You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
mraemisch 's review for:
Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War
by Sebastian Faulks
You know when Joey on Friends puts The Shining in the freezer cuz it was too scary? I've never had an impulse like that in my life until just now when I got up and put this book in the other room to get its gross misogyny away from me.
I don't like abandoning books. I really don't. And I have been looking forward to reading this for a long time. The reviews are so great.
This book is about a man who objectifies women left and right and thinks his evaluation of them is what does or doesn't give them value.
Whether it be another man's wife who he starts randomly touching and grabbing. Then when he finally ramps up to more fully forcing himself on her and she flees, the book says, "The force that drove him could not be stopped. The part of his mind that remained calm accepted this; if the necessity could not be denied, then the question was only whether it could be achieved with her consent."
Faulks was full out stating that his protagonist would rape this woman if she didn't consent, but then she does. So its apparently okay and romantic?
Or whether it is how this character describes the physique of that same woman's step daughter. How he gropes her (even if she was consenting in the moment, she was too young and immediately clearly felt so uncomfortable and upset that he allowed it to get that far - statutory rape y'all, she was too young).
Or now, when he tries to peer pressure his friend into sleeping with a whore when he clearly doesn't want to, and he, of course, wants the whore's daughter for himself - her mother is just too old (gasp! 40!?). Then he threatens the daughter with his knife because she isn't the lady he groped and wanted to rape at the beginning of the book?
I just reached page 200 of 480 and he may die soon and the book will get better, who knows, but... honestly, enough. He is a womanizer and none of this is romantic. This book belongs in the trash.
I don't like abandoning books. I really don't. And I have been looking forward to reading this for a long time. The reviews are so great.
This book is about a man who objectifies women left and right and thinks his evaluation of them is what does or doesn't give them value.
Whether it be another man's wife who he starts randomly touching and grabbing. Then when he finally ramps up to more fully forcing himself on her and she flees, the book says, "The force that drove him could not be stopped. The part of his mind that remained calm accepted this; if the necessity could not be denied, then the question was only whether it could be achieved with her consent."
Faulks was full out stating that his protagonist would rape this woman if she didn't consent, but then she does. So its apparently okay and romantic?
Or whether it is how this character describes the physique of that same woman's step daughter. How he gropes her (even if she was consenting in the moment, she was too young and immediately clearly felt so uncomfortable and upset that he allowed it to get that far - statutory rape y'all, she was too young).
Or now, when he tries to peer pressure his friend into sleeping with a whore when he clearly doesn't want to, and he, of course, wants the whore's daughter for himself - her mother is just too old (gasp! 40!?). Then he threatens the daughter with his knife because she isn't the lady he groped and wanted to rape at the beginning of the book?
I just reached page 200 of 480 and he may die soon and the book will get better, who knows, but... honestly, enough. He is a womanizer and none of this is romantic. This book belongs in the trash.