From the author of the critically acclaimed Some of My Best Friends (a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year) comes a brilliant, incisive and unforgettable memoir that illuminates one of the most significant archetypes in our culture: the mentor—and the dynamics it breeds.

Tajja Isen was young when she realized that she responded well to authority. She was a classic overachiever, even as a child—but something happened when someone "in charge" turned their gaze to her: she lit up, she stood straighter, she listened carefully, she followed direction. She wanted to earn their approval. She wanted to please them. 

Decades later, as an adult, Tajja realized that this is a pattern for her, and it's been an undercurrent to her personal and professional life: a ruthless tendency to seek—and often lose—herself in intense, complicated bonds with figures of authority. Tough Love braids personal narrative with cultural critique to explore the cultural significance of the mentor—the complex role they play in the myths of mastery and meritocracy, and why she has spent decades buying into those narratives, even when she ought to have known better. 

In investigating her own life and relationships, Tajja traces the path of these relationships from a familiar, comfortable set of variables—older patron, good intentions, benign attention—to the any number of directions they shoot off in: the erotic, the competitive, the exploitative. Parsing her own ambition, including what spawned it, what fed it and all the suspect things it's made her do, Tajja explores the wider intersection of power, submission, influence and the formation of the self.

At once dazzlingly original and utterly relatable, Tough Love is a crystalline examination of power, ambition and the road to becoming the person you want to be.

From the author of the critically acclaimed Some of My Best Friends (a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year) comes a brilliant, incisive, and unforgettable memoir that illuminates one of the most significant archetypes in our culture—the mentor—and the dynamics it breeds.

Tajja Isen was young when she realized that she responded unusually well to authority. Even as a child, she was a classic overachiever. But something else happened when someone in charge turned their gaze on her: She lit up, she stood straighter, she followed direction. She didn't just want to earn their approval. She wanted to please them. In exchange, she hoped they would tell her who to be.

Years later, as an adult, Isen realized how dependent she'd become on this pattern. Her personal and professional life relied on this ruthless tendency to seek—and often lose—herself in boundary-crossing bonds with her superiors. Tough Love braids Isen's journey with cultural criticism to explore the significance of the mentor: the complex role they play in the myths of mastery and meritocracy, and why she spent decades buying into those narratives, even when they did more harm than good.

With unflinching honesty and a forensic attention to power dynamics, Isen interrogates her attraction to these figures and how it fueled her ambition—from her success as a child actor, through her obsessive dedication as a student, to her eventual emergence as a writer. This is a fearless exploration of the knotty intersection between desire, submission, influence, and the formation of the self.

At once dazzlingly original and utterly relatable, Tough Love is a crystalline examination of power, ambition, and the challenge of becoming the person you want to be.