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Reviews tagging 'Antisemitism'
Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession by Rachel Monroe
3 reviews
stephen_reads's review against another edition
2.75
This fast-paced scattered narrative follows 4 distinct and unrelated women who were involved in true crime in some way.
Although the author tries to link the 4 narratives with an overarching moralistic message about women and their relationship to violent media, the book feels disjointed and haphazard.
The author also fails completely in her task to be objective. She even has a friendly relationship with one of the women, describing her in the acknowledgements as warm and generous, leading to her profile being uncritical and positive. This is the woman who married Damian Echols, one of the West Memphis 3, while he was awaiting execution on death row. Everything this woman says is taken at face value, her flaws and strange behaviour completely glossed over, any sense of ambiguity destroyed. It comes across as flat, disingenuous, and deceptive. The narrative doesn’t want to ask questions or be curious, it lacks objectivity, it’s frustrating.
The conclusions drawn about the four women are vague. An attempt is made to discuss the whiteness of true crime fanaticism and the inherent racism of the community, but it never goes deep enough and intersectional victims are relegated firmly in the background.
A positive I can say about this book is that it’s fast-paced, the author has wit and writes fairly charmingly, if condescendingly at times. I easily finished it in an afternoon and didn’t consider it entirely wasted time.
Although the author tries to link the 4 narratives with an overarching moralistic message about women and their relationship to violent media, the book feels disjointed and haphazard.
The author also fails completely in her task to be objective. She even has a friendly relationship with one of the women, describing her in the acknowledgements as warm and generous, leading to her profile being uncritical and positive. This is the woman who married Damian Echols, one of the West Memphis 3, while he was awaiting execution on death row. Everything this woman says is taken at face value, her flaws and strange behaviour completely glossed over, any sense of ambiguity destroyed. It comes across as flat, disingenuous, and deceptive. The narrative doesn’t want to ask questions or be curious, it lacks objectivity, it’s frustrating.
The conclusions drawn about the four women are vague. An attempt is made to discuss the whiteness of true crime fanaticism and the inherent racism of the community, but it never goes deep enough and intersectional victims are relegated firmly in the background.
A positive I can say about this book is that it’s fast-paced, the author has wit and writes fairly charmingly, if condescendingly at times. I easily finished it in an afternoon and didn’t consider it entirely wasted time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Genocide, Child death, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Murder
Moderate: Racism, Antisemitism, and Self harm
kdbookdragon's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
medium-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Antisemitism, Murder, Mass/school shootings, and Gun violence
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Sexual assault, and Racism
mfrisk's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
2.75
I thought the premise of this book was interesting as someone who consumes true crime content and is working to learn to also be more critical of what I consume especially in this vein over time. That being said, the stories chosen I think were interesting to learn more about though I felt in their own chapters the lessons were a bit too neatly wrapped up and decided and the ending felt similarly too wrapped up and decided despite noting that there are shades of grey in these situations. I didn’t really enjoy much of the author’s commentary as I felt she often missed the mark and saw herself as above others who consume true crime content while also being incredibly overly empathetic towards Columbiners of all those highlighted in this book. While there were some interesting points made I felt this book missed the mark in the pacing and balance of the commentary and story aspects of this book and because of this the points made felt at times contradictory and at others not fully thought out.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Toxic friendship, Kidnapping, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Murder, Toxic relationship, Mass/school shootings, Gore, Sexual assault, and Blood
Minor: Antisemitism, Racism, and Bullying
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