Review: I wish there was a negative star rating.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 05 20, 2014
I am all for freedom of speech. You have the right to say whatever you please about whomever you please however you please.That being said, this is not an issue of free speech for me. It’s easy to speak about rape in terms of censorship and your First Amendment rights when it’s a hypothetical for you. Unfortunately, for me and millions of other women around the world, rape is not a hypothetical.It’s a reality.I read this novella, mostly because I will never be comfortable criticizing a book I haven’t read. I’m luckier than most in that I don’t recall very much of what happened to me, but what does stick in my mind is the complete and utter loss of control and stark terror. It wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t pleasant and it was without question the single most horrifying event of my life. My having a physical reaction to a book that, in my mind, glorified this event shouldn’t come as a surprise. It made me ill—and I mean that literally. It sent me straight to my knees before the porcelain god more than once. I try very hard not to take anything someone writes personally, but this was personal for me. Neurotic or not, it felt like a slap in the face to survivors of sexual assault.Is it right that Amazon pulled the original version of this book? Is it FAIR? Maybe not—but it’s also not fair that I spent seven years in therapy. Or that I have to take anti-anxiety medication to go Christmas shopping. Or that I break out in a cold sweat when a man walks up behind me. Or that I can’t be touched without tensing up. Please--don’t speak to me about right and fair.Nothing irritates me more than a personal attack on an author. I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the ruthlessness with which some reviewers respond to a book. I’d honestly never finished a book and felt RAGE towards someone for their writing. There’s obviously a first time for everything, but I’m a professional and a grown-up so we will leave it at I was a fan--was being the operative word.I get that sex and desire are fluid, I get that people crave things that are completely beyond my realm of comprehension and I get that there’s stuff that I am not meant to understand. Quite frankly, I’m glad of it. Understanding someone’s actions leads to justification….and there’s an unfortunate amount of crap in this world I have no desire whatsoever to justify.I didn’t have to buy this book and I didn’t have to read it—but I did on both counts. When you put a book out there, you open yourself up to criticism. Consider this mine. You want a rape fantasy? I have a story I have no problem telling. I feel fairly confident you won’t find the idea fantastical afterwards.