- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins; Film tie-in edition edition (27 Sep 1993)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0006475892
- ISBN-13: 978-0006475897
- Product Dimensions: 17.8 x 11.2 x 1.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,687,107 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
DIRTY WEEKEND
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Product Description
Synopsis
Bella, a young woman living alone in Brighton, is terrorized by an obscene phone-caller. The aggressor lives nearby and when he starts to harass Bella in the street, she decides she has had enough. She proceeds to murder her oppressor and then a whole series of predatory males.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Although disturbing and violent in parts, this book is also very entertaining and strangely compelling. It is girl-power with a difference and makes for an uncomfortable read (especially if you're a bloke!) The author weaves a web of intrigue and black humour to leave the reader confused about how they should be feeling.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book has to be read to be believed. Zahavis hypnotic text leads the reader into Bella's warped world, yet leaves you convinced that she's doing the right thing. I couldn't put it down, and recommend it to all the girls out there who've ever wanted revenge, and all the men who've ever taken advantage of a woman!
Format:Paperback
This is strong, provocative fiction whose style is reminiscent of the writers Gordon Lish (e.g., Peru: A Novel, Dear Mr. Capote) early Jenny Diski (e.g., Nothing Natural) and Andrea Dworkin (Mercy, Ice and Fire (Flamingo)), in terms of its honesty to consider and portray ugly realities and truths through the experiences of their female characters and the chameleon forms of violence perpetrated against women. Dirty Weekend, an account of 48 hours of violence against one woman, and her retributions, is by turns bizarre, poignant, powerful and empathetic.
From the outset, the story of Bella takes on the level of a fable or parable. By the opening pages, she has already been threatened with sexual violence by a man who lives opposite her. He promises to pour acid on her skin. But then 'Fate found Bella one night ... and whispered in her ear. And when she woke up, she knew she'd had enough'. It is from this point that she is empowered; no longer wishing to remain persecuted and victimised by the ignorance and violence so common in so many men. She decides, with the help of a mystic, that - since men seem only to view her as a victim - she is unable to at least act even as a bystander and avoid their glare, so concludes that she has no other choice than to take action.
In a series of explicitly and clinically described episodes, Bella enacts her ideas of retribution upon one violent man after another. If these extreme scenes are powerful, it is because of the brutal honesty in the evocation of Bella's pain and outrage, and the attitudes of the men that only wish to threaten and oppress any iota of self-regard that she may have.
It is an uncompromising novel, working as it does within the ugly, hypocritical shadows that our supposedly moral society casts. Occasionally cliches do spill over the overall quality of the writing, yet Zahavi's strength - to be celebrated, and foolish, if not impossible to deny - is in her fluidity and razor-blade precision to evoke a dark vision; a sinister fable-like version of feminist understanding and empowerment.
From the outset, the story of Bella takes on the level of a fable or parable. By the opening pages, she has already been threatened with sexual violence by a man who lives opposite her. He promises to pour acid on her skin. But then 'Fate found Bella one night ... and whispered in her ear. And when she woke up, she knew she'd had enough'. It is from this point that she is empowered; no longer wishing to remain persecuted and victimised by the ignorance and violence so common in so many men. She decides, with the help of a mystic, that - since men seem only to view her as a victim - she is unable to at least act even as a bystander and avoid their glare, so concludes that she has no other choice than to take action.
In a series of explicitly and clinically described episodes, Bella enacts her ideas of retribution upon one violent man after another. If these extreme scenes are powerful, it is because of the brutal honesty in the evocation of Bella's pain and outrage, and the attitudes of the men that only wish to threaten and oppress any iota of self-regard that she may have.
It is an uncompromising novel, working as it does within the ugly, hypocritical shadows that our supposedly moral society casts. Occasionally cliches do spill over the overall quality of the writing, yet Zahavi's strength - to be celebrated, and foolish, if not impossible to deny - is in her fluidity and razor-blade precision to evoke a dark vision; a sinister fable-like version of feminist understanding and empowerment.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The best book I've ever read!!
Thi book is both a relevation and an inspiration! If you've ever felt 'at the bottom of the pile' in terms of being dumped on by men this is the book for you. Read more
Published on 24 Oct 2007 by Ms. J. E. Rutter
If all is getting you down girls...then read!!!!!
I loved the way Helen Zahavi has created an atmosphere of claustrophobia and the almost repetative lulling of Bellas entrapment. Read more
Published on 27 Jan 1999
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