A review by lanidon
Mary: An Awakening of Terror by Nat Cassidy

5.0

I feel like so much is going on in this book I need to read it again to fully appreciate it. I love a woman protagonist who is full of rage forced inside her by society just absolutely letting loose. The writing is really beautiful, often in a grotesque way. It tells this story in so uniquely. It's somehow a story about sexism through the lens of a man who does not shy away from his own culpability in this system.

It has the most beautiful afterword I've ever read, which is not something I'd expect to say in my life. I've often said "if you need an afterword to explain what you were trying to do with a work, you didn't write it week enough in the first place" but that is not the case here. Cassidy was able to construct a story that completely spoke for itself and then delivered a moving monologue about creating passion and compassion in equal measure. 

"We've got to own up to those poisons within us if we're ever going to change things" is a line that's going to stick with me and that's not even in the actual novel portion, which itself has so many killer lines. I plan to reread and annotate it, when I do I'll update this review with more quotes

I can't wait to see what else this author does when he puts this much care and ardor into his first original book