Rejection

It’s a good book. Objectively. It’s creative and unflinching, well-written, often funny—even when it’s being awful on purpose. The only thing that feels a little unwisely contemporary is how much it leans on texts, emails, tweets: the ephemera. Some of it already reads dated, a time capsule of slang. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the cringe is part of the record. What I really love is the POV work. It’s immersive third-person limited. Tulathimutte doesn’t just describe their obsessions and struggles, he inhabits them. He shows their pain clearly enough that your empathy kicks in right away. It’s insightful in that mean, bright way that good writing can be: it makes you understand, whether you want to or not. What I don’t love is that it’s a cruel book. Contemporary grimdark, basically. The first story—best of the seven—drops you into the mind of a self-proclaimed feminist, a guy who’s read all the right books and learned all the right words, and can’t handle the fact that women still won’t have sex with him. That refusal doesn’t just disappoint him; it twists him. He spirals into incel-dom psychosis, an ugly entitled rage that ends like so many such paths end. With violence. And the stories don’t get nicer from there. I can’t fault the author for his narrative choices. These are the stories he chose to tell: the stories of dysregulated, pathetic people. There’s no real hope for any of them, and you can feel that from the beginning. In a different book, the incel might get hope, the woman spiraling into self-hating psychosis might stumble into therapy, they could find faith or go on a spontaneous trip, or start taking mood stabilizing medication. But this isn’t that kind of book. And it’s not only an exercise in poking at a bleeding wound. There’s craft here. There’s intent. It’s just that the reasons it implies and the solutions it offers—subtextually—are the same blunt truths everyone already knows. Don’t isolate yourself. Don’t staple your self-worth to sex and romantic love. Take care of your body. Take care of your emotions. Be good to your friends. Have hobbies. Go to therapy. Go outside. I don’t know. It’s smart. It’s sharp. It’s a peek into the minds of the most pitiful, wretched people, utterly without dignity or direction, spiraling all the way down to rock bottom. Yeah.