A review by tigger89
Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was a deeply unpleasant read. Not bad, but viscerally uncomfortable, with no semblance of thrill when the suspense breaks, only a sense of relief. The author, a trans woman herself, pulls no punches when it comes to depicting transphobia(and, to a lesser degree, racism and antisemitism), to the point where I felt myself thinking okay, I get it now, you can stop…oh my god please stop. I originally intended to mention this as a negative, but the more I sat with that feeling, the more I think it was Rumfitt's intent to make the reader feel that way. It would have been too easy to throw out something shocking and then stop. But that's not how bigotry works, right? It doesn't slap you in the face and then just stop. It slaps you in the face and then it knees you in the gut, punches your head, now you're on the floor, can't even get your breath back between each strike. It persists long after you're done with it, refusing to let up even if you beg.

So maybe that's why she chose to write that way, with the repetitive stream-of-consciousness rants that stretched on for pages after the point where I wanted so badly for them to stop. Or maybe I'm  just making up justifications, because it feels better to say I had a transgressive art experience than to say I read a bunch of horrible thoughts and was uncomfortable the whole time. Regardless, this is a book best encountered when you're mentally secure and able to grapple with the unpleasant truths it brings to light, because at its core this book isn't about a haunted house, or a trans woman, or her Pakistani-Jewish ex-friend. Rather, it's about fascism: how it perpetuates itself and what's necessary to defeat it. As I was reading, I was strongly reminded of some of Contrapoints's darker, bad-trip youtube videos. It had that same juxtaposition of ugly darkness with laugh-so-you-don't-drink-yourself-to-sleep-tonight stabs of humor. It's certainly not going to be to everybody's tastes.

The only thing I would highlight as a true negative is that I had a difficult time following the narration at times. It got better as I got used to the author's style, but in the early chapters I'd often find myself confused when the narration would step outside of Ila's(or Alice's) mind and start narrating omnipresently, or from the point of view of another character. But by the time I got to the middle of the book I'd gotten used to it, and didn't have much of a problem with it anymore.
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