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A review by cassidyserhienko
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow
5.0
This book is essential reading. Even if you closely followed the Harvey Weinstein story as it broke and Ronan Farrow’s own reporting you do not know the whole story. Catch and Kill is at once enraging, sad, and inspiring. Enraging and sad because of the viciousness and entitlement of men like Weinstein and Lauer, the culture of silence they created, and the apathy or dismissal from those who allowed or helped it happen. Inspiring because of the courage, resilience, and compassion of women, the support of their families and partners, and the dedication of reporters like Farrow who tread on despite the immense roadblocks placed in their path by predators and the ones who cover for them.
They aren’t lying when they say that Catch and Kill reads like a spy novel. For the majority of us who do not live in a world where private investigators are hired to follow, intimidate, and manipulate our supposed enemies, the measures that Weinstein and those around him went to to protect decades of systematic predation and abuse is shocking and alarming. Farrow does not need to be a master storyteller to keep you riveted and invested, though he is. He knows exactly how to interject his own voice, humour, struggles, and concerns and then fade away to let the women he worked with tell their own stories and claim their own space.
It would be hard to describe this book as hopeful, even though it ends with the exposure and downfall of criminals and predators. Catch and Kill exposes how power and access often allow corruption to build and build and build until it seems colossal and untouchable. But it also shows how the voices of women, helped by a reporter like Farrow, can break it until it all comes crumbling down.
“In the end, the courage of women can’t be stamped out. And stories — the big ones, the true ones — can be caught but never killed.”
They aren’t lying when they say that Catch and Kill reads like a spy novel. For the majority of us who do not live in a world where private investigators are hired to follow, intimidate, and manipulate our supposed enemies, the measures that Weinstein and those around him went to to protect decades of systematic predation and abuse is shocking and alarming. Farrow does not need to be a master storyteller to keep you riveted and invested, though he is. He knows exactly how to interject his own voice, humour, struggles, and concerns and then fade away to let the women he worked with tell their own stories and claim their own space.
It would be hard to describe this book as hopeful, even though it ends with the exposure and downfall of criminals and predators. Catch and Kill exposes how power and access often allow corruption to build and build and build until it seems colossal and untouchable. But it also shows how the voices of women, helped by a reporter like Farrow, can break it until it all comes crumbling down.
“In the end, the courage of women can’t be stamped out. And stories — the big ones, the true ones — can be caught but never killed.”