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nicholelipka 's review for:

Stoner by John Williams
DID NOT FINISH: 43%
Spoiler/TW: in this book a man sees a woman and just decides she is to be his wife. It’s essentially a forced marriage that her parents authorize. She shows strong visible and physical discomfort with this from the very beginning and all throughout, and yet the narrator and main character Stoner are somehow flummoxed as to why she isn’t happy. And of course this only gets worse when Stoner rapes her and she vomits after the first time. Then she is portrayed as practically a villain. How in the world this is not talked about more in the reviews about this book is absolutely beyond me. This book is disturbing and disgusting, and highlights that the misogyny of old is still massively present in today’s attitudes and mindsets. Additionally, Stoner ironically has the personality of rock. He goes to college for agriculture after working on his family’s farm as a teen, then for some reason changes his major to literature. We are told that this is what his life revolves around, yet we are not shown any reason why he likes it or chose this to be his life’s work. This book is a waste of time, and I get the beauty that *could* have been found in this story had the story not been about a woefully pathetic and boring rapist.
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