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Review
Jeremy O'Grady, editor The Week
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Customer Reviews
It has to be said that this is a brave book. It contains some startlingly frank admissions (and some uncomfortably universal observations) and rarely misses an opportunity for subtle side-swipes at (and many not-so-subtle full-frontal assaults upon) the ways men habitually treat and think of women. It is unusual to find writings like this coming from the pen of a man. Indeed, there are times when Paul Hoffman reads more like Sheri S. Tepper than anything else!
Perhaps almost inevitably, given its size and scope, there are times, though, when this book really does lose its way. Indeed, I can't help thinking that it should be rewritten and released as three or four books, not just one: there are times when it seems like the author has mixed up a number of unrelated stories, or else has dropped the occasional additional short story into the mix, creating, in the process, a complete hotch-potch of only loosely linked chapters and events.
So, while the book has some undoubtedly worthwhile ideas, the overall result is spoilt by a general lack of discipline. The book is allowed to wallow, overly at times, in its own invective — and shock tactics — often to little useful effect. The delirium and terminal ranting of a dying man, for instance, is taken to extremes, dragged out endlessly before the reader, always with the implication that its prolongation will bring clarity to some issue or other, whereas in fact, it never does. Another issue to consider is the sad matter of the book's historical inaccuracies (as they have turned out) of the recent past (still in the future when the book was written). While such things are virtually inevitable in any contemporaneously positioned work such as this, here they sadly throw into doubt some of the story's more important prognoses and prophecies, even though others have come frightening true already.
Mostly, though, the whole book just feels too hyperactive. It constantly leaps off in new directions before it has properly explored the territory it is passing through and sometimes seems to dump story-lines it has grown bored with, rather than fully resolving them. Which is a pity. The book is certainly worth a read: it gets where it is going in the end and has a very great deal to say along the way — which is probably also its biggest fault!
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