Afternoon of a Faun

by James Lasdun

"The truth might be hard to bring to light, but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist, because it did exist: fixed in its moment, unalterable, and certainly not a matter of ‘belief.’ "


When an old flame accuses him of sexual assault in her memoir, expat English journalist Marco Rosedale is brought rapidly and inexorably to the brink of ruin. His reputation and livelihood at stake, Marco confides in a close friend, who finds himself caught between the obligations of friendship and an increasingly urgent desire to uncover the truth. This unnamed friend is drawn, magnetized, into the orbit of the woman at the center of the accusation—and finds his position as the safely detached narrator turning into something more dangerous. Soon, the question of his own complicity becomes impossible to avoid.


Set during the months leading up to Donald Trump’s election, with detours into the 1970s, this propulsive novel investigates the very meaning of truth at a time when it feels increasingly malleable. An atmospheric and unsettling drama from a novelist acclaimed as “the literary descendent of Dostoevsky and Patricia Highsmith” (Boston Globe), Afternoon of a Faun combines a sharply observed study of our shifting social mores with a meditation on what makes us believe, or disbelieve, the stories people tell about themselves.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Contemporary, 21st Century, Gender, British Literature

160 pages, Hardcover

First published April 9, 2019

About the author

James Lasdun was born in London and now lives in upstate New York. He has published two novels as well as several collections of short stories and poetry. He has been long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and short-listed for the Los Angeles Times, T. S. Eliot, and Forward prizes in poetry; and he was the winner of the inaugural U.K./BBC Short Story Prize. His nonfiction has been published in Harper’s Magazine, Granta, and the London Review of Books.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

He said...
She said...
Did he?
Didn’t he?
Innocent?
or
Guilty?
Rape?
or
Consensual sex?
“Brazen Denial?
Objective truth vs. subjective?

‘Accusation’ of rape forty years ago raises questions in itself.

Let the investigation begin....

As the reader - we examine all points of view.... along side with our unreliable-narrator.
The no-name-narrator paints forgiveness for Marco... while seeking the truth from Julia.

Suspenseful psychological thriller aspects with a twisty ending.

This short novel was engaging - compelling and provocative....a reminder of Donald Trump’s last days of his presidential campaign and the ‘MeToo’ movement.

Wonder about the title?
“Afternoon of a Faun”?
There’s a poem - a Greek legend about a creature who is half man, and half goat....who awakens to reveal in sensuous memories of forest nymphs.

Meticulously well- written!

[Sinem A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bir oturuşta bitirilebilir bir kitap. Hem dili çok edebi akıcı hem de olaylar merak uyandırıcı.
Bir olay ne zaman taciz/istismar/tecavüz olarak adlandırılır bu soruyu cevaplamak bazen ne kadar da zor. Taraflardan hangisi doğru söylüyor, hangisi bencil, hangisi üzgün, gerçek ne idi sürekli bir muamma içinde neyin ne olduğunu bulmaya çalışmak öyle bir düşünmeye sevk ediyor ki...
Herzaman merak uyandıran tartışılan bir yandan sınırlarının çok net ortaya konduğu sanılan konular üzerinden insanın iç dünyasının tekinsizliği üzerine güzel bir kitap.

[Glenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. However, I can say that it probably won't be on my top reads for 2019 but I do recommend it.

The book opens and introduces Marco Rosedale, a self-centered English man now living in New York City. He had enjoyed some notoriety in the past but was not currently in the mainstream. Next comes a journalist from a national magazine called The Messenger who sent Marco a message through Twitter that he urgently needed to talk with him. From that point forward, “The Ordeal”, as Marco called it, sprouted wings.

It seems that an old girlfriend of Marco's, Julia Gault, was in the process of writing a memoir and Marco was in it. Not in a complimentary manner. While the excerpt strangely painted Marco in a favorable light, at the same time Julia reported that Marco had raped her after a drunken night sometime in the ’70s. The 1970s was a decadent time for Marco and he did admit his morals were loose. Marco admitted knowing Julia but didn’t remember having any meaningful relationship with her.

The narrator of this book, who is never named, is a friend of Marco that is also a transplant from England to New York City. He becomes Marco’s confidante during “The Ordeal".
Julia, it seems of late was down on her luck and needed money. Marco suspected that her motive to report an event that never happened must have been from this need. She had been a media star at one point, but that train had left the station.

The story unfolds from there. There is a girlfriend and a daughter that Marco desperately endeavors to keep “The Ordeal” a secret from. We don't get to really get to know them. Nor do we get to know the daughter's lesbian girlfriend.

I can’t say that I particularly liked any of the characters. Particularly Marco. His friend and confidante served only as the narrator of the story. His personal feelings for "the Ordeal" were mostly neutral.

So that's all I will say. I hate spoilers so I won't reveal anymore. I do recommend it.

You may read this review and others on my new blog:
https://glendareads.com

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this in one sitting. What a fascinating and thrilling piece of fiction, and it couldn’t be more timely. See Kipnis (who blurbs it on the back cover of the galley) in her latest Guardian piece, “A Man Lost His Job For A Rape Joke”. Lasdun is very smart, and this is his best novel yet.

[Kubilay K · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Lasdun, 2013 yılında, eski öğrencisi Afarin Majidi’yi kariyerini “mahveden” geniş kapsamlı bir “stalking” ile suçladığı Give Me Everything You Have’i kaleme alıyor. Hemen ardından Majidi de kendi hikâyesini anlattığı Writing and Madness in a Time of Terror’u kendi imkanları ile yayınlıyor. Atak ve karşı atak ile alevlenen bu yangın, Bir Faunun Öğleden Sonrası’nı doğru bir bağlamda incelemek için elzem bir atmosfer yaratıyor. Gerçek ile kurgunun, anı ile kurmacanın sınırlarının belirsizleştiği atmosferde Lasdun, Bir Faunun Öğleden Sonrası ile tartışmalı bir üst konsept-öte soru(n) yaratıyor: Kendi geçmişinin küllerini yeniden yakıp geçen bir “erkek yazar” #MeToo hikâyesi yazabilir mi?

Bir gözümüzü gerçeğe sabitleyip okumaya devam ettiğimiz romanda Lasdun, bize gençliğinde cesur bir gazeteci olarak nam salmış alabildiğine “beyaz” ve ayrıcalıklı karakter Marco Rosedale’ın uzun yıllar önceki çalışma arkadaşı Julia Gault tarafından retrospektif olarak tecavüz ile "suçlanması"nın hikâyesini anlatıyor. Psikolojik gerilim olarak da nitelendirilebilecek bu hikayede Lasdun, anlatısını isimsiz ve “güvenilmez” bir anlatıcıya emanet ediyor. Mesafeli ve tarafsız olduğunu iddia ederek başladığı yolda ardı arkası gelmeyen çözümsüzlüklerle kendine olan inancını yitiren anlatıcı, bir anlamda romanın diğer -ve aslında asıl- kötüsü olarak şekillenmeye başlıyor. Ve kendinden çok emin şekilde dile getirdiği o sözü ile romanın -ve gerçekliğin- belkemiğini yaratıyor: Hakikatin açığa çıkarılması zor olabilir ama bu var olmadığı anlamına gelmez, kesinlikle bir inanç meselesi ya da Schrödinger’in kedisi değildir. Ve bu inançla ilerlediği yolda içsel sorgulamalar ve “görünüşte objektif” subjektiflikten başka sonuç elde edemeyerek o “eril emin” belkemiğini paramparça ediyor. Gerçeklik, bir grup konsensusu tarafından kabul edilmiş bir sosyal fenomen olarak karşımızda yükselirken “neyin olup olmadığı” meselesi, neredeyse mitik olarak nitelenebilecek bir içe bakıştan öteye gidemiyor.

Mallarme’nin erkek erotizmini sembolize ettiği şiirinden, şiirden doğan Debussy senfonisinden ve ünlü Rus balet Nijinsky’nin unutulmaz performansından aldığı ismiyle Bir Faunun Öğleden Sonrası, devam eden vicdan muhasabeleri ve incelikli tarzı ile hakikat sonrası çağın orta yerinde Trump’tan yükselen turuncu kötü kokulara bulanmış bir “gerçeklik masalı” yaratarak bize gerçekliğin tekelinin imkansızlığını sorgulatıyor. Üzerinde çokça düşünülmesi gereken bir modern zamanlar miti.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novel so wise and observant, so rich and elegantly written, and so disturbing in its implications that the day after I finished it I picked it back up and read it again, just to marinate in it some more.

Calling to mind the compactness of Coetzee's Disgrace, Lasdun offers up a psychological thriller whose central mystery is essentially unanswerable: Did the rakish Marco Rosedale rape his co-worker Julia Gault as she now claims he did 40 years later?

The entire ordeal is communicated to us through an unnamed narrator who is friends with Marco and a long-ago acquaintance of Julia's-- and who apparently bears a not-small resemblance to the author himself, who wrote a memoir some years back about a former student who threatened to destroy his career over an accusation -- whose "scrupulous neutrality" allows him to report almost journalistically to us each party's (legitimate) grievances, making us active participants in sussing out "the truth," in all its elusiveness.

The genius of this novel, which at 164 slim pages wastes not one moment and thus carries great tension all the way through, is how Lasdun (through his narrator) anticipates every #metoo rejoinder we've all internalized and reflexively spit out as if to convince ourselves of our magnanimity, as in this exchange between the narrator and Julia:

"You did go on working with him, though?"

"Yes. I wasn't going to give up my career. Why should I?"

"And you never said anything about it at the time? Never reported it? Not that not reporting it means nothing happened, obviously..."

She gave a grim laugh.

"You have been well trained, haven't you? You men all act like you've come through some sort of Maoist indoctrination program nowadays."

Lasdun saves his final and most damning twist for the final chapter, which not coincidentally takes place the night of the second Trump/Clinton debate (the one where the "ivory-gold colussus" was made to answer for the Access Hollywood tape). The narrator's neutrality is laid bare as the impossible bargain it is. It seems in these "he said, she said" cases, we can't possibly know what truly happened, but to reserve judgment has dire consequences as well. Or, to paraphrase Janet Malcolm in one of her withering treatises on objective truth, "He couldn't have done it and he must have done it."

In all, an unshakable novel that in some ways you only begin thinking about once it's over, and is about as perfect on a sentence level as I've read in some time. My highest recommendation.

[Garrard Conley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent structure/pacing shot through with real ambiguity and nuance. Did not know where this was going. Thrilled to read something that keeps me up at night. Read it all at once.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The power struggle between men and women will likely never go away. David Mamet’s play Oleanna—in the year 1992 – focused on a female student who spoils a tenured university professor from attaining tenure. Now, in the era of #MeToo, James Lasbun takes on the topic of possibly false accusation when a famed English television journalist is accused of a rape from 40 years ago.

James Lasdun may be a perfect author for this topic. His former book, Give Me Everything You Have, is a true story of how his own career was very nearly ruined after his former protégé becomes obsessed with him and accuses him (among other things) of a shadowy rape.

The plot, in a nutshell, is this: an unnamed narrator reports on his friend, Marco, who is about to be accused of a sexual assault in the memoir of a former colleague named Julia, now down on her luck. Marco remembers the encounter as consensual and indeed, has some “proof” that he is remembering correctly. The narrator, who wishes to write about it, is bounced between the two conflicting versions.

The title itself comes from a poem by Mallarme, made into a ballet with Nijinsky. A faun, who wakes from a dream, is not certain whether the remembered encounter is, indeed a dream, or whether it’s something that actually happened. There is a push-pull between male desire and innocence.

And, to add to the intrigue, all of this takes place at a time when a reality-star beleaguered pussy-grabbing candidate is somehow capturing the imagination of the American public. The shaky questions of, “What is an assault? Is there one real version of the truth? How far do we go to discredit another person?” is all at play here.

The reader is, indirectly, asked to weigh in. Where do your sympathies lie – with Marco or Julia or neither? The fact that there is no easy answer may say quite a lot.

[Bonnie Brody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ex-pat journalist Marco Rosedale is living the good life in Manhattan. Out of the blue, he finds out that Julia Gault, a woman he briefly worked with around two decades ago, is publishing her memoir and, in this memoir, is accusing Marco of raping her some 20 years ago. Marco scours his memory and, for the life of him, cannot remember any specific wrongdoing on his part. He does know, however, that if this memoir gets published, his personal and professional lives will come to ruin. He confides the accusation to a friend who strives not only to listen well but to explore on his own what actually happened two decades ago.

Marco is trying to find some rhyme and reason to this sudden attack and he comes up with some ideas but none make complete sense. He and Julia worked together twenty years ago but he recalls that she had a boyfriend. He thinks they may have had a sexual encounter while both of them were 'under the influence' but "it's not clear whether the encounter was what we would call consensual, or even whether it was in fact a dream". Marco wonders if this attack on him is a ploy for Julia to make money via the sensationalist aspect of her memoir.

I think it is very telling that this novel has been published in the midst of the #metoo movement, advocating the empowerment of women to speak up against their sexual oppressors. It asks important questions about what constitutes rape vs. consensual sex and how one could ever know the truth when it is one person's word against another's. Lausdun explores the idea that "the truth might be hard to bring to light, but that didn't mean it didn't exist, because it did exist; fixed in its moment, unalterable, and certainly not a matter of 'belief'". If Marco did have consensual sex with Julia, as opposed to her declaration of his raping her, "was it possible, useful, to look at him, through the lens of the faun, that mythic incarnation of masculine sensuality." Or, is this an old construct, no longer applicable since women have chosen to take control of their bodies and say #metoo.

This novel raises many questions. Are women entitled to make allegations, without proof, that can destroy a man's reputation and livelihood? Are we trying to "recreate a world in which a word, a rumor, an anonymous posting, could once again destroy an entire life. Is the #metoo movement symbolic of mass hysteria, not dissimilar to a witch hunt?"

While I found these questions food for thought, it was hard to be objective throughout the book. Marcus is painted as a victim but he is not an 'innocent'. The days of sexual freedom, during which the alleged attack occurred, are symbolic with the days of male domination. These were the 'good old days' when a rape victim was put on trial for the way she might have dressed or the inopportune behaviors that might have caused her to be overpowered. I think it is wrong to blame feminism for a movement that has been a long time coming just as it is wrong to use this movement as a method of shame and vengeance.

This is the first book I've read by James Lasdun and I found the style somewhat imperious and very British. The philosophical, historical and mythical questions it brings up are not just academic, but important for contemporary writing.

[belisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

ilginç bir kitaptı, özellikle malum dava söz konusuyken...

çok çetrefilli ve çok boyutlu bir konu, iftiranın ve yalanın nerede başladığı, mağduriyetin olay sırasında mağdur ettiği iddia edilene duyurulmasının ne kadar önemli olduğu...

ben böyle hissettim, bana bu yapıldı derken, "peki karşındakinin bundan haberi var mıydı?" diye sormamak "sen kendini ifade ettiğin halde mi durmadı" dememek bana göre büyük haksızlıklara gebe kararlar vermeye neden olur...

mağdur edene mağdur etmemeyi öğretmek kadar, mağdur olana pasif davranmamayı da öğretmek gerek...

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 conflicted stars. 5 for laser-like writing in the vein of Ian McEwan. 5 for the Highsmith worthy press of tension ratcheted by the story's unreliable narrator. 2 for the subject's queasiness, despite the clearly ironic ending, and also for its questionably autofictional component. Which nets to approximately a 4? A compelling read for anyone with #metoo interests.

[Ericka Clou · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's rare that such a well-written book has an ending that practically makes you gasp, but this had that effect on me.

[Wynne • RONAREADS · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is it awkward to say that I'm obsessed with James Lasdun's writing when he's written prolifically about his own experiences (real and fictional) with obsession?

Who cares? I'm obsessed.

I was given a galley of this novel through work and found it to be as smart and layered as all of Lasdun's fiction typically is.
This story follows a nameless narrator, a white, aging English academic whose a new empty nester along with with his wife, Caitlin. He's casual friends with Marcus, a former journalist and TV personality of sorts, his career steadily waning despite being the son of a wealthy English lawyer. Their friendship becomes more intense after Marcus confides to the narrator that he's been accused of rape by a former colleague he had slept with years ago. He had thought the encounter was consensual, and scrabbles to keep the situation under control while the woman's accusations become louder and more damning.

Lasdun's great skill (one of them anyway) is creating unreliable narrators who aren't inebriated in anyway. So many writers make their narrators unreliable through mental illness or substance abuse, but Lasdun recognizes that we are all made unreliable simply by the force of our emotions and perceptions. Did Marcus misread his youthful relationships? Is she just a struggling woman whose career misfortune makes accusing Marcus now a profitable endeavor? Who has the power? Who benefits from pain? All these questions are floating up in the air, painted next to the backdrop of the 2016 election, made even more sinister because we know the outcome of that debacle.

The tension heightens, the blamelessness of our narrator becomes murky. No one is good, no one is bad, everyone is just human, flawed in their own natural ways. Lasdun's text is as it usually is, rich with literary references and nuances lost on all but adults. Is that weird to say that he writes specifically for adults? Maybe, but it seems true. Younger people are capable of reading anything they want, but there is something distinctly adult about Lasdun's work, that I feel would only grow clearer the more life experience I accumulate.

This book is entirely about #MeToo, but it isn't pop culture-y in any way. It's studied and tense and encapsulates all the grey areas of those issues in a way that will still leave you stunned. Bummed, no doubt, but stunned.

[Colin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written from a disinterested narrator’s POV, two men try to understand the #metoo movement after a decades old rape allegation surfaces. The final scene was too obvious and spoiled some of the poetry of the writing. Maybe men shouldn’t be the only voices guiding the narrative during these conversations.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid, workmanlike. It doesn't age well, even though it came out in 2019.

[Constance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unputdiwnable!

[Kenton Yee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novella didn’t work for me. The persona narrator was distant and cerebral, like Gatsby’s Nick Carraway, but in contrast to Gatsby, Afternoon of a Faun lacked the bigger-than-life Gatsby character and the musical mein of the Roaring 20s. In Afternoon of a Faun, we’re stuck in a fictional law school case study world of a he-said-she-said civil dispute juxtaposed with allusions to “the current situation (of 2016)” and “the (unnamed) Republican candidate”. So what if the ending has a twist? The book did not foreshadow the twist so there was no suspense and nothing at stake that readers could latch onto & care about. I had trouble finishing it. If I wanted to read an editorial rumination about late 20th century sexual mores and 21st century weaponization of the media & legal process, I could watch cable TV or read social media... or unpack my old law school casebooks. This book illustrates how dull fiction is when it substitutes interesting characters, a relatable narrator, and stakes & suspense in favor of passive-aggressive pseudo-intellectual editorializing. I’m disgusted. Lovely words though, which is why I’m giving it 3 rather than 2 stars.
🤭 #Lasdun #novella

[Liz Goodwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

These days, when public discourse seems like so much shouting past each other, the last thing you want to read is a fictionalized he-said/she-said about a #metoo moment. BUT! Not many write as lucidly as Lasdun about how people think, and his narrator - an acquaintance of both the he and the she -recounts what he is told as well as how he processes that information. While we live with the optimism and anxiety caused by a tectonic cultural shift, when masses of received wisdom are breaking up and new standards haven’t quite solidified, it’s crucial to examine not just ideas but the motives and emotions that undergird them. Lasdun’s novella has the plotting and pacing of a thriller, each revelation causing you to reexamine the situation and your own assumptions - even after you finish it! But it’s his sly wit and quietly elegant prose - shot through with images of surprising aptness (he also writes poetry) - that elevate this ripped-from-the-headlines story into a thoroughly satisfying reading experience.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars for the nuanced handling of the phenomenon that has baffled me as much as it has invigorated me: the #MeToo movement. The perceptual gulf is, perhaps, insurmountable between the offender, who was just doing what men did in those days, and the victim, who buries this violation inside her for years.

Is a moment of bad sexual decision making worth bringing up 20 years later? My Gen X comrades might say, “Let a sleeping dog lie.” But generations since see no expiration date for the crime, even if it means the ruin of someone who has since grown up.

I appreciate the complexity and lack of a pat answer to the dilemma, which Lasdun handles adeptly in Afternoon of a Faun.

[Bettie]

“An instant masterpiece that brings the taut psychological precision of a Chekhov story to a hyper-modern, post-#MeToo setting” —Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Observer https://bit.ly/2G3uBYs [sponsored]

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sexual politics are two words that are messy by themselves; together they can cause a nightmare of implications for both parties. In this case, a decades-late accusation is made in the current #MeToo climate against an aging journalist. His male friend narrates the developments and explores the nuances of truth, memory, and ethics. The novel never fails to be insightful, fascinating, and sincere as Lasdun skillfully tightropes where the implied empathies belong. The ending is absolutely stunning, involving a soon-to-be accused President, landing the short novel into solid 4* territory. Somehow Lasdun and his conscientious narrator manage to appease both sides of the controversial spectrum in an artful way despite the heavy male perspective.

[DilekO · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beni düşündüren, tedirgin eden , belli kavramları sorgulatan “gri” kitapları seviyorum, bu da öyle bir roman ; bir nefeste okudum. Kitap biter bitmez ilk yaptığım otobiyografik olup olmadığını araştırmak oldu, o kadar gerçekçi buldum. Yazarın çok hassas bir çizgide başarıyla yürüdüğünü düşünüyorum.

[Francesco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Potente, affilato, letto in una notte. C’è stato davvero uno stupro o è una rivalsa, una ripicca, una vendetta contro la vita di una donna in caduta libera? Un narratore interno alla vicenda ma - forse - equidistante racconta il dipanarsi dei fatti, rievocando fra ricordi e ricostruzioni un episodio avvenuto decenni fa all’ombra dell’elezione di Trump. Un romanzo molto attuale sul peso dei media e il potere delle parole.

[R · Rating 3 out of 5]

258 pages of well thought out sentences that culminate in not saying much at all. I wanted to like this more than I did, but the construction is nice, so I'll leave it at three stars.

[Camille · Rating 4 out of 5]

So compelling that I read it in one sitting. A twisty tale with no clear-cut truths about a man accused of rape decades after the fact.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfect ending.

[Christina McLain · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very, very interesting and timely story of an accusation of sexual misconduct and its effect on both the alleged victim and the accused. The narrator, who remains nameless in the novel, is British as is his charming and likeable friend Marco, a moderately successful journalist of a certain age who is suddenly accused of having committed historical rape by a former colleague Julia, a woman hoping to make one last chance at fame and fortune by publishing memoirs featuring her time as a newswoman in the hedonistic 70s. Marco, who at first appears to be a likeable fellow, decides to launch a ferocious assault on Julia with the help of his father, an ancient but still powerful lawyer and succeeds in preventing her memoirs from being published and in maintaining his reputation. Throughout the novel the narrator has been more or less a stalwart champion of Marco and his innocence, though very very slowly he begins to have niggling doubts about his friend. A fateful meeting with Julia proves to be unsettling, and in a final shocking meeting with Marco, he learns the truth. What makes this story so interesting is the way the author, who himself was accused of rape by a woman in real life, shows us the difficulty of ascertaining the truth about such matters but also, more importantly, imparts some interesting truths about male sexuality, consent and entitlement. What's really clever is the way he ties in the ascent of a certain rough beast of the Republican persuasion with the story. At a party celebrating Marco's reprieve, the guests there, including Marco, are shown watching one of the the 2016 presidential debates and completely underestimating the atavistic appeal of the soon to be president. They are also unaware of the truth about Marco, and perhaps themselves. As an acquaintance of mine once said about 45: he knew us better than we knew ourselves.

[Kim Wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminiscent of Ian McEwan's writing. Description of a "me-too" moment that unfolds in the waning months of 2016, when we are still positive of Donald Trump's status of a clownish reality TV star, never a president.

[Cheryl Penn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly thought-provoking about memory, #metoo, truth, lying, human frailities. This 140-pager has a lot going on. Rarely do I receive this much to think about from such a slim volume. Wow!
And there's the added plus of hearing what the #metoo experience is like from the accused point of view. Highly recommended read.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have conflicted feelings on this book. Insightful, closely observed and well written, it also contains a couple of scenes late in the book that strain credulity. In any event, very thought provoking and intentionally cringe-inducing.