Review: Wonderful, thought-provoking book...but I doubt I'll read it again
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 12, 2011
Warning: This review might contain what some people consider SPOILERS.Rating: 8/10PROS:- Not all (well, not many at all) of the occurrences described in the book are pleasant, but they're all described WELL--not necessarily in terms of the amount of detail but in terms of the narrator's reaction to them. The book captures, for example, a spectrum of twisted, contradictory emotions that arise after the narrator falls victim to a sexual crime.- Ashling does a good job of creating a futuristic world that's foreign without being science-fictiony. There are developments in the story that don't exist in contemporary society, but they're logical progressions of our current state of affairs, so it didn't take much suspension of disbelief to believe that a world like this could really exist someday. Even as I read parts of the story with horror, I admired the author's ability to weave a complex plot with an incredibly elaborate backstory. There's a lot of (fictitious) legal webbing in the story, and it all seemed very well thought out to me.- There's a touching love story woven in with all the unpleasantness.- Some of the narrator's comments are very funny in an off-handed way. This is one of my favorites: "By real sex I meant two people taking ample time to enjoy each other, preferably after an intensely romantic but very short courtship. Let's say, an evening."- I very much admired several of the characters. The narrator, of course, is one; but I also really liked several of his friends. Ashling characterizes succinctly, giving just enough information to create a solid picture of what kind of person the character is without dwelling too much on details.CONS:- I found it incredibly difficult to read. (Not sure this is a con, actually, since the author *does* warn readers about this; I just thought I'd add my own warning.) The very first thing the book describes is an incident of sexual assault on a 14-year-old, and that sets the tone for the rest of the story. There are several more rape scenes, as well as a couple of scenes of such horrible degradation and embarrassment that I could hardly stand them.- It took a while for the overall structure of the story to become apparent to me. The first several chapters detail occurrences from the narrator's childhood, and the connections between them all are tenuous. I wondered more than once where the story was going. (The events ARE connected; we just don't find out HOW until later in the book.)- I was a little (okay, a lot) upset that the story contains pretty graphic descriptions of several meaningless sexual escapades but then fades to black when the narrator is finally with the one boy who matters to him.- The epilogue--which is lengthy--is written by a character other than the narrator, and he uses the characters' last names. Because of this, it was a little slow going for me because I had to keep pausing and pairing up last names with the first names that had been used up to that point.Overall comments: This certainly isn't for the faint of heart. It's a social commentary, not a light bit of entertainment. I certainly think it's worth reading if you're interested in something out of the ordinary, but as the author warns, you should certainly be prepared for a lot of unpleasantness. The angst is pretty hardcore with very little happiness to tone it down. Still, I'm glad I read it: it's well written and contains a story that I'm still thinking about, almost a week after having finished it.