Man Hating Psycho: Stories

by Iphgenia Baal

Twelve darkly funny stories about the humiliations of our screen-obsessed, politically fraught era by one of the UK's mouthiest writersIn Man Hating Psycho, Iphgenia Baal deftly identifies the unexpected humor, absurdism, and surreality of online encounters, demonstrating how the indifferent depravity that rules the internet has spilled over into our everyday, face-to-face interactions. In these stories, set among the uncertainty of post-Brexit London, the horror of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, and the confusion of the Covid-19 pandemic, young people stage rooftop confessions, group shows, and bowling-alley brawls, fumbling toward a hazy sense of self-knowledge in a world growing increasingly unfamiliar. 

These stories meander like late-night conversations toward moments of unexpected vulnerability and depravity. In “Pain in the Neck,” a woman’s misguided act of generosity toward an old friend leads to one of the worst nights of her life. A group of teenagers in “Pro Life” disintegrates over a shocking secret that proves their inability to see one another clearly. And in “Crazy Menu,” a dissolute stag party at a Ukrainian strip club unravels into an absurd spectacle of lust and excess. Provocative, hilarious, and startlingly original, this collection distinguishes Baal as one of the most resolute and daring voices in contemporary literature.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary

264 pages, Paperback

First published April 22, 2021

Reviews

[Janie · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is no man hating psycho in this book. The stories are about social media, uneasy relationships, difficult periods of youth, race, and underlying truths. While the stories were mostly palatable, I did find many of them to be a bit tedious.

3.5 *

[Blair]

Biting short stories of life in London: dating, protests, house parties, art and writing; missed connections and failed relationships. A bit like Boy Parts in that it’s really good at depicting what it sets out to depict, really good at portraying characters and cultural scenes but my god, I am SO fucking glad I don’t know any of these people. Highlights are the opening story, ‘Change :)’, in which a WhatsApp group quickly descends into chaos; ‘Pain in the Neck’, the hilarious tale of a gathering gone wrong and an unfortunate injury (loved the narrator’s switches from rage to resignation and back again); and ‘Pro Life’, about a group of 90s teenagers being awful, as teenagers are.

I received an advance review copy of Man Hating Psycho from the publisher, Influx Press.

TinyLetter | Linktree

[Don Jimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a chapter of this a day. I was very excited about this based on some tweets I had seen about this book, and the author. While it started out brilliantly I thought it faded away in the last few stories. At least some of these stories are fictional but some of them may be true... not sure. Certainly this is a love letter to London - one story in particular which highlights Grenfell makes that perfectly clear. Definitely an interesting read, but not sure who I would recommend it to...

[Ricardo Motti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great short story collection. Can't believe this book isn't more famous.

[Dave Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Iphgenia Baal doesn't care what I think. I feel like that's important to state right off the bat here. She'll probably never see this review, and if she does, she'd probably just laugh and call me a twat for bothering to write it. But in, like, a funny/mean way. Not a mean/mean way (at least I hope not). And I, in turn, would take that response as a compliment. Because she's awesome, and reading her scathing, off-kilter, and often hilarious Man Hating Psycho has made me care a little bit less about what other people think too.

(Though knowing that she read this would absolutely make my week).

Anyway. Sorry. Enough of all that. About the actual book, which is a collection of short pieces (and one fantastic longer one) that draw heavily on the author's own life as a down-and-out writer, activist, and inveterate shit-stirrer in and around post-millennial London. While there are a handful of stories that tinker playfully with structure and form (the opening chapter is a 30-page group text, for example), the bulk of Baal's work here feels firmly in the realm of autofiction. And what's more, as she messily blurs the lines between conjecture and memory, past and present, online life and real life, her book takes up the mantle of a broader investigation into what it even means to write autofiction in an age when we're all doing it to a degree - editing ourselves, displaying our lives, writing our stories - via text and social media every day.

In contrast with, and perhaps even in direct opposition to our society's current, curatorial bent, these stories are far too nimble and unfettered to feel anything but (mostly) real. Issues of sexism, racism, and especially classism, float atop the surface of Man Hating Psycho like dropped-anchor dreadnoughts, but beneath their looming shadows Baal's prose flows like a bitch session at an underground pub with your raddest friend (you know the one). If you want a point of comparison, maybe down a bottle of wine, watch half an episode of I May Destroy You with no intention of ever finishing it, and then go drive around until you find a fun reason to get yourself arrested. For much like that ill-advised proposition, this is a book wholly uninterested in tidy endings, and one whose tales have a way of dipping out at a moment's notice without providing anything so polite as climax or closure or even a cursory ttyl. Instead, Baal fearlessly leaves you to draw your own conclusions (and pay the tab), but if you're like me, you'll feel more than happy to do so, likely chuckling to yourself as you hand over your last few quid and bask in the glory of having gotten to spend some time with a true original.

[Bart Van Overmeire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the second short story collection from Influx Press I read in August, after Gemma Seltzer's brilliant 'Ways of Living'. I hadn't heard of either author before I picked them up in my local bookstore, but my local bookstore doesn't disappoint. Don't be scared by the title, this collection is hilarious, but nothing like I've ever read before (Whatsapp group chats about left-wing politics, ...). I'll be keeping an eye out for more Influx Press.

[Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is why I subscribe to Influx. Fantastic, innovative contemporary writing.

[Zoye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ik vind het moeilijk om een review te schrijven omdat het de schrijver duidelijk niet echt uitmaakt wat je denkt, wat tegelijk goeie en slechte gevolgen heeft. Sommige kortverhalen waren interessant en kregen me mee, vooral de algemene ondertoon van liefde voor Londen was een mooi aspect, maar soms verloor ik echt mijn aandacht en hoopte ik gewoon dat het einde sneller kwam... het eindigt wel mooi met een mooie verwoording van haar transitie van lastige puber naar geïnteresseerde jongvolwassene en de zoektocht naar haar afkomst/appreciatie voor haar voorouders/vraag of die appreciatie geen egoïstisch gegeven is.

bon ik weet dus echt niet goed wat ik moet denken, maar ik denk niet dat ik dit zou aanraden (denk ik)

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wild, whip-smart whooshing prose, sardonic and unhinged, withering slapdowns of the Instagram age and the self-interested London hipster set.

[Golnoosh Nour · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a shameless collection of short stories, and I cannot recommend it enough; why yes, I mean ‘shameless’ as a compliment. This book is unapologetic, dark, daring, yet extremely funny. If you’re a Londoner and/ or interested in London & how it affects its denizens, you’ll find so much (sickly) truth in this book… These innovative short stories cover a wide range of characters & dilemmas, from transactional friendships & political rage to toxic lovers to creepy dysfunctional activists et cetera. I esp love the opening piece & I Just Want to Pull Down Your Panties And Fuck You. But really all the 11 stories are a treat to read. I recommend this book highly.

[Stephanieeee.R · Rating 2 out of 5]

That’s what I get for buying a book because I liked the cover smh. This one feels like being stuck talking to the most annoying person at some terrible squat rave omg I avoid hackney wick for a REASON

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first few stories were pleasantly bizarre but without much overall cohesion. The English nerd in me enjoyed the Middle English poetry. But what really captured my interest were the (I assume, based on limited info) semi-autobiographical stories beginning with “Victim Blaming”. Through a cool, thoughtful lens, the narrator reflects on intense emotions, wild youthful experiences, and intersections of family/race/love/friendship.

[Jason Pollard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, this was [Full opinion redacted in order to encourage those who want to hear my full opinion to attend the first meeting of BREVITY, my short story collection book club, at First Light Books, Monday Jan. 26 @7pm]!

[Connor Girvan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 / 5 stars

[Siobhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man Hating Psycho is a collection of short stories that in many ways are the anti-short story, or at least anti-something. From a Labour activist group chat gone wrong to a take on an apparently "'inverted' psychogeography', the thirteen texts look at modern London, technology, relationships, and people trying to be subversive.

The chaotic cover and blurb drew me into the collection, despite being someone who doesn't always gravitate towards short story collections unless they're doing something a bit different or telling a wider story. I'd say in some ways Man Hating Psycho fulfils both of these categories, with stories that feel like a fresh take on the form and an overarching sense that it's saying something biting about modern life and London. It certainly kept me gripped throughout, never sure what the next piece might bring, and enjoying the fact most of the stories didn't end with a clever conclusion, as it feels a lot of short stories have to, but something more like a freeze frame or fade out.

The first piece, 'Change :)', is an ideal opener, a story in group chat form that depicts a modern political moment and an amusing technological fail. Other stories that stood out to me personally were 'Pro Life', a slice of teenage life going off the rails, and 'Married to the Streets', the previously mentioned take on psychogeography and changing London. One or two of the others were a bit long and meandering for my tastes, but I enjoyed the narrative voices and style throughout, and the little cutting barbs directed at various topics.

For fans of short stories and also people who are more ambivalent towards the form but want to try something different, Man Hating Psycho is a gleefully spiky collection that shows the mostly downs of modern London.

[Sérgio Serra · Rating 5 out of 5]

My rating is very personal.
Man Hating Psycho gave me nostalgia for a life I haven't lived. I've always felt that my adolescence arrived late, and this book gave me a possible explanation.
Like the author (considering these stories are autobiographical), I have thrusted myself headlong into one of Europe's history-soaked capitals. Lisbon was the hole I fell into, while Iphgenia's was London.
London is a city I've always looked forward to visiting. As a friend of mine said, jokingly, "you don't visit London, you visit (pause for thought) eight Londons. yeah, eight of them". That mental calculation must be off but I've lived here at least long enough to recognise the several Londons she was thinking of: the chi-chi London, the suburbanite London, the dirty London, the touristy London, the multicultural London, the raw, art-is-in-your-face-and-all-over-the-place London, the let's-just-chill-and-look-at-the-Thames London, the serious business London...
There are several Lisbons as well, but they are extremely close together. Close enough to simply be personality traits instead of the schizophrenia London presents when you simply move from one neighbourhood to the other. There's an obvious clash happening in London. You have to be on your toes to adapt to your surroundings. While in Lisbon you just smile at the changes and treat it like someone with mild Tourette's.
So of course my adolescence was gentle, late. I'm a white male in a city that has held me softly, accepting me along the way. There were no big clashes.
The author's London seemed much rougher and uncaring - although extremely attractive -, a quick growth fertiliser.
Activism is much stronger in London because you really feel a part of the vaster world out there. In the ass of Europe, activism in Portugal (before the americanisation of our worries) was focused solely on our problems. That's also a cause for my stunted mental growth.
One thing which I believe she has in her favour is the differences time has made in our cities. A change in London may go unnoticed, or be noticed only to the people local to a certain neighbourhood that are directly affected by it. A small change in Lisbon destroys whole swats of my childhood. Tourism in London is concentrated in the usual spots, while in Lisbon it is spread out almost uniformly. Some years ago, the last time I visited Lisbon, I stood on one of its streets, with what seemed like thousands of faces around me, and the only Portuguese came from a radio somewhere that was playing Fado. I felt bellic. Spurred by the radio to launch myself at the invading horde. Instead, I left again. I can't wait to come back, but I'm now aware of the layers of foundation that have been applied to its face. I'll visit it like I visited London or other European cities in the past before I lived in them: as a stranger.
So yeah, hard to be nostalgic and grow out of my adolescence when there's nothing physical for me to reminisce about.
What a stupid rant.
About the book: nice stories that have resonated with me, maybe too much. Can't really recommend it due to this personal effect. If you feel like me and like to experience someone else's life story through a strong psychogeographical link between the author and London, go for it. If, like me, you live in the surroundings described by the author, go for it. If you live abroad and receive every bad piece of news of your home city as a cancerous growth inside you, go for it. There's a lot to like, there's a lot to hate. I, personally, liked it a lot.

[Mattie]

Picked this up with absolutely no knowledge of what it was in my local library. Considering I live in a small town in Northumberland which I would say is roughly 95% white, I feel like this is a pretty cool acquisition by whoever is in charge of their catalogue, so props to them.

I found this somewhat difficult to categorise, though 'experimental short fiction' seems about right. 'Middle English Bestiary' is very definitely horror, and I found it genuinely disturbing; other stories seem more like straightforward satire or slices of life. It's hard not to read certain stories as memoir, given that her narrator or narrators generally seem to share biographical details with a) one another and b) what little I've found out about Baal. Or is this me being unsophisticated in insisting on a biographical reading? I can only speculate. Baal often plays games with identity and self-reflexivity, like obscuring first names while giving a full address or a surname, or having her character, while copy editing a situationship's manuscript, give him notes on the very tense changes which have already been noticeably used in the story itself (and later, the "character" sits down to write, seemingly, the very story we hold in our hands). On the subject of copy editing, I did notice several typos; maybe some of them are deliberate, but I can't imagine that all of them are.

Though I liked and identified with 'Pain in the Neck', on the whole I found that I liked this more as it went on, with the strongest stories ('Married to the Streets' and 'Victim Blaming', for me) right at the end. There is sometimes a mean-spirited and vaguely phrenological streak in stories like 'Pro Life' and 'Middle English Bestiary', which I found a bit alienating, and there can be a tendency towards insidery-ness (this feels very much aimed at a London readership). I think the strongest image in the whole book is the one at the end of 'Married to the Streets', but other than that, I feel like Baal most excels in capturing the frustrations and anxieties of a badly-planned drunken night with people you realise you can't really trust (in 'Pain in the Neck' and 'I Just Want to Pull Down Your Panties and Fuck You'). God knows I've been there more times than I'd like, and it's rare to see it portrayed so viscerally.

[Lucia Campbell-Reeves · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25

As I seem to always say in every review, this was an interesting book and one that im glad I picked up off of the library shelf, even though I don’t think it’s one I’ll remember much.

Man hating psycho is a collection of 11 short stories all of which (I believe ) are set in London or somewhere in Britain. The stories include a range of predominantly alternative, accentric, poor, young, strange, often anarchist and anti- establishment characters with contradictory racist or misogynist views, many of whom are writers. Most of them are either desperate in some way, have found themself in a strange situation, are interacting with fellow strange people, or all of the above.

The first third of the book was my fave, with the first 21 pages being the fastest 21 pages I’ve ever flipped through as they were formatted like a big (attempted) activism group chat. A man establishes the group chat with loads of people and sends out a message explaining his concept; for him to send out un-biased resources in regard to the upcoming election, and for everyone to share the resources they agree with, to have a ‘more balanced and informed campaign’. Throughout the next 20 pages an estimated 75 people leave the group chat and a few women reply mentioning their encounters with this man years ago that were predatory and creepy. He then accidentally leaves the group chat while attempting to remove everyone else and gets someone else to forward his messages through, defending himself and apologising that they ‘perceived’ his actions to be predatory. It’s dark humour, it’s triggeringly relatable, and it’s peak comedy. ‘Rapey leftists’ was a term used again later in the book, and it’s a niche I enjoyed seeing light shed upon. Overall it was a unique as book, it had some spelling and grammar mistakes but the fun formatting made up for it, and it’s worth a read!

3.5/5

[Nicole C · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5

ok so I bought this for the name and the cover, however the stories really don’t anything to do with the title. This is a pretty artsy out-there collection of short stories about social media, lack of connection, coming of age, and feeling like an outsider all set in a pre-gentrification london.

There is no satisfying conclusion to any story, they just sort of end, so if that’s not your thing, be warned. I am obsessed with her writing style, it’s sooo real and raw, almost feels like a memory. Mostly, if not all, the stories have to be autobiographical

TW: incredibly British

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great stuff here. Short stories about life as a woman in London today (to put it succinctly while also cutting out most of its charm).
The standout for me is the opening story, which conveys the very specific brand of creep that inhabits leftist spaces online and in the world in such a fun and innovative way. Also, 'I want to pull your panties down and fuck you' is a great story, and feels like something Sally Rooney might write if she wasn't too busy being a toff.
Great stuff!

[Mer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a strange short story collection. I found it experimental, but all the stories felt kind of similar. Eventually they just blurred together. I don’t enjoy this very much.

Political views, racism and being black, homelessness appeared in most stories. This also felt very British - there is a big love for London in this . Sadly, no man hating or psycho’s in this, which kind of wasted a fantastic title…

[Rowena Macdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this. A fast furious funny read. Devoured it in a couple of days. Adventures in London bohemia. Although it is short stories they work as a fragmented whole. Would appeal to anyone female (or male) who has lived on the edge in a big city. Or even anyone who hasn't and just wants to experience such a life vicariously.

[hanhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of typos and grammatical errors. Did anyone even edit this?

In terms of the stories, the first three or four were interesting and I enjoyed them, then things became repetitive with the ultra far left rants about the state of things. The short poems/meditations on certain words between the chapters confused me - I am not sure what these were supposed to add to the text. The thing that really annoyed me was all of the spelling and grammar errors. These are embarrassing and depreciate the writing.

Some of the perspectives were very interesting and contradicting. I wish the author had gone a little further in exposing the hypocrisy of the characters more in the writing.

[Agape Amanuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Filled with the kinds of stories that you cant wait to tell people when you make new friends. The best kinds of stories were the narrator isn't the heroine, because sometimes things happen TO you and you just have to experience it. A love letter to London from a very very human narrator.

P.S the new cover (not featured here) is so sick

[Amy Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn’t put this book down due to her unique style, humor, and brilliance. I’m not necessarily a short story reader but I loved 80% or more of the stories, and liked the other 20%. I can’t wait to read more of her stuff. I love the way she puts together sentences.

[Natasha K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up knowing nothing about it, not even that it was a short story collection. Was very impressed, particularly with the last three stories.
Felt the shorter stories a little more difficult to connect with/understand but the rest all hit perfectly.

[Jamie Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up 🌟

[Rob Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply outstanding. Brilliant exploration of modern identity

[Eskay · Rating 5 out of 5]

fucking brilliant.

[Lucy Norie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A series of shorts that made me fall in love with such experimental modern literature and pity heterosexual women in their 20s in London. Really worth anybodies time