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A review by aschwartau
Any Man by Amber Tamblyn
4.0
So many feels with this one.
I feel like I need to address all of the different aspects of this one by one since it's so unlike any other book I've ever read. And I'm still processing.
The Structure and Variety of Style
There's not a whole lot of 'plot' in this book. It's told in sections related to major events and specific characters, though some of the characters overlap multiple sections. Each section is further split into chapters, which vary in form, from diary entries, emails, online chats, newspaper articles, transcripts from radio/tv shows, tweets, inner monologues, poetry.....
Overall, the structure of the book as a whole and the format of each section and chapter worked. It was so unique, that you never knew what the next page would hold. You definitely want to keep turning the page (not just for this reason though).
I will say, though, that I struggle with poetry in general as a written form, so those sections weren't as impactful on me, and I actually kinda skimmed them. :-/ I think they worked where they were used but I don't feel that they were so intrinsic to the moment that I missed anything by skipping them.
The Voices and Characters
Tamblyn is insanely talented at tapping into the minds of her characters and nailing their individual voices. It felt like this was written by multiple people, appropriately. It stopped feeling like fiction because of that. I think the audio book would have been really interesting to listen to for this reason.
The characters were varied, diverse, very realistic. She made them come alive, fully formed people stepped off the pages. Even the secondary characters were vivid and clear in my mind.
The Subject Matter
Oh boy. Where do I even start? This is a book about serial rape victims, and all of the victims are male. It's very much a product of the #metoo movement and a generation of women sick to death of fighting to have their voices heard. And I thought it was an absolutely stroke of genius to flip the gender of the victims, to have all of these men be victimized by a faceless unknowable woman. Because when men are victimized, they are pitied but they are heard. Whereas when women are victimized, they are doubted and shamed.
I'm not stranger to books about rape victims, but for some reason, there was something much more shocking and visceral about having all of the victims be male. I was cringing and physically uncomfortable for much of the novel, in a way that I've not felt when reading about female rape victims, and that made me stop and really ponder the situation for a few moments. WHY would I feel WORSE reading about men being victimized? I realized it was just that because it's such a new, novel concept it still grates on my skin, whereas I'm almost desensitized to stories of female rape victims -- and I don't mean fictional stories. Our news is plastered with these stories, they are commonplace and 'normal' in a way that they should not be. They don't make my skin crawl the way that the stories in this novel did, which is such a bizarre and unsettling fact. Because many of the sections were told in first person, you really get into the heads of the characters, and the tension is palpable. The fear and uncertainty of what happened, and what may happen, was so tangible. The fact that none of them had anything else in common besides their gender made the title and overall message resonate more: you can be old or young, black or white, trans or cis, fat or skinny, gay or straight, and you could be a victim. ANY MAN could be a victim.
And ultimately that comes down to what I think the final chapter(s) want you to think about: that for women walking down the street, getting into elevators, drinking at bars, going to parties, getting into ubers, that our attacker could literally be ANY MAN that we ever interact with. You know that famous quote about a man's worst fear being laughed at, and a woman's worst fear being killed? This story illustrates that point even though it completely flips the lens through which we're looking in order to make that point. The terror and uncertainty that the men in the world of this book feel is what women feel every single day in the current world and have felt for centuries; it's just something that's part of our identity as women and therefore something that might even go unnoticed by women themselves. By having men experience that same fear and resulting trauma, and having men's voices draw attention to the shame, the emotional and physical pain, and the toll those take on you as a human being, should highlight this terrible issue that women have been dealing with as part of being a woman for TOO long.
I hope lots of men read this book. I hope this book encourages dialogue and conversation. This book does not place blame or say that all men are terrible or say that all women are monsters. It's asking readers to empathize with its characters, to place themselves in uncomfortable shoes, and figure out why the story of ANY MAN being raped or tortured or sodomized or assaulted elicits the response that it will, and why the TRUE stories of all of the woman who are raped or tortured or sodomized or assaulted do not elicit the same response. It asks readers to think about difficult things and ask difficult questions. It is not an easy reading experience, but it is an important and worthwhile one.
I feel like I need to address all of the different aspects of this one by one since it's so unlike any other book I've ever read. And I'm still processing.
The Structure and Variety of Style
There's not a whole lot of 'plot' in this book. It's told in sections related to major events and specific characters, though some of the characters overlap multiple sections. Each section is further split into chapters, which vary in form, from diary entries, emails, online chats, newspaper articles, transcripts from radio/tv shows, tweets, inner monologues, poetry.....
Overall, the structure of the book as a whole and the format of each section and chapter worked. It was so unique, that you never knew what the next page would hold. You definitely want to keep turning the page (not just for this reason though).
I will say, though, that I struggle with poetry in general as a written form, so those sections weren't as impactful on me, and I actually kinda skimmed them. :-/ I think they worked where they were used but I don't feel that they were so intrinsic to the moment that I missed anything by skipping them.
The Voices and Characters
Tamblyn is insanely talented at tapping into the minds of her characters and nailing their individual voices. It felt like this was written by multiple people, appropriately. It stopped feeling like fiction because of that. I think the audio book would have been really interesting to listen to for this reason.
The characters were varied, diverse, very realistic. She made them come alive, fully formed people stepped off the pages. Even the secondary characters were vivid and clear in my mind.
The Subject Matter
Oh boy. Where do I even start? This is a book about serial rape victims, and all of the victims are male. It's very much a product of the #metoo movement and a generation of women sick to death of fighting to have their voices heard. And I thought it was an absolutely stroke of genius to flip the gender of the victims, to have all of these men be victimized by a faceless unknowable woman. Because when men are victimized, they are pitied but they are heard. Whereas when women are victimized, they are doubted and shamed.
I'm not stranger to books about rape victims, but for some reason, there was something much more shocking and visceral about having all of the victims be male. I was cringing and physically uncomfortable for much of the novel, in a way that I've not felt when reading about female rape victims, and that made me stop and really ponder the situation for a few moments. WHY would I feel WORSE reading about men being victimized? I realized it was just that because it's such a new, novel concept it still grates on my skin, whereas I'm almost desensitized to stories of female rape victims -- and I don't mean fictional stories. Our news is plastered with these stories, they are commonplace and 'normal' in a way that they should not be. They don't make my skin crawl the way that the stories in this novel did, which is such a bizarre and unsettling fact. Because many of the sections were told in first person, you really get into the heads of the characters, and the tension is palpable. The fear and uncertainty of what happened, and what may happen, was so tangible. The fact that none of them had anything else in common besides their gender made the title and overall message resonate more: you can be old or young, black or white, trans or cis, fat or skinny, gay or straight, and you could be a victim. ANY MAN could be a victim.
And ultimately that comes down to what I think the final chapter(s) want you to think about: that for women walking down the street, getting into elevators, drinking at bars, going to parties, getting into ubers, that our attacker could literally be ANY MAN that we ever interact with. You know that famous quote about a man's worst fear being laughed at, and a woman's worst fear being killed? This story illustrates that point even though it completely flips the lens through which we're looking in order to make that point. The terror and uncertainty that the men in the world of this book feel is what women feel every single day in the current world and have felt for centuries; it's just something that's part of our identity as women and therefore something that might even go unnoticed by women themselves. By having men experience that same fear and resulting trauma, and having men's voices draw attention to the shame, the emotional and physical pain, and the toll those take on you as a human being, should highlight this terrible issue that women have been dealing with as part of being a woman for TOO long.
I hope lots of men read this book. I hope this book encourages dialogue and conversation. This book does not place blame or say that all men are terrible or say that all women are monsters. It's asking readers to empathize with its characters, to place themselves in uncomfortable shoes, and figure out why the story of ANY MAN being raped or tortured or sodomized or assaulted elicits the response that it will, and why the TRUE stories of all of the woman who are raped or tortured or sodomized or assaulted do not elicit the same response. It asks readers to think about difficult things and ask difficult questions. It is not an easy reading experience, but it is an important and worthwhile one.