Source of book: Audiobook from the library
This month, I had a gig one county north of where I live, so that meant a lot of commuting time. As usual, particularly when driving late at night, I prefer an audiobook as they keep me awake.
I do not remember exactly how I ran across this book. Usually I would say NPR, but this one went under the radar a bit. Maybe LitHub? Probably because the author is Canadian, and the book all about a specific subculture of Canadians - although it certainly is more universal than that: the appalling men and their rape culture are everywhere, particularly in MAGA here in the US.
I will admit, I was a bit disappointed in the book. But I am not sure how much of that is on me. There are a few issues that made it less than enjoyable. First, it is very much in a stream-of-consciousness but one that jumps around a lot in time and from character to character in a book with a lot of interconnected characters. This made the first third or so difficult to follow as an audiobook. By the end, I got better at remembering who was who and who was related to who and how.
The second issue for me is that this book is more or less a primal scream, the embodiment of “#metoo” and the rage against the men that treat women as objects to be used, abused, and discarded, and the culture that tells them that this is acceptable - indeed desirable - male behavior. For me, a guy who isn’t particularly fond of conflict (although I’m not exactly avoidant), it was a bit much.
The drama, the rage, the dismal male behavior is unrelenting throughout the book. The only likeable people in the story are the ones very much at the edges, who mostly serve as a backdrop of the few decent people the main characters encounter occasionally.
As for the characters that we actually get in the heads of, all of the men are so fucking horrible that you really wish they would all go away. This is not to say they are unrealistic. Trump would fit right in with their treatment of women, as would no small number of his voters. I know people like this; everyone does. And right now, they are running this fucking country, which is another reason this book was a bit too much. The Rogers are in power.
And yes, Roger the Rapist (and drug pusher and bad influence and truly horrible person) is the worst of the horrible men in this book - and like Trump he gets away with rape and maybe murder because the culture refuses to hold him accountable.
I have the definite impression that the author lived many of the nasty experiences in this book, because she writes them all too vividly. That probably includes the boy cousins who drown a kitten (that alone is a harrowing scene), the neighbor boy who jams his hand down a girl’s pants. And maybe the grandfather’s suicide. One can only hope the gang rape wasn’t a personal experience.
All of this is made even harder to take by the fact that the author reads the audiobook. And don’t get me wrong: she is a really excellent reader, with good voices and pacing. The problem is, she feels the book so strongly that it feels like she is making the primal scream herself as she reads it, tearing her characters new ones over and over and over.
As I said, way too much drama for me.
Although, to be fair, there is no way in hell I was falling asleep at the wheel.
The book is set in the author’s hometown of St. Johns, Newfoundland. This smallish city, about one third the size of my hometown of Bakersfield, in many ways resembles it. It is a melting pot of races, a destination for immigrants, and full of impoverished people who still retain a certain redneck asshole way of existing in the world. Both have the small town problem of most people being only a few degrees separated.
The author is like one of her characters, Olive, in that she is of mixed race - white and indigenous. Although Olive is secondary in importance to the central character of Iris (Olive’s half sister), it is clear enough that the author understands the experience of existing between worlds, not truly fitting in either.
While I could definitely feel sympathy for the female characters (and maybe the one gay male character), they were also frustrating as hell. I really do not understand how and why certain women tear themselves apart just to get a crumb of love from a worthless male. I mean, I know this is a thing. I even see it in my law practice regularly. But still.
I think another thing that bothered me a bit about the book is that, while it definitely explores the effects of generational trauma and poverty on its characters, it misses the chance to examine why those men without poverty also are terrible. We get a bit of the rick fucks in this book, but while we see their actions, we don’t really get behind them the way we do with the characters who grew up in poverty.
Probably I wouldn’t have noticed except for the fact that poverty is blamed in several instances in the book. This isn’t wrong, but it isn’t complete. Kind of like blaming Trump’s popularity on economic issues mostly misses the point that he literally campaigned on racism.
Likewise, not everyone who has experienced poverty or trauma or both turns out like this. Yes, at the population level, there are certain unsurprising results. But the book doesn’t really have the other kinds of responses other than paying the violence forward like the men, or passive victimhood on the part of the women.
Otherwise, however, the author does make it clear that culture raises men to be horrible, limits the options of women, and that “nice” Canada is by no means exempt from this. Patriarchy really has poisoned everything around the world.
I won’t say the book is badly written. Quite the contrary. The writing is effective, and the characters interesting, if highly frustrating.
So, as I noted at the outset, maybe the issue is more about me. The experience of this book was more traumatic than enlightening. That’s the problem of being the man who tries to be decent to the women in his life - and indeed in this world. And that despite a fair share of trauma in my childhood.
In a real way, the paradox of this book is that it will probably be read mostly by the wrong people. Women (who read a lot more literary fiction than men on average) will likely read it, and nod along with the frustration of the author. But the men who read it will probably mostly be people like me, who abhor toxic masculinity and are already doing what we can to push back against the patriarchy.
For us, the experience is a bit traumatic, taking us back to all the childhood bullies we knew, and reminding us all too much that these assholes run the world. The Rogers of the world - and even the Calvins - can’t be bothered to read at all, let alone something written by a woman that implicates them.
But, your mileage may vary, and maybe this book will speak to you. For me, finishing was a bit of a relief, and I think I will need something a bit lighter for my next audiobook.
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