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A review by breadcrust
Oola by Brittany Newell
2.0
The problem with this genre of novels that try so hard to be cutting edge is that they want to say so much that they just end up saying nothing at all. After sitting back and going over everything I just took in, the only main themes I could pull were the authors obsession with "kink" in the form of pedophilia, constantly referenced and exalted. This coupled along with the fact that this story doesn't really feel like a man obsessed with a woman at all, but rather the author's obsession with herself, or rather her personal relation to her own womanhood, made that all the more distressing for me. At first I rolled my eyes at its constant pretension and desire to shock and titillate as much as possible with the easiest route ever of sex crimes and bad sex and teen sex and blah blah blah. It even fell victim to what is apparently par for the course now of getting a graphically described rape out the way in the first third of the book, and of course the women in these books (in the case of this one a child) are unfazed by this. She welcomes it, laughs in its face, dares it to challenge her. She will proclaim it's not real/women secretly want it because she is a Cool Girl who Hates Herself and is Artsy. Unlike other women who only begrudgingly let themselves be put in the position of defilement, this ultramodern educated woman offers herself up happily. She intellectualizes it because she's different, duh! This is essentially the basis of the entire atmosphere of the book. Man becomes obsessed with the aesthetic of the chosen woman, therefore missing out on the actual her in favor of the idea she encapsulates. Tale as old as time. This makes me sad because this style of story cropping up over the years has made me really wish for a true from-the-heart vulnerably honest look at the relationships between love, obsession, and desire. The word love is thrown around often in this book but you never really feel it between people, everything is burdened by sex and visuals and being pleasingly dirty.
If anything this felt like a disturbing self-insert that could've just been long form tumblr posts over the course of a few months. "You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur". Excessive in the first half, interesting in the middle, with a weird pitter out in some other direction for the end. I quite liked a few pieces here and there, when she was just observing/commenting on the state of existing as a woman, or just simply thinking out loud. Those struck me the most and I felt like it was then that I could truly see the artistic intention here. Oola is interesting when she is allowed to be a person outside of a "sexpot" or whatever other terms we're decorating her with in a given passage. I'm not mad at all I read this one but I wish there was just a little something more to it
If anything this felt like a disturbing self-insert that could've just been long form tumblr posts over the course of a few months. "You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur". Excessive in the first half, interesting in the middle, with a weird pitter out in some other direction for the end. I quite liked a few pieces here and there, when she was just observing/commenting on the state of existing as a woman, or just simply thinking out loud. Those struck me the most and I felt like it was then that I could truly see the artistic intention here. Oola is interesting when she is allowed to be a person outside of a "sexpot" or whatever other terms we're decorating her with in a given passage. I'm not mad at all I read this one but I wish there was just a little something more to it