Charm & Strange

I went into this not knowing at all what to expect. There was a lot of good hype about it, but not much elaboration on what it was about. I read an excerpt when I was bored at work one day and ho-ly shit within a paragraph I knew I needed to read this and read it now.

This book hurts. I think the last time a story made me feel this way after I watched Shame. It's that I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-my-life-until-this-passes-so-I'm-just-going-sit-here-and-stare-into-space kind of pain. I thought I knew what I was reading for a while, until Keuhn finally reveals the root of Win's delusion, and god it hurts. I couldn't focus on anything for the rest of the day. It was like a bomb went off in my head.

Charm & Strange is about predator and prey. It's about the inhumanity in man that feeds on the weak, and the animal in each of us that helps us survive. I can't help but draw a connection to Teeth, which is also about victimization, people that show their animal in their bodies, and those that show it in their actions. At one point, Win says “I am savage. I endured.” I believe Moskowitz's fishboy would probably say something similar.

Yeah, if you understand all the connections I've made to other works, and what they all have in common, then you can probably guess what this book is actually about. Sorry for the spoiler, I guess, but you could use the warning.

I didn't even realize until I went to pick it up from the library that it would be on the “realistic fiction” shelf. It's a book about a painfully real subject, but its also about fantasy. The fantasy that exists between trauma and recovery. The stories and mythology we build to make sense of the world. The system of meaning, as we find out its called. Win Winters is raised in a tiny world where what is wanted is taken, that bodies belong to anyone who wishes to take power over them, and so he has to be a monster if he is to survive. He believes he can let no one in lest he hurts them the way he was once hurt. He expects the change to come with the full moon, like a beast under his skin. If only things were that simple. If only beasts did terrible things.

I loved the intimacy between Win and Lex, two characters that have an almost dudebro conflict at first, until you realized the only reason why they're being shitty to each other is because they saw each other at their most vulnerable. They hate each other for it, but they're sewn together as a result. Jordan comes in as a catalyst. Win responds to her vulnerability, her naivete not as a predator, but as a protector. They expose his nature, his real animal, and its not something that destroys, but fights.

I can't not recommend this book, as hard as it is. It will make you angry, it will disgust you, it make you want to claw the paint off walls. But I don't know anyone who shouldn't read it.