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ash122's review
challenging
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Pedophilia, and Rape
roach's review
challenging
dark
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
O I don't think that [...] I'm a word that anyone should put in his mouth. Would want to put in his mouth. That anyone ever put in his mouth. That anyone spit out in order to slip on it later.
What a strange, strange text this one is.
This weird book with the aggressively vulgar title by award-winning Swiss author and journalist Urs Allemann is a strange literary experiment that's hard to take in, hard to rate, hard to talk about, and all of that kind of feeds right into the point of it.
This book isn't truly about the repulsive titular activity. Rather it's about a narrator trying and failing to imagine said thing which works as an exercise on the power of the written word without real-life actions. It reads to me like an exploration of what language can do to us through a single word. The title is such an abhorrent concept that nothing else is needed to disturb the reader or make them cringe. It's so awful that we don't even want to acknowledge, let alone imagine it. And neither does the narrator, really. He goes on rambling about how he is sentenced to follow the title and spins up an incoherent story in a desperate attempt to convince the reader that what he's saying is true. But he fails miserably because he can't actually fill it with sense or purpose.
The narrator's disgusting ramblings might start out shocking and difficult to read, but become more and more ridiculous as you read on. I had full on belly-laughs while reading some of this because the narrator tries so hard to be vulgar while barely being able to string his insanity together into a coherent story. Urs Allemann creates a literary character that's trying to be relevant but chooses a shortsighted strategy. The narrator's story isn't real. It's all lies. And the reader just watches the narrator stumble through his own language.
The author created a story about storytelling in which we watch the narrator character fail to create something from the awful lie he chose. Where we watch him fail to follow through with his own thought experiment and use the power that the abhorrent titular word has over us to any substantial effect.
Why is the narrator ruminating on this specific subject for so long? Why is he trying to convince the reader all of this nonsense is actually going on when it's clear it's just his limited imagination? Does the narrator want attention? Does the narrator think that a story needs to be shocking to have an effect on the reader?
I think the narrator is trying to prove to himself that he's even capable of intellectually handling such a horrible subject. He's trying to gain power over this word that has a power over him. The fact that the title of this book is so abhorrent and repulsive to virtually everyone shows how much power this written word has over us and the narrator is trying to conquer it. To win over it and use it as a tool, the way words are supposed to work for us. And he continually fails at that.
The way his disconnected ramblings point at how writers and readers process text is pretty clever. At one point the narrator talks about how a stabbed baby would bleed, but stabbed paper, blank or written on, does not. Paper doesn't bleed, no matter the pain. Because what's on the paper isn't real and we, as writers and readers, create its meaning. And yet it can make us feel intensely uncomfortable. It's an allegory for how there is a difference between the act and the word, even if it makes us feel similarly. An allegory for how an idea can be repulsive even if it isn't really happening and how our mind processes those ideas. And that's the whole crux that Allemann's text explores through this.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Pedophilia, and Rape
Moderate: Violence and Vomit
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