A review by readingoverbreathing
I Was Dora Suarez: Factory 4 by Derek Raymond

2.0

"Life, people, the places they made for themselves, the traces they leave behind them like the wake fading behind a ship, the earth itself — life is so precious that I fear one day it might blind me, just as it blinded Suarez."

This is by far the most disturbing book I have ever read. I don't know how a human being could even begin to come up with some of the horrific stuff that is in here. I don't even consider myself a squeamish person, especially if something's just in print, but this book genuinely made me nauseous, making this probably the most unpleasant reading experience I've ever had.

I didn't like the way the plot was done, either, as there wasn't so much an investigation as the protagonist and his partner bullying those guys at the club. And honestly, that was really at least a third of the book. They were basically handed a name, and that was how they solved the case; there was no real intrigue, just fragile male egos unable to deal with their own inferiority on either side of the crime.

There were some spurts of well-written passages that saved this book from sinking any lower, but other than that there was nothing to enjoy here, nothing at all redeemable from the graphicness of it all. It's not even that it was particularly violent (although, yes, it still was), as much as it was sexually disturbing. I have no idea how we could have been assigned this book on an academic level, especially with no content warning, but I guess I'll find out in class this week.