Tag: reviews

The bravest and most horrifying book I’ve read in ages

Before this year, I had no clue The Power or Naomi Alderman existed—despite the acclaim the book met when it was published in 2016, and the fact that its apparently been made into an Amazon mini-series starring Toni Collette, who I absolutely love. A colleague in a crit group read a story I was working on, and recommended I read this. She was absolutely right.

Cover are for the near-future scifi dystopia novel THE POWER by Naomi Alderman shows red hand print overlayed with a winding root-like/lightning-0like pattern in grey.

When I say this is the bravest and most horrifying book I’ve read in ages, I’m not exaggerating. I actually had to stop about 10 minutes from the end because I was in a Thai restaurant in Orlando and was on the verge of bursting into tears, and didn’t want everyone staring at me. This book is easily better, and darker, than Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale (both a book and artist I hold in hella high regard).

One clarification: when I told my wife that this book was the bravest and most horrifying thing I’d read in years, she totally misunderstood what I found horrifying in the book. She assumed I was upset by the rapes. There are several very graphic and traumatic rapes of men by women in this novel, as well as broader sexual subjugation of men.

Frankly, none of that really bothered me. I’ve read fictional depictions and non-fictional accounts of the rapes of men and boys that I’ve found more upsetting. Talk to anyone who’s worked for child protective services and you’ll hear an earful. Humans are, on balance, awfully creative when it comes to being awful.

What got me about this book is that, evidently and despite it all, there was some small part of me that had continued to really and deeply believe that “everything would be better if women were in charge.” Alderman meticulously dismembered and violated that foolish, optimistic child that was still hiding inside me.

Agustina Bazterrica’s TENDER IS THE FLESH: ★★★★★ would dine again!

(I do a fair bit of reading, which I track over on Goodreads. Trying to move some of that value over here, prior to the inevitable enshitification.)

Cover art for the English translation of Agustina Bazterrica's novel TENDER IS THE FLESH

This book is a little like heavy metal poisoning. Its impact is pernicious, deep, and likely permanent. You’ll be powerfully tempted to pigeon-hole this as an allegory (about world-wide overconsumption of meat, about climate change, about patriarchy, about the deadly tendency to humor wealthy idiots)—but, jeez, don’t. That’s just a defense mechanism, your brain’s white blood cells trying to contain and thus destroy an interloper. Don’t cop out like that. Just let the story fully in, let it blossom and consume you.

It’s really a helluva book. In many ways, this is the exact opposite of Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door, in that it blessedly lets no one off the hook.

For those interested in other art Dave compares favorably to heavy-metal poisoning, consider Merhinge’s film Begotten.

I should not have read Jack Ketchum’s THE GIRL NEXT DOOR (a zero-stars review)

(I do a fair bit of reading, which I track over on Goodreads. Trying to move some of that value over here, prior to the inevitable enshitification.)

This book was notorious when I was a kid for being so extreme and gruesome. Straight talk: it’s not that gruesome. Yes, there are graphic depictions of torture and sexual violence that are basically in the ballpark of stuff happening in conflict zones right now. That this really happens to real people is gruesome and outrageous; that some guy typed it up in 1989 feels trite.

Anyway, what really is truly extreme and gruesome in this book is its absolute moral cowardice. Ketchum sets up an interesting premise–not the sex torture of the orphaned girl next door, but the narrator’s (David’s) complicity, how he lets awfulness roll forward despite liking this girl, despite being a “good guy” and “All-American Kid” (echoes of King’s “Apt Pupil” there).

That premise is interesting, because it matches the vast majority of us: we’re good people, and we let bad things happen all over the world all the time.

The problem is that Ketchum pulls the punch. Inexplicably, he attempts to transform David into a hero in the final act–despite the fact that there’s no set-up for it, and Ketchum seems entirely incapable of pulling it off. That might be fine; it could still be a solid three-star book if David tried to play the hero, then faceplanted (as he does in the novel, as he must, because the situation is so hopeless), and Megan (the victim of these outrages and everyone’s leer, readers included) had poured her fury and rage out on him.

Instead Ketchum paints this kid–this coward, this bystander, this rapist-by-proxy and torture fanboy–as the hero, and forces Meg to be his forgiving damsel.

And it just makes me want to fucking vomit. It’s a mediocre book that’s only shocking if you’ve never read a newspaper’s international headlines. It’s an advertisement for never holding anyone accountable for anything–save for the victims; “What was she doing alone with those boys? What did she expect, dressing like that” and so on and so forth ad nauseam, ad infinitum, world without end, amen 🤮

A Canticle for Leibowitz ★★★★★

(I do a fair bit of reading, which I track over on Goodreads. Trying to move some of that value over here, prior to the inevitable enshitification.)

This is a re-read (or really a re-listen for me). The first time I read A Canticle for Leibowitz I was maybe 17 at the oldest, so almost three decades ago now. Reading old books is a comfort, because it reminds us that even our most painfully modern woes—A.I.! Self-driving cars! A broad American passion for alluring misinformation coupled to a contempt for facts spoken by the “wrong” side!—were old and well-worn decades before I was born. This books is from 1959, and it’s third section literally opens with a guy working in his office and getting super frustrated with the malfunctioning A.I. he’s trying to dictate a letter to. Soon thereafter he and his subordinate have to dodge autonomous semis while crossing the street to get to the cafeteria. 😂

Setting aside Canticle‘s mild antisemitism(*), it’s refreshing to read religion in a scifi book written by someone who doesn’t have contempt for religion, but neither idealizes it, either. Miller (who I understand to have been a devout Catholic by the time he wrote the novel) respects that religious institutions, like any and all institutions, are political and can be petty, because they are operated by humans (who are political and petty). But he also highlights that religious institutions aren’t *just* petty political vehicles. He acknowledges the reality that people don’t cleave to religion out of fear or contempt or cruelty or because they hate the Other, but rather out of love and comfort and, believe it or note, a true and legitimate desire to bring about a good and just world.

We have religion in America now—right alongside our malfunctioning A.I. and glitchy self-driving cars. We’re gonna have it in the future. It’s absence in scifi is as weird and non-credible as the bizarrely small number of Black people in the Detroit depicted in Robocop.

(*) A “Wandering Jew” character plays a major supporting role in all three sections of this A Canticle for Leibowitz. I think enough people categorize the “Wandering Jew” as a foundational antisemitic trope that this should be a fairly non-controversial opinion. But I also know how the Internet works, so if you’re legit interested in discussing what precisely reads as antisemitic to me in this novel, feel free to reach out. Happy to chat.