Hali

Another book I am incredibly torn on.

The tldr: The quality of writing is good, the execution of the concept not so. Better for its literary devices than for its story.

The long:

• The fantasy

The book, while depicting something that obviously can happen, still shows you the exaggerated mind of a female pedophile in multiple worst case scenarios. Most women that rape young boys will not facilitate the death of family members and drug their husbands non-stop, it's a lot more mundane than that. Celeste is almost a caricature of the average pedophile and for a good reason: While the story's climax is right before the end, the actual end is much more indicative of what this story is talking about. Despite everything, despite the death, the manipulation, the power plays and everything else, the public perceived her as an innocent, mentally ill young woman that had no hand in the happenings of this book. No matter what you do, a pedophile that is a woman will often be perceived as less dangerous than a man, especially when targeting young boys.

• The reality

I still cant tell whether the hypersexualization of everything by Celeste is her being an unreliable narrator or just a setting the author chose for this novel. It gets to a point where it's ridiculous: Everybody seems incredibly oblivious to Celeste, nobody questioning her actions at all and when interacting with other adults, everything is still somehow sexual. It feels like the book both wants to portray a real setting and story and also exaggerate it.

• The plot

This book doesnt have a plot in a classic sense. Celeste becomes a teacher, Celeste grooms and rapes a boy for a year that is narrated, she moves onto another boy, she gets busted. The story is best during that year when there is actual tension. The beginning is drawn out by multiple long scenes of Celeste masturbating and being unhappy with her husband which, in my opinion, didnt need to be established repeatedly. The last parts of the book dont have a big suspenseful ending like in a classic fantastical story; Celeste gets busted, has a trial, gets probation, stays a pedophile. It's painfully realistic and I cant tell whether I like it or not, considering it is quite a letdown after the entire middle part of the book having suspenseful moments.

• The good

The writing is superb, and I really mean that. You sit down and (if you arent already deterred by the contents) the book is smooth like butter and suddenly its three hours later. The author has also put layer upon layer of commentary and meaning into this book, whether it is the emphasis on youth ("a male, but not yet a man"), the absurdity of Celeste's inner workings, the obsession she goes about it all, the reactions to her actions, and so on.

• The bad

Especially in the first third of the book its really hard not to be annoyed. Every second scene is masturbation or drugs. Same applies to the end. I wont knock how explicit the book is because I feel like it did add to it, the erotica in this book being very clinical too, but I really feel like they were overwritten sometimes. My eyes sometimes just skimmed them instinctively. Alongside the plot just not being that good the end result is a book that just isnt that good.

• The stereotype

This book follows a pattern I have seen in books by creative writing professors and teachers within this genre. They strive to tell real stories with a level of satire but while the writing and messaging is great, the book ends up being just mediocre. They're great places to explore power dynamics and taboo themes but end up falling short on the novel side of things. Great experiences that I wont repeat because the messaging stays with me while the novel isnt worth rereading in my eyes.

• The summary

Its a superb piece of commentary and a really mediocre book.

The more I read this series, the less I like the English translation. This volume's en tl seems a bit better and clearer tho so yay! Fun volume, a lot of things happened in it.

compared to the LN, this really sucks

A lot of fun, although the translation tripped me up sometimes. I understand however this might just be how the JP author's style translates into English, no blame game. Either way Im gonna have to reread a lot and read the manga to actually understand what happened at some points...

I cant give it a full five stars, even if I feel compelled to do so. Critique sandwich:

The Good: Honestly a GREAT book. A journalistic venture by a woman into the world of women in Islamic Arabic-speaking countries written with a lot of empathy and the perfect mix between personal experience and explanation of facts. It holds a lot of knowledge on the Happenings of the 80s, having mostly been written during them, and contains references to events we can nowadays barely find traces of online, even if they were really important to the people and especially women at the time. There's so many little nice parts about the book I'd write a whole essay if I listed them all :P

The Bad: I REALLy, really appreciated a lot of the context and background knowledge the author gave. That's exactly why (as both a major in arab & islamic studies and a big leftie) I have to point out that some of her context is a bit... off. It doesnt reek of atheism, and overall, the author has a really good understanding of Islam and especially the people she met following it. I also dont know exactly HOW prevalent some discourses were at the time she wrote this book, considering a lot of the countries she visited didnt allow for a difference in opinion on Islamic matters. But some of the religious context she gives is a little short-handed, I think? Like e.g. for sure introducing Aisha as the Prophet's 6 year old wife, when thats a topic thats been pretty widely debated. She remarked at another point that a historic reading of the Koran wont change the opinion and power of people reading it literally, she couldve done it here too to illustrate how these stories have a real effect despite Aisha's age likely having been exaggerated. You will find other reviews that point out inconsistencies or issue regarding this too.

The Good, again: The author doesnt hold back on criticism and it feels so much more meaningful than when other people who have had no contact with Islamic culture and countries level the same criticisms at people because she says these things not out of hate, but out of a sense of justice. Her book ends with an anecdote about living in a place where women can choose whether to closely follow Islamic teachings or not and respecting each other. It's pretty damn beautiful.

It's somewhere between greatly written and embarrassingly out of touch. The main character Anna mentions multiple times how she is bothered by Will's competitiveness because she is a single mother of two and she can't lose her job and the flexibility it brings, but her disliking him is later on framed mainly as her being competitive as well and her being worried about her position thanks to him snatching up chances is dropped. Will has his own good reasons for wanting those, dont get me wrong! But this is never spoken about, in conversations, Annas dislike of Will is reduced to him being competitive and annoying. I think this is what bothered me the most about the book. As soon as this was forgotten, the book (regrettably) became a lot more fun.

You can really feel the tension between Anna and Will and even with "fade to black" sex scenes, the book is sexy. Their flirting in well-written and they have chemistry. The characters – aside from Anna, sadly – are given a lot of respect and fleshed out like crazy, too. It's honestly great.

Not the worst but two more things that bothered me:

• the author managed to write autistic weirdos multiple times (sometimes in a good, sometimes in a bad light, although the way the first one was written is a bit too close for comfort to an actual ableist depiction of autistic people for me)
• the author is... out of touch... but tries to be in touch... the mid-20 year olds are not bonding over Roblox and the kids are not calling each other default, usually

Tldr: There's some glaring issues but I still had a lot of fun reading this book thanks to how well-written the rest of the book is.

ganz süß & voller Quellenangaben & hatte schöne Zwischentexte und Aussagen. Dafür sind die Formulierungen manchmal verwirrend und das Buch, an sich, ist jetzt nicht das besonderste... insb. weil es veraltet ist (und das ziemlich schnell). TBF ist es genau deswegen aber auch interessant, ist mal ein kleiner Anblick ins Deutschland von 2015. Wäre es nicht in meinem Buch-Abo, hätt ich's nicht gelesen/gekauft.

Aufgerundet auf 5 Sterne, da ich mir nach dem Lesen der eBook-Version überlege, das Buch nochmal in Papierform zu holen. So viel Spaß hat das Lesen mir gemacht :) Der Autor ist sehr respektvoll und bringt alle Themen auch für Nicht-Kenner gut rüber.