Rating: 5/5
Review:
Very well done and very disturbing
This is a very good book.
It wasn't at all what I expected from Shappi Khorsandi: I've loved her
comedy for years and I thought this would be an incisive but basically
lighthearted and funny read. It is very
funny in places, but it's also disturbing, troubling and very upsetting in
places.
It has these qualities because it is so well written. It is the story of Nina, a young adult at
college who, for reasons we come to understand, is drinking excessively, having
random sex and regularly finds herself in a terrible physical state and unable
to remember events of the night before.
Some of her justification for this is the "boys do it so we should
too" ladette culture, which Khorsandi exposes very well here. She draws on (some of) her own experience of
that time, and I found Nina's voice and her behaviour chillingly believable. She manages to juggle with our emotions very
skilfully and Nina's descent and the eventual discoveries it brings are painful
to follow.
Frankly, I'm struggling to review this book. It's not a problem with the book; it's
extremely well done, very worthwhile and exceptionally good for a first novel. However, I found it so raw and disturbing,
possibly because of some of my own family history, that I struggled to keep
reading. However, objectively this
probably deserves five stars for its quality and courage and that's what I've
given it. It is very well done indeed,
but do be warned that you might find it an emotional struggle.
(I received an ARC from Netgalley.)
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