The Chain: Love, Betrayal, and the Sisterhood That Heals Us 

Summary

In this raw and searing memoir, one woman recalls her romantic relationship with a pathological liar who betrayed her and many other women, exploring the trauma he caused and the sisterhood that formed despite—and in spite of—him.

In January 2017, Chimene Suleyman arrived at a women’s health clinic in Queens, New York, to undergo an abortion, accompanied by her boyfriend, the father of her nascent child. After reluctantly going through with the procedure, she returned to the waiting room to find it empty. Her boyfriend had fled. It was the last time they were together. In an extraordinary sequence of events, she eventually discovered the truth: that the man she she’d loved had gaslit, lied to, stolen from, and painfully betrayed her and many other women like her.

Spellbinding and soul-baring, The Chain explores the havoc one man wreaked on the  lives of the many unsuspecting women who believed the stories he told, about his various illnesses, his dying mother, his career and professional prospects, and his undying love and commitment. It also chronicles how these women came together to both expose him and to support each other in the wake of his destruction.

Examining how women fall prey to manipulative men, Suleyman questions society’s complicity in allowing those who would do women harm to flourish and contemplates why others remain silent witnesses by accepting and normalizing shameless behavior towards women. She demonstrates how women themselves are acculturated to perform prescribed roles of giver and nurturer, to be self-sacrificing and subordinate, and to bolster the egos of others by remaining silent and ignoring their own protective instincts.

Both a devastating personal testimony and a searing indictment of persistent misogyny, The Chain is a book for any woman who has questioned her relationship and buried her doubts and for any woman who has been sheltered by the fierce protection of her female friends.