Reviews with content warning for Alcoholism - Any Man

Reviews tagging 'Alcoholism'

Any Man by Amber Tamblyn

19 reviews

indigo149's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75

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chloseencounter's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Any Man was a stunning and unique experience. I’d 100% recommend the audio book because it’s extremely immersive.

I really enjoyed hearing all the different POVs of the antagonist’s victims, this was a very raw look into all the various outcomes that can come from surviving sexual assault, weather it’s dealing by humor, family, control, emptiness, self destructive behavior, or even suicide. While the characters were interesting and their storylines were heartbreaking, the most special thing to me about this novel is the look at what women so often deal with when faced with sexual violence but through the eyes of a man. Unfortunately female victims of sexual assault are all too common, we hear about it so much in fact, our society has become desensitized to the sexual abuse women face and how it’s handled by the public. Flipping the narrative and using men as the victims not only opens up an important conversation about men who have experienced sexual violence and how they are treated but also made the subject feel much more shocking. Then I suppose we can ask ourselves…why is that? Why is being sexually assaulted as a women so commonplace that it doesn’t feel nearly as gut wrenching to read?

The most eye opening part in my opinion was the very last bit, when our serial rapist responds to the journalist, in which she replies with a lot of grotesque language about how a women might think about men as essentially prey or even nonhuman. Then she sends the same exact paragraph replacing the pronouns with she/her, it was sort of appalling to see how different those paragraphs felt right next to one another. Why one was shocking and the other…felt sort of normal. As a women it was easy for me to read the paragraph and think “yea that’s just how men often think of us”, and yet the same exact paragraph but with men as the group being preyed upon felt much more abhorrent.

At the end of the day, I think that ultimately there wasn’t one predator but multiple women predators. The story seemed to lump these people into one frightening amalgamation of a women because how could society believe that there may be multiple women out there preying upon men, it must be a repeat offender. However, when a women is attacked it could literally be “any man”, which is a very smart way to make a statement about how both male and female victims of sexual violence are seen unfairly by the general public.

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megcrs's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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cnricochet's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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hapikohw's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

It started on such a high for me. I really thought it would be a 5-star easy. As we went from the survivor-hood of each of Maude's victims to the general spectacle of the case it dipped for me. It is at its best when the internalization of each man is explored and how they maneuver through relationships of those closest to them. When they are centered. Some of the survivors are given this, and others are not - the last two men. It was bold to use real celebrities and what they would say in an event like this. The sixth man, who was technically the first, and then Maude herself were extremely rushed and that lack of exploration in those chapters really dropped it for me to 4 stars. Maude's logic that she gave the press versus what she actually believes in and why she actually done it is fine, but there should have been more if she was to actually have a moment in the book instead of being the person who got away and exists as a phantom in the public consciousness and the minds of her victims. Still, the experimental approach to the physical and audio book was enough to still be great to me.

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