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A review by rimamandwee
The Laughter by Sonora Jha
5.0
If you ever have me in a situation where you need someone to rant excessively, keep it interesting, and get controversial (is this a need anyone ever has? maybe in an airport lounge waiting for a flight with some free wine), ask me about Lolita. I’ll stand up. I’ll pull out my notes. I’ll find a microphone. There is no book that has ever fucked me up the way Lolita did, and I think, perhaps, MAYBE it should be required reading (big asterisks around this because maybe it could have some horrible implications, but I also reject the notion that the existence of a book like Lolita could “enable” p*d*ph*l**).
THE POINT IS, The Laughter takes the structure and premise of Lolita, the part that makes it brilliantly fucked up and twisted and thrilling and mind-bending, and flips it into a modern situation in the era of the 2016 election. Dr. Oliver Harding, an aging, white, divorced man and academic, has completely fetishized and become obsessed with his colleague Ruhaba, a Pakistani Muslim hijabi professor of law. It is not a story about the power dynamics around age - it is a story of power dynamics with men who feel entirely and completely entitled to not only sexualize women but call themselves a victim to a woman’s divine femininity. Similar to Lolita, the story in the form of a letter written from Dr. Oliver to law enforcement trying to plead his case (we don’t learn what the case is until the final pages of the book), a perspective we as a reader are responsible for remembering (just like in Lolita, the writing makes it extraordinarily difficult to remember the context). The additional benefit is the author’s searing criticism of academia, which was the perfect context and environment to make this novel so real and touching that I would have believed her, easily, if she said it’s a true story.
An explosive examination of toxic masculinity, misogyny, white rage, racism, and xenophobia, this book is as infuriating and evil as it is brilliant and accurate. I cannot in good faith recommend it if you are a person who prefers to only read happy books. But I also cannot in good faith pretend to understand that kind of lifestyle choice.
THE POINT IS, The Laughter takes the structure and premise of Lolita, the part that makes it brilliantly fucked up and twisted and thrilling and mind-bending, and flips it into a modern situation in the era of the 2016 election. Dr. Oliver Harding, an aging, white, divorced man and academic, has completely fetishized and become obsessed with his colleague Ruhaba, a Pakistani Muslim hijabi professor of law. It is not a story about the power dynamics around age - it is a story of power dynamics with men who feel entirely and completely entitled to not only sexualize women but call themselves a victim to a woman’s divine femininity. Similar to Lolita, the story in the form of a letter written from Dr. Oliver to law enforcement trying to plead his case (we don’t learn what the case is until the final pages of the book), a perspective we as a reader are responsible for remembering (just like in Lolita, the writing makes it extraordinarily difficult to remember the context). The additional benefit is the author’s searing criticism of academia, which was the perfect context and environment to make this novel so real and touching that I would have believed her, easily, if she said it’s a true story.
An explosive examination of toxic masculinity, misogyny, white rage, racism, and xenophobia, this book is as infuriating and evil as it is brilliant and accurate. I cannot in good faith recommend it if you are a person who prefers to only read happy books. But I also cannot in good faith pretend to understand that kind of lifestyle choice.