The Importance of Perspective in “Service” by Sarah Gilmartin

“I don’t want that to happen to me. I don’t want to be reduced to half an hour on a stand where all anyone remembers are the accusations of loose behaviour, drink, and drugs. Because if you say yes to one thing, you must be game for everything”.

Using three disparate viewpoints to explore a singular event, Service is a book that really explores the importance of perspective. After a letter accusing Daniel, a celebrity chef, of sexual assault goes public, memories of a summer spent working under his authority begin to bubble up for Hannah. Alongside these two, we get a glimpse behind the curtain of Daniel’s carefully curated life, as his wife Julie depicts what living with a “human exclamation point” as a husband is really like. Service is a masterful portrait of different types of abuse, all seemingly hidden in plain sight. 

The Function of The Viewpoints in Service

These three viewpoints offer the reader some variety in their experience of the different characters while also illustrating the messy complexity of human life. The essence of the story turns on one event – an assault on Hannah by Daniel years before – which colours everything that comes after. “There is a cruel logic that stops things cohering, that one short, painful episode, fifteen, maybe twenty minutes long, has had repercussions for a decade – a lifetime”.

Daniel’s Point of View

The book offers us a relatively acerbic view of Daniel. His inner monologue is crass, egocentric, cruel, and, at times, simply stupid. “Did I ever complain? Did I ever cry sexual assault when these women touched parts of my body with their tight, pawing grips? Certainly, I did not”. He takes a self-pitying approach to the accusation imposed on him and paints himself as a victim of the #MeToo climate. “There is nothing I can say these days. I have lost the power to defend myself … That letter was like a bugle call. Once a girl cries rape, that’s all anyone hears”.

Daniel’s view of Hannah is also hugely problematic. Rather than a real person, Daniel sees Hannah as a solution to his ennui and jadedness. Put simply, she is the manic pixie dream girl: “People think a man who has found fame and fortune must wake each day with an innate sense of his own value. Not so … But occasionally, someone like Hannah comes along, with the power to make one forget oneself”. Not only is this not true of Hannah in particular, but by viewing her in such a reductive way, Daniel minimises the realness of Hannah as a human more generally. In a sense, he’s justifying his actions towards her, as she’s not a person but simply a concept.

A Complex Character Study

However, to the book’s benefit, the author also manages to portray Daniel as a human being rather than just a simple cartoonish villain. He almost wins us around in some of his more vulnerable and self-aware moments, which is a credit to Gilmartin’s skilful writing. “I am not unused to being looked at; I am unused to being looked at in this way. The difference, I feel now, is the difference between winning and losing, life and death”.

The author of Service treats the complexities of consent and assault with appropriate delicacy and gentleness. While violence seems to be the book’s core, it is subtle and never gratuitous, especially when we see the event taking on a tragic nuance in Hannah’s mind. “I stopped saying no because I thought it would be easier that way. Less violent, less embarrassing”.

The Female Characters in Service

Towards the periphery of the event this book turns on is the almost tragic figure of Julie. Since she always played second fiddle to her husband’s leading man, the accusations against him have thrust her world into chaos. “You were too full of your own stories, your voice set to megaphone inside your head, while the rest of us whispered asides”. But perhaps even worse is that they’ve also revealed an ongoing iniquity and dangerousness to the pair’s relationship: “A thing that bothers me: you seem to lack awareness of how our lives have been affected by your actions”. 

The trial forces Julie to re-examine her life with Daniel in all its horror. “The years are peeling back, and I see you properly for the first time in decades; I see you hiding there in front of me in plain sight, a stranger”. These realisations are almost impossible for her to face, as she begins to understand she needs to tear her own life down in order to rebuild it from scratch.

“All these years have meant nothing, marriage to mirage”.

You can pick up your copy of Service by Sarah Gilmartin at Waterstones.