At least he is honest. The narrator truly did render me speechless, and not the good kind. The fact that this is written anonymously and in the form of a diary does beg the dreaded question of whether this is autobiographical or truly fictional (please let it be the latter).
The book was overall praised for its honesty, which is a little scary, and far from enough to be redeemable. If this is honesty, then I don’t want it. A misogynistic borderline psychopath, the epitome of the male manipulator roaming the streets hurting women and the second he feels a little remorse, a little too late, may I add, we praise him for his “honesty.”
After reading this, I reached the happy conclusion that not every piece of writing needs to see the light of day. Maybe this is the whole point of the novel, to infuriate you, or maybe we are being a little too generous giving meaning to a waste of time. The blurb only adds insult to injury signalling that this is “above all, a very realistic account of what we do to each other.” Who is “we”? I have endured many books with pathetic, flawed narrators, but this one takes the cake.
I guess the only praise I could give this book is that it made me feel something, an anger for all those women who were treated by men like this, and all the men who got away with it, only to be pitied due to a serious victim complex. But then again, we don’t need to read a book to realise this. We can just look out of our windows to see the repeating patterns in our society.
The one brilliant decision this writer did make was to remain anonymous.
Illustration Via Erika Bunjevac @erikabunjevac for The Student