#problematic books

DNFed at 51%.

I started Tell No One excited to try a genre I don’t often read. I do love a good mystery, and honestly, the premise was really intriguing. But unfortunately, the book just doesn’t deliver on the potential of its idea.

Right from the start, everything felt painfully caricatured — the characters, the pacing, even the emotional beats. And what really started to grate on me were all the casual racial stereotypes. The pediatrician working in the suburbs who only sees “welfare cases.” The sketchy “ghetto” guys. The “evil” Asian martial artist. A character named Latisha who’s a drug addict. That bizarre line comparing a handshake between the FBI and the police to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?? It’s exhausting. Coben  seems oddly obsessed with describing every character’s race — unless they’re white. It’s just such a weird racist tic, and it adds nothing but discomfort.

And don’t get me started on how queer characters, especially the lesbian couple, are portrayed — it just didn’t feel real or nuanced at all.

Around the halfway point, the suspense stopped working for me. The plot keeps stretching itself out without adding depth or stakes, and I found myself more bored than intrigued. So I DNF’d. And when I looked up the ending, it honestly felt convoluted and full of plot holes.

imagine the dark torture smut you wrote on tiny paper rolls to evade confiscation while in jail (actually, you know what? scratch the rest, imagine doing that in general in jail lol) and then leave behind in jail eventually made its way to your family only for your descendant to show it around to visitors.

holy shit, i'd die. 💀

1/5 stars

I was first introduced to this book by a booktuber who I had followed for some time. I was intrigued by the way the book was described. I simply added it to my TBR list without bothering to check much information about the book. I was disappointed to find out that certain details were omitted while recommending this book. This book is an example of reverse racism. Having two black siblings in power is fine, but not when you are characterizing them in a way that harms them. Not only is this problematic by itself, but the book is also antisemitic. The main character being a blood witch is another horrible stereotype used against the Jewish community. The author refuses to respond and has chosen to censor their comments. Due to this, I personally will not be wasting my time by reading this book.

Reference: https://twitter.com/AshiaMonet/status...

like Joanne.....

- Dudley Dursley

- Vernon Dursley

- Marge Dursley

- Peter Pettrigrew

- Crabbe 

- Goyle

These are all antagonists and their fatness/lack of conventional attractiveness is used to make them worse. They are bad people but fatness/obesity is shown as a negative trait to show them as bad or use them as comedic relief. 

 Vernon  “His mean little eyes now slits in his great purple face”

Dudley “His piggy little eyes fixed on the screen and his 5 chins wobbling as he ate continually” and “Very fat and hated exercise—unless of course it involved punching somebody”

Marge “She was very like uncle Vernon, large, beefy, and purple-faced, she even had a moustache, though not as bushy as his.”

Whenever they are shown as mean people, they are also shown as fat.

Peter : He is shown as less than the Marauders at Hogwarts, because compared to them, he is fat and short. Also, everytime he does something bad, JKR continually describes him as fat and grubby.

Peter sucks but his fatness is made to make him even worse and less than.

Crabbe and Goyle: Their personality traits are literally just being fat, stupid and mean.

Harry and Ron are made able to knock them out and polyjuice them by putting cupcakes infront of them, they are considered dumb fat people.

Their fatness is associated with being dumb, mean, and greedy.

To be completely honest, I really, really want to like this book. This was my first experience with one of Murakami's works, and I have to say, I'm disappointed. Murakami was this hyped-up magical realism author that everyone around me had read and recommended, and maybe I came into this book with high expectations, but that all came crashing down about 30 pages in, when Kafka, the main character, began describing a girl's boobs. 

And yes, I'd heard all the complaints of Murakami's "problematic" writing of female characters, but this was... so much worse than I thought it would be, and this was just the tip of the iceberg.

But first, some of the things I liked about it. One aspect I adored was the magical realism in this book. I don't think I've seen magic as grounded in reality as this book, the way magical occurrences are written into the book so casually as if this were your typical novel is really well done. I also loved the character of Nakata, he really endears himself onto the reader by the time you finish reading the first chapter from his perspective. And, that's kind of it.

Now, let's move on to the bad parts, and oh boy, there are a lot. Let's start with the bit that made me want to put this book down several times and never come back to it, the prophecy. Oh, by the way, this is your warning for spoilers. The entire prophecy is an oedipal complex which basically says Kafka will kill his father and fuck his mother and sister. Yeah. This was the first warning sign that I should've stopped reading long ago, but I pressed on, and yes, the prophecy comes true. 

It is revealed that Miss Saeki is his mother, and Sakura, the girl he meets on the bus is his sister. Well, not really. It is made pretty clear that these 2 are not his biological mother and sister, but his spiritual ones. Kafka, the protagonist he is, tries at all costs to avoid this prophecy coming true, like any reasonable person. 

Yet, he rapes Sakura in a dream where she is also aware of him, which is just fucked up on so many levels, and he has sex with Miss Saeki's 15 year old alternate reality self. My problem with this, ignoring the incest, is how self-indulgent this story is with its treatment of female characters and how they are used as nothing but props and given flimsy arcs.

I promise you, I tried to like this book. But, every time it seemed to be turning a corner on the weirdness of its story, Murakami returns to inflict yet another dream sex or just normal sex sequence into the book.