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A review by _inge
Holding by Graham Norton
Did not finish book. Stopped at 39%.
I absolutely hate this book. Slightly spoilery review but I wish I’d known about this before reading.
Initially I was just bored. This book is all ‘tell’ instead of ‘show’. There’s so many characters introduced in quick succession who all feel very similar, and from everyone we get a third person view about their present and past life. It got confusing very quickly, but I mostly found myself just not caring about anyone. Why should I care about someone’s past if I barely got to know them in the present? It also features some heavily men write women segments, women are judged for being feminine in this (???) and men usually stare at their butts. It’s also weirdly fatphobic, literally calling a fat officer a ‘mount of flesh’ and constantly commenting about his huge breakfasts. The mystery wasn’t there either, but some character descriptions were quite funny so I kept on reading anyway.
I read until page 118, shortly after the first sex scene. Officer PJ is attracted to seemingly every woman he meets, and all we know from those women is that they’re supposedly lonely and worthless without a man. All they do is sit inside the house all day, drinking too much, and being miserable on their own. So obviously they need a man to fix that /s. We are told these women are attracted to him but we have genuinely got no clue why, besides the fact they’re supposedly lonely and in need of a man. They’ve got no connection whatsoever and these women don’t necessarily find him attractive either. They’re basically being portrayed as woman who will gladly get with any man because they simply can’t live without one.
The officer thinks every woman is in love with him too. In the first sex scene a woman is emotionally vulnerable and the officer then decides they might as well have sex. In another moment a woman bakes him a loaf of bread and he literally wonders if she fancies him too:
‘Was it possible that he, PJ Collins, at the age of fifty-three and for the first time in his life, had not one, but two women who were interested in him? He gently squeezed the bread. Still warm.’
I then quickly skimmed the rest. Turns out I hadn’t even reached the worst. From page 221 there’s a very graphic rape scene which serves no purpose (why describe how someone was raped in detail??) and is absolutely disgusting. At this point I threw this book away from me so I won’t know who the killer is, but I genuinely don’t care.
Initially I was just bored. This book is all ‘tell’ instead of ‘show’. There’s so many characters introduced in quick succession who all feel very similar, and from everyone we get a third person view about their present and past life. It got confusing very quickly, but I mostly found myself just not caring about anyone. Why should I care about someone’s past if I barely got to know them in the present? It also features some heavily men write women segments, women are judged for being feminine in this (???) and men usually stare at their butts. It’s also weirdly fatphobic, literally calling a fat officer a ‘mount of flesh’ and constantly commenting about his huge breakfasts. The mystery wasn’t there either, but some character descriptions were quite funny so I kept on reading anyway.
I read until page 118, shortly after the first sex scene. Officer PJ is attracted to seemingly every woman he meets, and all we know from those women is that they’re supposedly lonely and worthless without a man. All they do is sit inside the house all day, drinking too much, and being miserable on their own. So obviously they need a man to fix that /s. We are told these women are attracted to him but we have genuinely got no clue why, besides the fact they’re supposedly lonely and in need of a man. They’ve got no connection whatsoever and these women don’t necessarily find him attractive either. They’re basically being portrayed as woman who will gladly get with any man because they simply can’t live without one.
The officer thinks every woman is in love with him too. In the first sex scene a woman is emotionally vulnerable and the officer then decides they might as well have sex. In another moment a woman bakes him a loaf of bread and he literally wonders if she fancies him too:
‘Was it possible that he, PJ Collins, at the age of fifty-three and for the first time in his life, had not one, but two women who were interested in him? He gently squeezed the bread. Still warm.’
I then quickly skimmed the rest. Turns out I hadn’t even reached the worst. From page 221 there’s a very graphic rape scene which serves no purpose (why describe how someone was raped in detail??) and is absolutely disgusting. At this point I threw this book away from me so I won’t know who the killer is, but I genuinely don’t care.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia, Rape, and Sexism
Minor: Death