Trigger warnings: rape, child sexual abuse, genocide.
ETA: Having reflected on this for 24 hours now, I think that extra half star was pretty fucking generous. This book was terrible. 0/10, would not recommend.
Original review:
1.5 stars.
So one of my colleagues asked me a few days ago if I wanted to borrow this. I was dubious based on the title and the blurb, but she assured me that it was quite funny, so I figured I'd give it a go.
I don't know what book she read, but it sure as shit wasn't the one I read.
The title and cover art implies something very specific. The blurb says that it's a black comedy about revenge. Instead what I got was the story of one woman's life and the huge amounts of sex that she had.
This is one of those situations where you're reading a book with a female protagonist and you can just TELL that the author is a dude. You can just TELL. Because this book could have been so much better than it was. I mean, in the course of the story, Rose survives the Armenian genocide, several very abusive situations, World War II, the death of her husband and children in the Holocaust, and Maoist China. So if it HAD been a book where this woman revenge plots her way through 20th century history, it could have been INCREDIBLE. (And honestly, her survival during some of the most brutal events of the 20th century is what gained it that extra half star. But it was a close call.)
Instead, we're treated to baffling amounts of description of her sex life, and then "Oh no, my husband and kids are dead. BUT THEN I HAD MORE SEX SO IT'S OKAY." Like...????
Add in the fact that Rose is a rape survivor and a survivor of child sexual abuse but IT'S LITERALLY NEVER REFERRED TO AS THAT, and I was full of rage towards this book. She's eight when she survives the Armenian genocide. She only survives because a grown-ass man in a position of power thinks she's beautiful and takes her home where she's made to perform oral sex on him and call him "master".
When she's ten or eleven, he tires of her and sells her on to another old fat dude who repeatedly rapes her while they're travelling from Turkey to France. And then, years later in Nazi Germany, she's pushed up against a wall and raped by one of Himmler's troops and ends up pregnant.
But there's WAY more sex in it than that. She tells us that over 13 years, her second husband gave her 4000-and-something orgasms. Like, she wrote them all down and added them up during their marriage. She repeatedly cheats on her first husband with a random restaurant patron. She spends half her 20s fucking her first husband like a rabbit in heat. She has the best sex of her life with a gay man and spends the rest of her life trying to seduce gay men in an attempt to replicate that sex. And then after her second husband dies, she's all "I was too old to find a man by then, so I just turned to masturbation instead. Then I decided I may as well try fucking a woman. I mean, why not?"
Okay, but like...WHERE IS THE PLOT??? And where the fuck was her character?! She had basically no personality other than being horny 24/7 and occasionally disguising herself as a boy to murder people who've wronged her.
Oh, and there's a touch of magical realism in that she has a pet salamander that talks to her. Not even kidding. I still don't know what the point of it was.
So we had all of that shit. And then we added in a disturbing level of almost hero worship towards the worst of the worst in the Nazi party and in Maoist China. She ends up working for Himmler and they're totally having an emotional affair that's only not consummated because she ends up pregnant from the rape. It's a frightening amount of humanisation towards Himmler, towards Hitler, towards Mao.
Rose provides them with herbal medicine to cure their aches and pains. She cooks their favourite meals and encourages them to become vegetarians. She cares for them and about them. And frankly, that's pretty fucked up. Especially for a woman whose husband dies in a concentration camp.
Trigger warnings for rape, antisemitism, paedophilia, child abuse, genocide, abortion attempts, and just flat out murdering animals. If someone can explain to me why I bothered to finish this shit, I would greatly appreciate it.