fantasynovel 's review for:

Love by Maayan Eitan

4.0

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3.5 stars. A beautiful book that I kind of hate about an Israeli everygirl prostitute named Libby. (Though she is first described as several different races and ethnicities, she turns out to be white. I'm not sure how to write about this exactly. I have many vague thoughts on introducing a white character through an everygirl lens, most of which boil down to, if Libby had been left as a multiethnic everygirl it would have still been a story untouched by the complexity of race and racism. Which is fine, that's not what this author was doing, though the gaze definitely others nonwhite characters.) The prose is gorgeous, and there are a few chapters I'm in love with, including the one where Libby laughs and laughs because she cannot cry, and the chapter at the end with all the men touching her. For the most part, though, this book neatly elides the messiness of trauma, choosing the path of lyrical writing as opposed to pain. This book is not nearly painful enough. What's the point of all this gorgeous writing if none of it actually does the messy work of excavating human emotion?

But I'm still clicking 4 stars because it's beautiful, and because it captures the pulse of objectification, and the way it feels to viewed through the panopticon of male judgment.