A review by ridgewaygirl
Red Pill by Hari Kunzru

4.0

The narrator of Red Pill is married with a small child and while his wife works as a lawyer, he's at home, caring for his daughter and finding himself unable to write. When he gets a three-month residency at a German center, he and his wife agree that he should take it and that he should return less angry. It doesn't work out that way. Wannsee, a lake community outside of Berlin, is gray and grim in the winter. It's also the site of the infamous Wannsee Conference, and the presence of that house across the lake weighs on him, as does a nearby monument erected in the memory of a histrionic and angry romantic poet who committed suicide on that spot. The narrator is upset that the center has rules and expectations and that his individuality as an American is not given the right amount of deference. He dislikes his fellow residents, it's not going well, he's not writing, the center is not inclined to let him stay, but he also feels like he can't go home.

Hari Kunzru has written a novel with an absolutely unlikeable character who always makes the worst choice possible as he cycles into angry despair, and yet this was a book I raced through. Kunzru can write and while I didn't want to spend time with the narrator, especially as he reacted to his brushes with white supremacists, I didn't want to put this book down and not see what would happen next. Kunzru wrote especially well about Berlin in the winter and how the dark, gray days take a toll on one's spirits.