imnotsusan
1/9/2021
This book should not be on "best books" lists. The concept was ambitious and the writing itself was fine. But the characters weren't appealing and the plot felt little more than a collection of vignettes tied together by a sort of MacGuffin. Even more unforgivably, what little momentum the plot did have was apparently building up to a really atrocious "twist" about the main character, Frank.
*spoiler*
Surprise! Frank, the lonely, woman-hating, animal-torturing, homicidal, mentally ill teenager who'd supposedly been accidentally castrated as a baby, is actually a biological female who has been raised as a boy by his dad for some reason that is never really explained. (Sorry, having the dad - who feels barely present in the book - drunkenly mumbling, "It was a science experiment" doesn't really provide a satisfactory explanation.) This revelation is not only out of left field in an already jumbled plot, Frank's transgender status (of which, he'd been previously unaware) is arguably being presented as the reason why he murdered three family members. While I doubt Banks intended this to be transphobic, this book just feels like another entry in the cliched literature/film sub-sub-genre of "homicidal transgender characters" along with The Silence of the Lambs, Sleepaway Camp, or (God help me) Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. I understand this book was written in the dark ages of the 1980's. But there is a point at which we have to acknowledge that some ideas do not age well, and should be quietly retired - especially because no one needs to read *this* book in particular.
There are better versions of this book out there. Before I read it, I'd seen it described as a violent book, a black comedy, and a feminist text. This book really isn't that violent; while the animal cruelty is somewhat graphic, the human murder scenes are mostly bloodless and almost whimsical, as though Banks was channeling a less-charming Roald Dahl or Lemony Snicket. While reviews claimed this book was funny, I could only picture Frank as a mouth-breathing bore and the "wit" was sporadic at best. If you want to read a hyper-violent novel featuring a charismatic, psychopathic narrator, read A Clockwork Orange or American Psycho; if you want to read an actually-comedic "black comedy" read Slaughterhouse Five or (again!) A Clockwork Orange. If you want to read a feminist text, read a book about the social construction of gender that doesn't rely on transphobia to make its point. And even better - read a book written by a woman-identified and/or transgender writer, such as Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, or Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater. Don't waste your time on this one - and don't continue to support books that so casually and ignorantly maligns a marginalized community.