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A review by otterno11
Red Pill by Hari Kunzru
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
A chilling and all too relatable work, Hari Kunzru’s novel Red Pill captures, to use a word that the novel’s unnamed narrator might, the zeitgeist of the fraught 2010s with all its anxiety, fear, and sense of uncertainty. With its languid, meandering pace, broken up by lengthy asides, though, the novel lacks needed clarity in its reflection of the current state of the world, even as it builds to a fever pitch with the US election of 2016.
The novel centers on a middle-aged freelance writer sharing certain biographical similarities to Kunzru himself as he leaves his wife and young daughter in New York to cloister himself at a prestigious writer’s fellowship outside Berlin, hoping to finish his latest book. Soon realizing that the Deuter Center’s stifling atmosphere leaves him completely unable to write, he quickly spirals into bouts of existential dread and paranoia, becoming lost in the dark history of his new surroundings at Wannsee, getting sucked down various online rabbit holes, and binging on the disturbing and pessimistic cop show, Blue Lives. A chance encounter with an American writer, whom the narrator sees as the literal embodiment of all of the existential fears that were occupying his mind, the calculated transgression, laughing bigotry, and incipient fascism of the alt-right, causes him to spiral completely into madness.
As his narrator loses his grasp of reality, Kunzru does capture something of the fractured nature of reality in a time of “fake news” and echo chambers, as his friends and family see their own realities crumble upon that final, horrific revelation of November 3rd, 2016, making the narrator, in his anxious paranoia, a kind of harbinger. The last few years have had bad effects on individual mental health, as a world that once seemed settled and solid became an illusion hiding hideous ideologies. This Weimar Germany vibe is certainly one I’m familiar with, fixating on some online symptom of the fascist infection, becoming convinced that something is going to happen, but, especially after what actually happened in the years after 2019, there is a fatalism to the narrator’s attitude. In his private mental breakdown, unable to form a coherent response to the reactionary forces that he feels surround him, his isolation leaves him without solidarity.
But, the narrator is, after all, far from being alone in noticing the worrying shift in the facade of liberal democracy before 2016 and the growing undercurrents of fascist thought online and in politics, so it seems odd that he never seems to find anyone to share his fears, his concerns. If we are going to oppose this fascist resurgence, we’ll need an organized response, whether through voting or action, and I think it’s important to recognize that there are many people who are bringing eloquent and passionate rebuttals to the Antons of the world.
The novel centers on a middle-aged freelance writer sharing certain biographical similarities to Kunzru himself as he leaves his wife and young daughter in New York to cloister himself at a prestigious writer’s fellowship outside Berlin, hoping to finish his latest book. Soon realizing that the Deuter Center’s stifling atmosphere leaves him completely unable to write, he quickly spirals into bouts of existential dread and paranoia, becoming lost in the dark history of his new surroundings at Wannsee, getting sucked down various online rabbit holes, and binging on the disturbing and pessimistic cop show, Blue Lives. A chance encounter with an American writer, whom the narrator sees as the literal embodiment of all of the existential fears that were occupying his mind, the calculated transgression, laughing bigotry, and incipient fascism of the alt-right, causes him to spiral completely into madness.
As his narrator loses his grasp of reality, Kunzru does capture something of the fractured nature of reality in a time of “fake news” and echo chambers, as his friends and family see their own realities crumble upon that final, horrific revelation of November 3rd, 2016, making the narrator, in his anxious paranoia, a kind of harbinger. The last few years have had bad effects on individual mental health, as a world that once seemed settled and solid became an illusion hiding hideous ideologies. This Weimar Germany vibe is certainly one I’m familiar with, fixating on some online symptom of the fascist infection, becoming convinced that something is going to happen, but, especially after what actually happened in the years after 2019, there is a fatalism to the narrator’s attitude. In his private mental breakdown, unable to form a coherent response to the reactionary forces that he feels surround him, his isolation leaves him without solidarity.
But, the narrator is, after all, far from being alone in noticing the worrying shift in the facade of liberal democracy before 2016 and the growing undercurrents of fascist thought online and in politics, so it seems odd that he never seems to find anyone to share his fears, his concerns. If we are going to oppose this fascist resurgence, we’ll need an organized response, whether through voting or action, and I think it’s important to recognize that there are many people who are bringing eloquent and passionate rebuttals to the Antons of the world.