex-boyfriend on Tinder, Suleyman is thoughtful and expansive. She’s dealing with a (possibly stress-related) stomach illness and a needy cat, but otherwise life is good. She says she doesn’t know what her ex is up to, and hasn’t heard from him about the book.
In the end, the relationship that traumatized her also proved to be a gift. The television rights to the book have been sold, and Suleyman is the executive producer of the series (she’s working on ways to fictionalize the material). She has lasting bonds with a new group of friends. Most important, by writing her story, she came to an understanding about herself and the world. She has managed, in a way, to take back the sky. I ask her about this and she laughs. “Yeah, I think I’ve made something good out of something so rotten.”