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The Men
From the author of The Heavens, a dazzling, mind-bending novel in which all men mysteriously disappear from the face of the earth
Deep in the California woods on an evening in late August, Jane Pearson is camping with her husband Leo and their five-year-old son Benjamin. As dusk sets in, she drifts softly to sleep in a hammock strung outside the tent where Leo and Benjamin are preparing for bed. At that moment, every single person with a Y chromosome vanishes around the world, disappearing from operating theaters mid-surgery, from behind the wheels of cars, from arguments and acts of love. Children, adults, even fetuses are gone in an instant. Leo and Benjamin are gone. No one knows why, how, or where.
After the Disappearance, Jane forces herself to enter a world she barely recognizes, one where women must create new ways of living while coping with devastating grief. As people come together to rebuild depopulated industries and distribute scarce resources, Jane focuses on reuniting with an old college girlfriend, Evangelyne Moreau, leader of the Commensalist Party of America, a rising political force in this new world. Meanwhile, strange video footage called “The Men” is being broadcast online showing images of the vanished men marching through barren, otherworldly landscapes. Is this just a hoax, or could it hold the key to the Disappearance?
From the author of The Heavens, The Men is a gripping, beautiful, and disquieting novel of feminist utopias and impossible sacrifices that interrogates the dream of a perfect society and the conflict between individual desire and the good of the community.
Deep in the California woods on an evening in late August, Jane Pearson is camping with her husband Leo and their five-year-old son Benjamin. As dusk sets in, she drifts softly to sleep in a hammock strung outside the tent where Leo and Benjamin are preparing for bed. At that moment, every single person with a Y chromosome vanishes around the world, disappearing from operating theaters mid-surgery, from behind the wheels of cars, from arguments and acts of love. Children, adults, even fetuses are gone in an instant. Leo and Benjamin are gone. No one knows why, how, or where.
After the Disappearance, Jane forces herself to enter a world she barely recognizes, one where women must create new ways of living while coping with devastating grief. As people come together to rebuild depopulated industries and distribute scarce resources, Jane focuses on reuniting with an old college girlfriend, Evangelyne Moreau, leader of the Commensalist Party of America, a rising political force in this new world. Meanwhile, strange video footage called “The Men” is being broadcast online showing images of the vanished men marching through barren, otherworldly landscapes. Is this just a hoax, or could it hold the key to the Disappearance?
From the author of The Heavens, The Men is a gripping, beautiful, and disquieting novel of feminist utopias and impossible sacrifices that interrogates the dream of a perfect society and the conflict between individual desire and the good of the community.
272 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 14, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 521 reviews
March 14, 2022
A particularly tedious and threadbare entry in the "Gender Apocalypse" subgenre, which has proven to be a dumping ground for nice liberal women who want to dabble in TERF-adjacent thought exercises without being publicly associated with the increasingly right-wing and violent movement. Thoroughly regressive and only mildly and intermittently interesting, its imagery weak, its supporting cast unmemorable.
THE MEN fundamentally misunderstands what patriarchy is and what perpetuates it. A lot of bland runway across the backs of the marginalized for a morally lazy white woman's guilty flight back to the arms of suburban heterosexual security.
Thank you to Granta Books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
THE MEN fundamentally misunderstands what patriarchy is and what perpetuates it. A lot of bland runway across the backs of the marginalized for a morally lazy white woman's guilty flight back to the arms of suburban heterosexual security.
Thank you to Granta Books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
June 25, 2022
I received an eArc of this book in exchange for an honest review, so yes I did read this book and you better believe these are my honest opinions.
I first heard about the book from the author's twitter getting publicly dragged because the premise is transphobic. Now I am one of the like three people who watched and loved the tv series of Y the Last Man, I don't think this premise has to necessarily be transphobic (but often is, as is the case with the comic, Y the Last Man). The author claims this book talks about trans people in this scenario, however the trans representation in this book is very minimal. We get a couple of references to the transwomen being gone and by a couple I literally mean twice. One character references how the trans girls she was friends with as a teen are gone and trans women are seen in the eerie films of The Men. Also some leftists talk about how saying the men disappeared isn't quite right because trans women were poofed as well and that trans men won't recreate the same power dynamics in relationships as cis men (I think this take about trans men is supposed to sound stupid as we see a protagonist emotionally abused by her lesbian partner a couple of pages later). How are trans men represented? We get to see an unnamed trans man brutally beaten up and sexually assaulted in the wake of the disappearance. As a cis person I do not feel qualified to pass judgement on this book as transphobic or not that said this book seemingly has nothing meaningful to say about trans identity.
I honestly question if this book has anything meaningful to say at all which is a weird takeaway from such an inherently political premise. The Men feels like it desperately wants to be Station Eleven but all of the characters save Jane and Evangeline are extremely flat. We learn about their relationships with men and that's about it, they don't even have any effect on the plot despite being set up as secondary protagonists. Instead we are treated to a long trauma congoline in the form the backstories of Jane and Evangeline. I say this as someone who loves stories about trauma (give me some good hurt comfort any day), these character's backstories are just upsetting. They are graphic and feature sexual assault and police violence. And there is no pay off to seeing this trauma porn, it's just trauma porn.
I cannot discuss pay off without discussing this book's ending so spoilers ahead. This book ends with the twist that it was just a dream (maybe?) which I'm sorry that's a joke ending. There's no narrative arc, no character growth, hell there isn't even any sociological story telling.
Some books are bad in a fun way, this book is bad in a boring way.
I first heard about the book from the author's twitter getting publicly dragged because the premise is transphobic. Now I am one of the like three people who watched and loved the tv series of Y the Last Man, I don't think this premise has to necessarily be transphobic (but often is, as is the case with the comic, Y the Last Man). The author claims this book talks about trans people in this scenario, however the trans representation in this book is very minimal. We get a couple of references to the transwomen being gone and by a couple I literally mean twice. One character references how the trans girls she was friends with as a teen are gone and trans women are seen in the eerie films of The Men. Also some leftists talk about how saying the men disappeared isn't quite right because trans women were poofed as well and that trans men won't recreate the same power dynamics in relationships as cis men (I think this take about trans men is supposed to sound stupid as we see a protagonist emotionally abused by her lesbian partner a couple of pages later). How are trans men represented? We get to see an unnamed trans man brutally beaten up and sexually assaulted in the wake of the disappearance. As a cis person I do not feel qualified to pass judgement on this book as transphobic or not that said this book seemingly has nothing meaningful to say about trans identity.
I honestly question if this book has anything meaningful to say at all which is a weird takeaway from such an inherently political premise. The Men feels like it desperately wants to be Station Eleven but all of the characters save Jane and Evangeline are extremely flat. We learn about their relationships with men and that's about it, they don't even have any effect on the plot despite being set up as secondary protagonists. Instead we are treated to a long trauma congoline in the form the backstories of Jane and Evangeline. I say this as someone who loves stories about trauma (give me some good hurt comfort any day), these character's backstories are just upsetting. They are graphic and feature sexual assault and police violence. And there is no pay off to seeing this trauma porn, it's just trauma porn.
I cannot discuss pay off without discussing this book's ending so spoilers ahead. This book ends with the twist that it was just a dream (maybe?) which I'm sorry that's a joke ending. There's no narrative arc, no character growth, hell there isn't even any sociological story telling.
Some books are bad in a fun way, this book is bad in a boring way.
April 27, 2022
I just pre-ordered this book for $30.
Why?
Because of all the grossly unfair accusations of "transphobia" by Woke Zombies.
Every time a female author is accused of being a TERF, I buy her book.
Why?
Because accusations of trans phobia are usually made by Handmaids & Misogynists, and directed at women with a backbone.
I would never have even heard of this book had it not been for the misogynistic attacks on this author.
She should give a commission to the ignorant fools who attacked her.
Oh, and thank you for introducing me to the brilliant Lauren Hough as well.
Her brilliant book of essays is amazing, and deserving of many awards.
Why?
Because of all the grossly unfair accusations of "transphobia" by Woke Zombies.
Every time a female author is accused of being a TERF, I buy her book.
Why?
Because accusations of trans phobia are usually made by Handmaids & Misogynists, and directed at women with a backbone.
I would never have even heard of this book had it not been for the misogynistic attacks on this author.
She should give a commission to the ignorant fools who attacked her.
Oh, and thank you for introducing me to the brilliant Lauren Hough as well.
Her brilliant book of essays is amazing, and deserving of many awards.
June 12, 2022
I'm not sure that this novel entirely works. The ending definitely threw me. But it was so original and consistently interesting to read that I very much enjoyed it and will suggest it to other readers.
On a summer night in a time not so far from our own, all over the planet, all the males (and anyone with a y chromosome) disappear. And although the women who remain are sad, missing their male husbands, sons, lovers, friends, and fathers are traumatized by this, eventually they pull together and make the world in many ways better, starting to fix the climate crisis, not having to worry about being raped when they're alone out in the world.
There are several narrators in this book, but Jane, a former ballerina who has survived one of the ugliest cases of sexual abuse I've ever encountered in a book, is at its center. I read the section that detailed this abuse right before it was time to drift off to sleep, and it was so disturbing it kept me awake.
Most people, when creating a novel, avoid difficult, weird, ambiguous things that don’t fit with the arc of the story, things that make the story harder to tell in a straightforward way. This writer goes ahead and puts them in, and I find it interesting and also think it makes the story seem more real, like it's a story she's lived through, not one she's making up.
There are a lot of weird developments in this weird novel that I don't want to spoil for the reader. But read it! Then maybe talk about them with me, because this is a novel I want to talk about.
Thanks for access to the digital ARC, Edelweiss!
Edited to add:
My god. All the reviews from people who haven't even read the book. They're so sure and so righteous-- even as they're all completely wrong. This is absolutely not a transphobic book.
On a summer night in a time not so far from our own, all over the planet, all the males (and anyone with a y chromosome) disappear. And although the women who remain are sad, missing their male husbands, sons, lovers, friends, and fathers are traumatized by this, eventually they pull together and make the world in many ways better, starting to fix the climate crisis, not having to worry about being raped when they're alone out in the world.
There are several narrators in this book, but Jane, a former ballerina who has survived one of the ugliest cases of sexual abuse I've ever encountered in a book, is at its center. I read the section that detailed this abuse right before it was time to drift off to sleep, and it was so disturbing it kept me awake.
Most people, when creating a novel, avoid difficult, weird, ambiguous things that don’t fit with the arc of the story, things that make the story harder to tell in a straightforward way. This writer goes ahead and puts them in, and I find it interesting and also think it makes the story seem more real, like it's a story she's lived through, not one she's making up.
There are a lot of weird developments in this weird novel that I don't want to spoil for the reader. But read it! Then maybe talk about them with me, because this is a novel I want to talk about.
Thanks for access to the digital ARC, Edelweiss!
Edited to add:
My god. All the reviews from people who haven't even read the book. They're so sure and so righteous-- even as they're all completely wrong. This is absolutely not a transphobic book.
March 6, 2022
Horrible. Not only does the author not understand the fundamentals of genetics, but is using this ignorance as a shield for her blatant transphobia. She aspires to be the next Margaret Atwood, but ends up as a Great Value cross between JK Rowling and Abigail Shrier. The Jordan Peterson of woman authors.
I'd give zero stars but the author did publish a book-like object, so there's that.
I'd give zero stars but the author did publish a book-like object, so there's that.
March 25, 2022
I've marked the spoiler button for the sake of anyone who might genuinely want to subject themselves to this book, since my review is going to focus on the ending, specifically.
There's a lot that could be said to damn this book, but there's already been a plurality of discussion on these points here and elsewhere. What I've seen very little of – or, more accurately, what I've seen people misunderstand - is the ending of this book.
The ending of this book hinges on the white main character choosing to allow a Black lesbian to be murdered by police. This is, without exaggeration, the end of the book.
Many I've seen have waffled on what Jane (the main character) is actually doing in this scene. As you likely know, the book pulled a classic Twas All A Dream twist on us in the finale, though this isn't entirely accurate. The exact mechanics of it are hazy (like basically everything), but it seems to indicate that the events we've read about did happen, but in some kind of alternate timeline or shared dream world or the like.
The point being that, at minimum, the events that transpire after the gender rapture are how things would happen in real life, and Jane remembers everything that happened. One of the key details she remembers is that Evangelyne, her lover in this alternate timeline, is about to be murdered by police at this date and time if nothing is done to save her.
And she chooses not to do anything. I've seen a lot of people confused about the bizarre tangents Jane goes on after just waking up and her decision to basically go get brunch like it's an ordinary day and she's just had a very scary dream. What they're missing, though, is that this is an intentional choice on the part of the character.
The confusion seems to stem entirely from Newman's ineptitude as a writer and inability to clearly define her character's motives. It takes some doing, but the fact that she doesn't really address the pressing action needed to save Evangelyne is meant to be her finding distractions and excuses for not doing what's needed to save her. A softer, gentler form of murder-by-proxy.
This may seem like just an interpretation, but it's not, and I'll explain why. For largely the entire story, Jane is defined by her passivity. At the start, her complicity in the rapes of numerous young boys is repeatedly told to us as a passive act; things were done to her, and she had no power or agency in them herself. When she's #canceled because she's a serial rapist, she just has to grin and bear it. When she's married, it's because her husband chose her, and she simply went along with it.
Even in the world without men, Jane is similarly passive. She becomes Evangelyne's lover because of Evangelyne's interest in her. In their cringe worthy sex scene, things are again done to her, with her internal narration seeming to emphasize at every point how little interest she has in this and how devoid of attraction or (potentially) consent this act involves on her part. With regards to watching the demon livestreams, it's entirely passive on her and the other women's parts, save for the immaterial nature of loving the men in the videos making it so they might maybe one day come back.
This is one of two important parts, as the first time we see her take agency, it's to return the men to the world. As outlined above, it's supposedly the love of specific women that can allow a man to come back from the Hell dimension. As such, it's Jane's love for her husband (and some guff about her being the purest little white girl who can never do no wrong) that allows him to escape from Hell.
This takes us to the second part, which is the final confrontation with Evangelyne before the world resets. It's been noted by others how "masculine" Evangelyne's demands and arguments sound when she's trying to convince Jane to keep the world as it is. She promises Jane status and power, tells her how she's so close to becoming president. Basically, she sounds an awful lot like the embittered ex she's made out to be at multiple points in the story – specifically, a male ex.
Throughout, Evangelyne (and lesbians overall to a lesser extent, as seen in Alma's narration when she muses about how many women she can now sleep with while they're all vulnerable and grieving their loved ones) is described as predatory towards other women, and Jane in particular. It's made note of specifically that Evangelyne denies access to herself from anyone that she isn't actively trying to sleep with, including exes. In general, she's portrayed as at least somewhat promiscuous and uncaring towards the majority (if not all sans Jane) of previous partners. It's not much of a stretch to say she's been written as every bit the quintessential fuckboy with a gender swap.
This is on purpose, as is her being a major player in politics. In all ways but gender, I can't come to any conclusion other than Evangelyne (and, by extension, potentially all lesbians) having been positioned as the "new men" of this world. In how she treats Jane to her political power to the dispassionate sex, there's multiple avenues with which the book takes great pains to give Evangelyne the characteristics of men who have harmed Jane in the past.
A lot of talk has been used to insist this book is some kind of twist or subversion on the feminist utopia-type gendercide book. Many have been baffled by this assessment since, bar a few moments that the book only half-considers (at best) as negatives, the new world does legitimately seem to be better than the old after the men get taken away. How, then, is this meant to be a subversion or condemnation?
The short answer is that it's the lesbians like Evangelyne who are poised to reproduce the same power structures and hierarchy as the men before them. Even in her desperate pleas to have Jane choose her before the end, Evangelyne goes on to neg her about how being a supposedly unskilled housewife makes her all but useless. When I read these bits, that stuck out to me the most, since it seems so similar to both the supposedly feminist man denigrating the work of women he doesn't feel is sufficiently empowering as well as a man whose mistress is about to leave him to return to her husband. Again, the only difference here is Evangelyne's gender.
While it's easy to dismiss this book as incoherent (it is) or devoid of meaning (it largely is, too), I feel we do it a disservice not to pick up on these aspects. All of this takes us back to the ending of the book, where Jane supposedly, through inaction or maybe just sheer stupidity, fails to do anything to change the course of fate, and Evangelyne dies as a result.
The problem with this interpretation, though, is that the entire book has built to Jane finally making choices. As I already outlined, her entire life up to her standing at the gate has been a largely passive endeavor, and her choice to bring the men back is framed as the climactic moment where she finally makes a decision. While it lands with less of a bang and more of a confused Tim Allen noise, that's clearly the intent here.
From this point on, Jane is making a choice. While the narration fails to acknowledge it, she is choosing to drag her feet from the moment she wakes up. It's an unsaid decision, but it's a decision nonetheless. In this way, it's nearly the same as her decision to let the men come back, wherein we never really have her verbalize or authorize that this is what she wants, but the results signify that she must have made this choice.
Just like choosing to bring back the men, Jane chooses to let Evangelyne be murdered. This is the karmic justice the book has built up to from the start. Evangelyne who, not unlike the man who groomed Jane as a child, uses her thoughtful exterior in order to control others for her sexual gratification. Like the men who abused Jane at various points, she gains more and more social and political power over the world and Jane herself. Just like her marriage to Leo, Jane seems to consider Evangelyne's partnership as more a form of security than actual love. In virtually every way, Evangelyne has reproduced the abuse of men against Jane and womankind, so she must therefore die and be sent to Hell as comeuppance.
As I said at the beginning, there is a multitude of problems with this book on almost every level. Virtually every marginalized group under the sun is portrayed with some level of disdain to say nothing of how men in generally are treated as some monolithic evil. The themes are murky at best and the multiple POV setup does little to flesh them out given how truly superfluous anyone but Jane and her perspective is to the story. Any good ideas, the few that there are, are summarily strangled in the crib (or raptured out of their mothers' bellies as the case may be) before they can be explored with any depth. Even the prose itself is frequently amateurish at best, with its best moments (the demon livestreams) both far too few and somewhat obviously just the author transcribing her various inspirations, most notably Bosch paintings.
Ultimately, though, I feel that these aspects have all been talked to death at this point. This aspect, though – that a white writer has positioned her white protagonist's arc of self-realization being contingent upon allowing the police murder of a Black lesbian - is something that, as far as I've seen, has largely skirted under the radar. Granted, this is due mostly to confusion given how poorly written and expressed these ideas are, but I believe it's worth having out in the open given that this is essentially what the entire book was building up to from the beginning.
It's truly unsurprising that the person who brought us Ice Cream Star is also the one responsible for this jaw-droppingly racist meditation on the need for white women to be a little less passive and a little more #girlboss. If that reads as a bit reductive, I both know and don't care, since I don't think this book deserves any more of my limited brainpower to think of a more creative metaphor for what's essentially just another example of white mediocrity failing upwards.
If anyone made it this far, I'd like to thank you for sticking with me on this. I only hope that this dissuades more people from supporting this work, as there's already been plenty of transphobic people doing that already in the presales.
I'd also like to thank the demons who, despite deciding I deserve to be sent to Hell with all the men, were generous enough to allow me time off from unending torture over the span of millennia to type this up for everyone.
There's a lot that could be said to damn this book, but there's already been a plurality of discussion on these points here and elsewhere. What I've seen very little of – or, more accurately, what I've seen people misunderstand - is the ending of this book.
The ending of this book hinges on the white main character choosing to allow a Black lesbian to be murdered by police. This is, without exaggeration, the end of the book.
Many I've seen have waffled on what Jane (the main character) is actually doing in this scene. As you likely know, the book pulled a classic Twas All A Dream twist on us in the finale, though this isn't entirely accurate. The exact mechanics of it are hazy (like basically everything), but it seems to indicate that the events we've read about did happen, but in some kind of alternate timeline or shared dream world or the like.
The point being that, at minimum, the events that transpire after the gender rapture are how things would happen in real life, and Jane remembers everything that happened. One of the key details she remembers is that Evangelyne, her lover in this alternate timeline, is about to be murdered by police at this date and time if nothing is done to save her.
And she chooses not to do anything. I've seen a lot of people confused about the bizarre tangents Jane goes on after just waking up and her decision to basically go get brunch like it's an ordinary day and she's just had a very scary dream. What they're missing, though, is that this is an intentional choice on the part of the character.
The confusion seems to stem entirely from Newman's ineptitude as a writer and inability to clearly define her character's motives. It takes some doing, but the fact that she doesn't really address the pressing action needed to save Evangelyne is meant to be her finding distractions and excuses for not doing what's needed to save her. A softer, gentler form of murder-by-proxy.
This may seem like just an interpretation, but it's not, and I'll explain why. For largely the entire story, Jane is defined by her passivity. At the start, her complicity in the rapes of numerous young boys is repeatedly told to us as a passive act; things were done to her, and she had no power or agency in them herself. When she's #canceled because she's a serial rapist, she just has to grin and bear it. When she's married, it's because her husband chose her, and she simply went along with it.
Even in the world without men, Jane is similarly passive. She becomes Evangelyne's lover because of Evangelyne's interest in her. In their cringe worthy sex scene, things are again done to her, with her internal narration seeming to emphasize at every point how little interest she has in this and how devoid of attraction or (potentially) consent this act involves on her part. With regards to watching the demon livestreams, it's entirely passive on her and the other women's parts, save for the immaterial nature of loving the men in the videos making it so they might maybe one day come back.
This is one of two important parts, as the first time we see her take agency, it's to return the men to the world. As outlined above, it's supposedly the love of specific women that can allow a man to come back from the Hell dimension. As such, it's Jane's love for her husband (and some guff about her being the purest little white girl who can never do no wrong) that allows him to escape from Hell.
This takes us to the second part, which is the final confrontation with Evangelyne before the world resets. It's been noted by others how "masculine" Evangelyne's demands and arguments sound when she's trying to convince Jane to keep the world as it is. She promises Jane status and power, tells her how she's so close to becoming president. Basically, she sounds an awful lot like the embittered ex she's made out to be at multiple points in the story – specifically, a male ex.
Throughout, Evangelyne (and lesbians overall to a lesser extent, as seen in Alma's narration when she muses about how many women she can now sleep with while they're all vulnerable and grieving their loved ones) is described as predatory towards other women, and Jane in particular. It's made note of specifically that Evangelyne denies access to herself from anyone that she isn't actively trying to sleep with, including exes. In general, she's portrayed as at least somewhat promiscuous and uncaring towards the majority (if not all sans Jane) of previous partners. It's not much of a stretch to say she's been written as every bit the quintessential fuckboy with a gender swap.
This is on purpose, as is her being a major player in politics. In all ways but gender, I can't come to any conclusion other than Evangelyne (and, by extension, potentially all lesbians) having been positioned as the "new men" of this world. In how she treats Jane to her political power to the dispassionate sex, there's multiple avenues with which the book takes great pains to give Evangelyne the characteristics of men who have harmed Jane in the past.
A lot of talk has been used to insist this book is some kind of twist or subversion on the feminist utopia-type gendercide book. Many have been baffled by this assessment since, bar a few moments that the book only half-considers (at best) as negatives, the new world does legitimately seem to be better than the old after the men get taken away. How, then, is this meant to be a subversion or condemnation?
The short answer is that it's the lesbians like Evangelyne who are poised to reproduce the same power structures and hierarchy as the men before them. Even in her desperate pleas to have Jane choose her before the end, Evangelyne goes on to neg her about how being a supposedly unskilled housewife makes her all but useless. When I read these bits, that stuck out to me the most, since it seems so similar to both the supposedly feminist man denigrating the work of women he doesn't feel is sufficiently empowering as well as a man whose mistress is about to leave him to return to her husband. Again, the only difference here is Evangelyne's gender.
While it's easy to dismiss this book as incoherent (it is) or devoid of meaning (it largely is, too), I feel we do it a disservice not to pick up on these aspects. All of this takes us back to the ending of the book, where Jane supposedly, through inaction or maybe just sheer stupidity, fails to do anything to change the course of fate, and Evangelyne dies as a result.
The problem with this interpretation, though, is that the entire book has built to Jane finally making choices. As I already outlined, her entire life up to her standing at the gate has been a largely passive endeavor, and her choice to bring the men back is framed as the climactic moment where she finally makes a decision. While it lands with less of a bang and more of a confused Tim Allen noise, that's clearly the intent here.
From this point on, Jane is making a choice. While the narration fails to acknowledge it, she is choosing to drag her feet from the moment she wakes up. It's an unsaid decision, but it's a decision nonetheless. In this way, it's nearly the same as her decision to let the men come back, wherein we never really have her verbalize or authorize that this is what she wants, but the results signify that she must have made this choice.
Just like choosing to bring back the men, Jane chooses to let Evangelyne be murdered. This is the karmic justice the book has built up to from the start. Evangelyne who, not unlike the man who groomed Jane as a child, uses her thoughtful exterior in order to control others for her sexual gratification. Like the men who abused Jane at various points, she gains more and more social and political power over the world and Jane herself. Just like her marriage to Leo, Jane seems to consider Evangelyne's partnership as more a form of security than actual love. In virtually every way, Evangelyne has reproduced the abuse of men against Jane and womankind, so she must therefore die and be sent to Hell as comeuppance.
As I said at the beginning, there is a multitude of problems with this book on almost every level. Virtually every marginalized group under the sun is portrayed with some level of disdain to say nothing of how men in generally are treated as some monolithic evil. The themes are murky at best and the multiple POV setup does little to flesh them out given how truly superfluous anyone but Jane and her perspective is to the story. Any good ideas, the few that there are, are summarily strangled in the crib (or raptured out of their mothers' bellies as the case may be) before they can be explored with any depth. Even the prose itself is frequently amateurish at best, with its best moments (the demon livestreams) both far too few and somewhat obviously just the author transcribing her various inspirations, most notably Bosch paintings.
Ultimately, though, I feel that these aspects have all been talked to death at this point. This aspect, though – that a white writer has positioned her white protagonist's arc of self-realization being contingent upon allowing the police murder of a Black lesbian - is something that, as far as I've seen, has largely skirted under the radar. Granted, this is due mostly to confusion given how poorly written and expressed these ideas are, but I believe it's worth having out in the open given that this is essentially what the entire book was building up to from the beginning.
It's truly unsurprising that the person who brought us Ice Cream Star is also the one responsible for this jaw-droppingly racist meditation on the need for white women to be a little less passive and a little more #girlboss. If that reads as a bit reductive, I both know and don't care, since I don't think this book deserves any more of my limited brainpower to think of a more creative metaphor for what's essentially just another example of white mediocrity failing upwards.
If anyone made it this far, I'd like to thank you for sticking with me on this. I only hope that this dissuades more people from supporting this work, as there's already been plenty of transphobic people doing that already in the presales.
I'd also like to thank the demons who, despite deciding I deserve to be sent to Hell with all the men, were generous enough to allow me time off from unending torture over the span of millennia to type this up for everyone.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 24, 2022
Let's be honest, the premise to this sounds a bit whacky: over night, all humans with a y chromosome disappear and the world has to rearrange itself in the aftermath. If it's written by Sandra Newman though, this obviously shouldn't deter anyone. I had enough trust in her abilities to know that she would turn this into something fascinating - and she did! The one leap of faith serves as the spring-board for all sorts of plausible story lines and the possible effects of the event. It's beautifully written and moving, the repercussions believable and intriguing. Where so much feminist dsytopia suffers (building a convincing world around its premise) Newman absolutely succeeds. Her new world is multi-faceted, recognizable while also being completely new. With all these wonderful dystopian fiction it seems like Newman might be setting herself up in Ursula le Guin's footsteps.
April 18, 2022
the amount of reviews of individuals who didn’t read it is immense. lots of sour grapes and bitterness in the comments. don’t judge this book by its reviews and give it a read yourself. stop letting others tell you what to think.
February 14, 2022
Many people will read the synopsis and come to this book expecting something akin to Y: The Last Man or Lauren Beukes's Afterland; Sandra Newman is no stranger to writing dystopic/post-apocalyptic fiction after The Country of Ice Cream Star, which would reinforce that expectation. I came to it regretting not having read Y, expecting that a comparison of how each dealt with the nuts-and-bolts of how a post-male society dealt with the disruption and reconstruction of previously male-dominated sectors, etc., would be de rigueur and valuable commentary. But this is emphatically NOT that kind of book; it is altogether more optimistic (even utopian) and above all stranger than that (perhaps no surprise for readers of Newman's previous book The Heavens). Some people will be disappointed by that, or by the frankly gauzy treatment of the "why" behind the phenomenon, or by the ambiguity of the ending, but I thought it was a unique and engrossing read.
The cover design needs work, though, as of right now -- it makes you think the title is "The XX-Men" and expect something decidedly more comic-booky.
Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the ARC.
The cover design needs work, though, as of right now -- it makes you think the title is "The XX-Men" and expect something decidedly more comic-booky.
Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the ARC.
June 12, 2022
Every single person with a Y chromosome disappears. No one knows why, how or where.
Looking at that piece from the synopsis I feel this books plot line was not as it was described. It starts off with this "bang" factor and then a whole different storyline comes into action.
I really struggled getting to know the characters as all the other topic's discussed kind of overshadowed the actual plot line and character building. I was hoping for a "cool end of the world" book. I really did like the narrator, she was fantastic with a great voice.
Thank you Netgalley and RB Media for the opportunity to review this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
Looking at that piece from the synopsis I feel this books plot line was not as it was described. It starts off with this "bang" factor and then a whole different storyline comes into action.
I really struggled getting to know the characters as all the other topic's discussed kind of overshadowed the actual plot line and character building. I was hoping for a "cool end of the world" book. I really did like the narrator, she was fantastic with a great voice.
Thank you Netgalley and RB Media for the opportunity to review this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
Read
April 27, 2022EDIT: The author has blocked me on Twitter for my literary criticisms and her awful behavior to the marginalized people like me in her own industry for criticizing her books.
And Goodreads is rife with marginalized literary community members (from editors and professional reviews like me, to authors and journalists, to amateur reviewers and readers) who are being targeted with spam and harassment on this page for daring to have opinions or do their jobs.
Every hateful comment to trans, queer, disabled, Black, Indigenous and other POC reviews on this page only proves what we’ve said in our reviews.
I expect better from Goodreads. Clean yourself up.
Implying trans people criticizing your book are “pigeons playing chess” who “kick over the pieces, shit on the board, then strut around as if it won” is one way to forever ensure people definitely don’t read your book! I’ve seen weeks worth of bigoted tweets protecting unscientific and lazy plots of this book.
But the vile ways you’ve made it quite clear this wasn’t an accident, that you had no intention of hiring trans editors or sensitivity readers, and absolutely disrespected every trans reader who approached you with criticism (most of them extremely kindly at that), made me decide to review this One Star. You’re driving good publicity into the ground. I can only hope plummeting sales follow.
As a grey ace and a pan/bi queer, the asexual and bisexual characters you used as background fodder were misrepresentative of what these identities mean, had so much heterosexual patterning involved it was unrealistic and offensive. Asexual people have sex. We also masturbate. And we’re no more statically prevalent as pedophiles than other sexualities people are. I read it out loud to my parent, we agreed it was terrible representation that will only add to the other previous terrible stereotypical and representation that had made my life harder, and we wondered why you don’t care.
As a disabled person, the stereotypes applied to your bipolar and schizophrenic character were blatantly ableist, not representative of anyone I’ve ever known with these conditions, and again you used them as sacrificial background tokens as though there’s nothing wrong with neurologically, mentally and behaviorally disabled people to sacrifice themselves. At no point did anyone have a care or think it strange disabled people would have to die to create utopia, or asked if they really wanted to die, or perhaps have any choice at all. Eugenics! 1,000 disabled people die to create a “utopia,” your words! Just holy shit.
And Goodreads is rife with marginalized literary community members (from editors and professional reviews like me, to authors and journalists, to amateur reviewers and readers) who are being targeted with spam and harassment on this page for daring to have opinions or do their jobs.
Every hateful comment to trans, queer, disabled, Black, Indigenous and other POC reviews on this page only proves what we’ve said in our reviews.
I expect better from Goodreads. Clean yourself up.
Implying trans people criticizing your book are “pigeons playing chess” who “kick over the pieces, shit on the board, then strut around as if it won” is one way to forever ensure people definitely don’t read your book! I’ve seen weeks worth of bigoted tweets protecting unscientific and lazy plots of this book.
But the vile ways you’ve made it quite clear this wasn’t an accident, that you had no intention of hiring trans editors or sensitivity readers, and absolutely disrespected every trans reader who approached you with criticism (most of them extremely kindly at that), made me decide to review this One Star. You’re driving good publicity into the ground. I can only hope plummeting sales follow.
As a grey ace and a pan/bi queer, the asexual and bisexual characters you used as background fodder were misrepresentative of what these identities mean, had so much heterosexual patterning involved it was unrealistic and offensive. Asexual people have sex. We also masturbate. And we’re no more statically prevalent as pedophiles than other sexualities people are. I read it out loud to my parent, we agreed it was terrible representation that will only add to the other previous terrible stereotypical and representation that had made my life harder, and we wondered why you don’t care.
As a disabled person, the stereotypes applied to your bipolar and schizophrenic character were blatantly ableist, not representative of anyone I’ve ever known with these conditions, and again you used them as sacrificial background tokens as though there’s nothing wrong with neurologically, mentally and behaviorally disabled people to sacrifice themselves. At no point did anyone have a care or think it strange disabled people would have to die to create utopia, or asked if they really wanted to die, or perhaps have any choice at all. Eugenics! 1,000 disabled people die to create a “utopia,” your words! Just holy shit.
June 5, 2023
Published today 2-6-22
This book and its reception overall remind me of two things
Firstly (and rather obviously) the author’s previous book “The Heavens” which could hardly be faulted for ambition, but certainly could for execution and seemed to be several novels in one: a relatively standard/derivative dystopian science fiction scenario (here the idea of time travel to the past altering the present) presented in a way which seemed to draw heavily on Dr Who; with some historical fiction (which walked on the edge between some cringey prithee-heavy dialogue and some actually very beautiful writing); political commentary (here on why we accept the world as it is while also believing it can be changed); an examination of abusive relationships; and a actually moving description of mental illness.
Secondly (perhaps less obviously) “American Dirt” a novel which, both in its writing and in the choice of marketing publicity, was open to heavy criticism but where much of the actual criticism directed, both in mainstream media and here on Goodreads, was either by people who had not really read the book (and were reacting second hand) or by others who seemed to overtly focus on some scenes in the book which to be honest they had, mis or at least over-interpreted (I would like to think by accident due to their hurt/sensitivity to the issues it raised for them).
This book is also I think a rather ambitious but sometimes very clumsily executed mix of:
Relatively standard/derivative dystopian (possibly utopian) science fiction (the particular trope here being the sudden rapture-style disappearance of men);
A twist on this aspect which rather than really spending too much time trying to add some pseudo-science to explain it – instead goes for much more of a X-Factor/spooky/mystical/open-ended explanation with a series of strange and videos of those who disappeared (which give the book its title) which fuel various conspiracy theories, and a resolution which will I think prove very controversial with some readers (and give those looking for an excuse to criticise the book some ammunition);
Two very involved back stories for the two main characters (which feel like they could and possibly should have been a novel in themselves) – one serving as a quote troubling examination of an abusive grooming-style relationship in ballet, and the other as an examination of American societal/police racism against an African-American traditional religious movement as well as of an radical form of politics based on mixing the Biological concept of Commensalism with a view that additional wealth adds effectively zero Utility.
I say clumsily executed because in the disappearance story the author (and possibly publishers) attempt to add racial diversity and to address issues of gender fluidity seems (to me) rather tokenistic and also appears to have backfired.
Overall definitely an interesting novel which is already dividing opinion in readers and on which I have decidedly mixed opinions.
This book and its reception overall remind me of two things
Firstly (and rather obviously) the author’s previous book “The Heavens” which could hardly be faulted for ambition, but certainly could for execution and seemed to be several novels in one: a relatively standard/derivative dystopian science fiction scenario (here the idea of time travel to the past altering the present) presented in a way which seemed to draw heavily on Dr Who; with some historical fiction (which walked on the edge between some cringey prithee-heavy dialogue and some actually very beautiful writing); political commentary (here on why we accept the world as it is while also believing it can be changed); an examination of abusive relationships; and a actually moving description of mental illness.
Secondly (perhaps less obviously) “American Dirt” a novel which, both in its writing and in the choice of marketing publicity, was open to heavy criticism but where much of the actual criticism directed, both in mainstream media and here on Goodreads, was either by people who had not really read the book (and were reacting second hand) or by others who seemed to overtly focus on some scenes in the book which to be honest they had, mis or at least over-interpreted (I would like to think by accident due to their hurt/sensitivity to the issues it raised for them).
This book is also I think a rather ambitious but sometimes very clumsily executed mix of:
Relatively standard/derivative dystopian (possibly utopian) science fiction (the particular trope here being the sudden rapture-style disappearance of men);
A twist on this aspect which rather than really spending too much time trying to add some pseudo-science to explain it – instead goes for much more of a X-Factor/spooky/mystical/open-ended explanation with a series of strange and videos of those who disappeared (which give the book its title) which fuel various conspiracy theories, and a resolution which will I think prove very controversial with some readers (and give those looking for an excuse to criticise the book some ammunition);
Two very involved back stories for the two main characters (which feel like they could and possibly should have been a novel in themselves) – one serving as a quote troubling examination of an abusive grooming-style relationship in ballet, and the other as an examination of American societal/police racism against an African-American traditional religious movement as well as of an radical form of politics based on mixing the Biological concept of Commensalism with a view that additional wealth adds effectively zero Utility.
I say clumsily executed because in the disappearance story the author (and possibly publishers) attempt to add racial diversity and to address issues of gender fluidity seems (to me) rather tokenistic and also appears to have backfired.
Overall definitely an interesting novel which is already dividing opinion in readers and on which I have decidedly mixed opinions.
March 12, 2022
Did you know that chromosomes are a very complicated topic? No? Neither did the author but still decided to write an entire transphobic book about it. 🤡
March 3, 2024
Cuánta controversia en un libro, no sé ni por dónde empezar por los ¿editores? porque ok, la autora puede que se pierda en su camino de ser muy blanca, muy heteorsexual y muy cis, pero ¿dónde están sus editores? Una novela escrita en el 2023 donde de manera intencional se borra a las mujeres y hombres trans me parece totalmente desfasada porque entonces la autora eligió el camino fácil sin querer meterse en pedos, pero si no te quieres meter en pedos es por dos razones: 1) porque no te interesa profundizar en el tema y prefieres dejarlo a la ligera 2) porque estás haciendo un statement lo cual todavía me parece más escandaloso en pleno 2024 muy al estilo JK Rwoling.
Le entré al libro porque la premisa me parecía muy interesante de averiguar cómo la autora resolvería con sus personajes lo que las mujeres (blancas, cis, heterosexuales y planas) harían en un mundo sin hombres (regresamos a la exclusividad de varones cis heterosexuales) esto de los cix heterosexuales no lo sabes hasta que vas a más de la mitad del libro. Pensé, inocentemente que metería complejidad y diversidad de personajes y por eso seguí leyendo.
Muy contrariada me encuentro con que para la autora, las mujeres siguen siendo represnetadas como unas bestias salvajes que solo saben llorar y ponerse histéricas cuando ven que su marido desapareció, o su hijo ya no está. Por otro lado, están las mujeres que viven como en comuna hippie felices de haberse salvado , por fin, de los hombres acosadores, violadores, mientras el mundo se está cayendo a pedazos. Incendios, fugas de agua, empresas paradas porque no hay hombres que hagan esos trabajos. La autora plantea un apocalipsis de género rebuscado, sin sentido, sin resolución.
A la mitad de la historia te das cuenta que se inclina por una de sus personajas mujeres con un pasado super creepy (traumático) y empieza a desarrollar otra historia como si fuera otra línea de tiempo, ¿un sueño, una alucinación? donde se encuentra con una exnovia negra, a la cual la mujer blanca la pone como la "salvadora". (otra vez)
Es una lectura caótica, revuelta, sin sentido y sobre todo con una postura muy radical. Lo cual, en estos tiempos me parece un discurso algo peligroso. Tampoco sabe resolver nada de qué harían las mujeres en un mundo sin hombres, tampoco sabe resolver nada de universos paraelos o realidades alternas y el final... dios mío. Las últimas 200 páginas las leía solo por encima para saber si me encontraba con algo que valiera la pena y quería llegar al final que fue una patada donde la mujer blanca cis heterosexual no hace lo que tiene que hacer....
NO soy quién para decir que es un libro transfóbico, pero el borrado de la comunidad trans es imperdonable.
Le entré al libro porque la premisa me parecía muy interesante de averiguar cómo la autora resolvería con sus personajes lo que las mujeres (blancas, cis, heterosexuales y planas) harían en un mundo sin hombres (regresamos a la exclusividad de varones cis heterosexuales) esto de los cix heterosexuales no lo sabes hasta que vas a más de la mitad del libro. Pensé, inocentemente que metería complejidad y diversidad de personajes y por eso seguí leyendo.
Muy contrariada me encuentro con que para la autora, las mujeres siguen siendo represnetadas como unas bestias salvajes que solo saben llorar y ponerse histéricas cuando ven que su marido desapareció, o su hijo ya no está. Por otro lado, están las mujeres que viven como en comuna hippie felices de haberse salvado , por fin, de los hombres acosadores, violadores, mientras el mundo se está cayendo a pedazos. Incendios, fugas de agua, empresas paradas porque no hay hombres que hagan esos trabajos. La autora plantea un apocalipsis de género rebuscado, sin sentido, sin resolución.
A la mitad de la historia te das cuenta que se inclina por una de sus personajas mujeres con un pasado super creepy (traumático) y empieza a desarrollar otra historia como si fuera otra línea de tiempo, ¿un sueño, una alucinación? donde se encuentra con una exnovia negra, a la cual la mujer blanca la pone como la "salvadora". (otra vez)
Es una lectura caótica, revuelta, sin sentido y sobre todo con una postura muy radical. Lo cual, en estos tiempos me parece un discurso algo peligroso. Tampoco sabe resolver nada de qué harían las mujeres en un mundo sin hombres, tampoco sabe resolver nada de universos paraelos o realidades alternas y el final... dios mío. Las últimas 200 páginas las leía solo por encima para saber si me encontraba con algo que valiera la pena y quería llegar al final que fue una patada donde la mujer blanca cis heterosexual no hace lo que tiene que hacer....
NO soy quién para decir que es un libro transfóbico, pero el borrado de la comunidad trans es imperdonable.
March 4, 2022
What a strange, hypnotic, lyrical book. Based off the premise, I was expecting more of a straightforward dystopian pandemic-type novel. Instead, it was a gorgeously written novel about gender, sexuality, race, and the variety of ways in which humans damage each other intentionally and through misunderstandings, with a heavy dash of sci-fi in-between.
I'm not sure that having multiple perspectives shown was necessary, especially since the bulk of the story was told from Jane's first person POV. I would have preferred to stay with her, especially since Alma, Ji-Won, Blanca, and Ruth were not given very much character depth. And while they do end up connecting, I don't think it's necessary for the novel.
I feel conflicted about the ending, and feel that it was a bit abrupt, but overall it was such a well-written, beautiful book that I bumped it from 3.5 to 4 stars.
Thanks for the digital ARC, NetGalley!!
I'm not sure that having multiple perspectives shown was necessary, especially since the bulk of the story was told from Jane's first person POV. I would have preferred to stay with her, especially since Alma, Ji-Won, Blanca, and Ruth were not given very much character depth. And while they do end up connecting, I don't think it's necessary for the novel.
I feel conflicted about the ending, and feel that it was a bit abrupt, but overall it was such a well-written, beautiful book that I bumped it from 3.5 to 4 stars.
Thanks for the digital ARC, NetGalley!!
dnf-or-on-hold
March 22, 2022Excellent review by Ana Mardoll detailing the many ways this book is transphobic (not to mention racist, ableist, etc...):
https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status... (on Twitter)
http://www.anamardoll.com/2022/03/ind... (on blog)
https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status... (on Twitter)
http://www.anamardoll.com/2022/03/ind... (on blog)
March 4, 2022
What a strange, hypnotic, lyrical book. Based off the premise, I was expecting more of a straightforward dystopian pandemic-type novel. Instead, it was a gorgeously written novel about gender, sexuality, race, and the variety of ways in which humans damage each other intentionally and through misunderstandings, with a heavy dash of sci-fi in-between.
I'm not sure that having multiple perspectives shown was necessary, especially since the bulk of the story was told from Jane's first person POV. I would have preferred to stay with her, especially since Alma, Ji-Won, Blanca, and Ruth were not given very much character depth. And while they do end up connecting, I don't think it's necessary for the novel.
I feel conflicted about the ending, and feel that it was a bit abrupt, but overall it was such a well-written, beautiful book that I bumped it from 3.5 to 4 stars.
Thanks for the digital ARC, NetGalley!!
I'm not sure that having multiple perspectives shown was necessary, especially since the bulk of the story was told from Jane's first person POV. I would have preferred to stay with her, especially since Alma, Ji-Won, Blanca, and Ruth were not given very much character depth. And while they do end up connecting, I don't think it's necessary for the novel.
I feel conflicted about the ending, and feel that it was a bit abrupt, but overall it was such a well-written, beautiful book that I bumped it from 3.5 to 4 stars.
Thanks for the digital ARC, NetGalley!!
May 29, 2022
Controversial before it even appeared in print, Sandra Newman’s novel’s an awkward, sometimes perplexing mix of speculative fiction and trauma fantasy. Her plot opens with a whole swathe of people suddenly disappearing from the known/charted world, their only shared characteristic that they were all capable or “potentially capable” of producing sperm. Central to the narrative is Jane Pearson a convicted sex offender, who as a teenager was groomed and exploited, and then falsely assumed to be in cahoots with her victimiser. Alongside Jane, Newman includes a host of other, more peripheral recurring figures, but Jane’s the only one whose story’s recounted in the first person. It’s not clear what’s happened to the lost population but an online streaming site offers access to a series called ‘The Men’ a possible reality show in which the lost seem to be existing in a kind of hellish parallel world, at the mercy of strange, unclassifiable creatures.
Newman’s novel’s been slated for its portrayal of gender identity particularly when it comes to the trans community, and I think I can see why that's the case, although what Newman actually intended to communicate isn’t easy to fathom - I found her representation of gender and gender identity overall here surprisingly clumsy, confused and confusing. Newman’s been explicit about the fact that she’s writing in relation to a long and specific history of feminist SF fiction from Herland to The Female Man and the book features a number of references to canonical SF texts including The Island of Dr Moreau but the structuring of the material is convoluted, the way the action shifts between an array of characters doesn’t help with that, just as one is established, another’s introduced. The ending too is a rather bewildering one. I think on some level this is intended as a kind of ironic, social commentary/satire about contemporary America in relation to racism and gender-based oppression – there’s something slightly Nabokovian about Jane’s backstory - but I couldn’t really connect with it or it could be that it simply misfires. It may be that others will see things in this that I’ve managed to miss or overlook but my overall impression was a less than positive one. There are some intriguing elements and some well-written or inventive passages but I didn’t find the social critique particularly engaging or convincing, and Jane’s story didn’t work for me. Ultimately this was just too heavy-handed for my taste and at times I found the pace excruciatingly slow.
Thanks to Netgalley and Granta for an ARC
Rating: 1.5 rounded up
Newman’s novel’s been slated for its portrayal of gender identity particularly when it comes to the trans community, and I think I can see why that's the case, although what Newman actually intended to communicate isn’t easy to fathom - I found her representation of gender and gender identity overall here surprisingly clumsy, confused and confusing. Newman’s been explicit about the fact that she’s writing in relation to a long and specific history of feminist SF fiction from Herland to The Female Man and the book features a number of references to canonical SF texts including The Island of Dr Moreau but the structuring of the material is convoluted, the way the action shifts between an array of characters doesn’t help with that, just as one is established, another’s introduced. The ending too is a rather bewildering one. I think on some level this is intended as a kind of ironic, social commentary/satire about contemporary America in relation to racism and gender-based oppression – there’s something slightly Nabokovian about Jane’s backstory - but I couldn’t really connect with it or it could be that it simply misfires. It may be that others will see things in this that I’ve managed to miss or overlook but my overall impression was a less than positive one. There are some intriguing elements and some well-written or inventive passages but I didn’t find the social critique particularly engaging or convincing, and Jane’s story didn’t work for me. Ultimately this was just too heavy-handed for my taste and at times I found the pace excruciatingly slow.
Thanks to Netgalley and Granta for an ARC
Rating: 1.5 rounded up
August 30, 2022
Captivating. This is the kind of book in which each sentence offers its own small rewards and that is usually enough to keep me going. But I then became deeply involved in the rich characters and their stories and how they all came together in surprising and revealing ways. This seems to me to be an unusually thoughtful take on the premise and the questions it raises. A (beautifully) strange and penetrating book that stayed with me while I wasn't reading and is still with me now. (High praise.)
March 6, 2022
Please can we stop with the transmisogyny and transphobia? I'm so tired of this
March 1, 2022
This was an enjoyable read that definitely gave off supernatural and dark/disturbing vibes. It is well written, with an enaging storyline and well developed characters. I didn't know what to expect but I really liked it and it will be with me for a while to come.
March 7, 2022
I have not read this book. The one-star rating is for the transphobic premise alone. "The Men", as Newman titles it, is about everyone with XY chromosomes disappearing. However, she states on her Twitter that trans women and AMAB non binary people disappear along with the cisgender men... so why title it as such? Why blatantly misgender trans people? Newman explains that everything is explained in the book, but to what extent? Why title your book about everyone with a Y chromosome disappearing "The Men", when very obviously not only men disappear and not all of the men do so either (Obviously the premise also does not account for basic genetics and how many cisgender women can also have Y chromosomes? But that's another thing). I don't plan on spending any money to read this book, because I can assure myself that it would be a waste of however much Newman is charging for it. Overall, a waste of paper and hard work writing and editing.
May 30, 2022
An interesting and extremely polarizing (based on the reviews that were left on goodreads) read about the aftermath of a strange event in which all men suddenly vanish. Just poof, disappear without a trace.
In The Men, we are with Jane, who was napping in a hammock while her husband and five year old son are cooking and hanging out camping in the woods, as she awakens to find them missing. Isolated from the rest of the town, she doesn't understand what has happened, believing them to have gone for a walk and gotten lost or hurt, or worse. After 10 days of screaming for them and endlessly searching the woods, it isn't until she drives down off the mountain that the reality of the situation finally starts to sink in.
As Jane begins to catch up with the rest of the world, the immediate panic everyone else was thrown into has begun to settle and we see women adapting to the men's absence. Sure, they miss their hubands and sons and brothers and friends. And yes, planes fell from the sky, and people died on operating tables, and the power and water failed for a while. But as society grieves, so do they also pull together to keep things going.
Jane discovers an ex-girlfriend is leading a new rising political power called ComPA and as they reunite, and as we are treated to much of their backstories, both in their times before and with each other, we are also introduced introduced to a few other women who begin watching The Men, which is widely believed to be deepfake live-streaming footage of the men marching through a barren, damaged place and accompanied by creepy, alien-like animals. But at end of each of these clips, the names of all of those who were filmed appear in the credits, and many women become glued to the tv, waiting and hoping, or perhaps not hoping?, to see if their men are there.
What is this strange footage? Is it a hoax? From where is it streaming? Where have the men really gone? Not to worry, folks. Readers who hang in there seeking the answers to those questions will be rewarded at the end.
A quirky and fractured spin on the female-only dystopia genre.
In The Men, we are with Jane, who was napping in a hammock while her husband and five year old son are cooking and hanging out camping in the woods, as she awakens to find them missing. Isolated from the rest of the town, she doesn't understand what has happened, believing them to have gone for a walk and gotten lost or hurt, or worse. After 10 days of screaming for them and endlessly searching the woods, it isn't until she drives down off the mountain that the reality of the situation finally starts to sink in.
As Jane begins to catch up with the rest of the world, the immediate panic everyone else was thrown into has begun to settle and we see women adapting to the men's absence. Sure, they miss their hubands and sons and brothers and friends. And yes, planes fell from the sky, and people died on operating tables, and the power and water failed for a while. But as society grieves, so do they also pull together to keep things going.
Jane discovers an ex-girlfriend is leading a new rising political power called ComPA and as they reunite, and as we are treated to much of their backstories, both in their times before and with each other, we are also introduced introduced to a few other women who begin watching The Men, which is widely believed to be deepfake live-streaming footage of the men marching through a barren, damaged place and accompanied by creepy, alien-like animals. But at end of each of these clips, the names of all of those who were filmed appear in the credits, and many women become glued to the tv, waiting and hoping, or perhaps not hoping?, to see if their men are there.
What is this strange footage? Is it a hoax? From where is it streaming? Where have the men really gone? Not to worry, folks. Readers who hang in there seeking the answers to those questions will be rewarded at the end.
A quirky and fractured spin on the female-only dystopia genre.
April 2, 2022
Though it's called The Men, this book is mainly about women, which suggests that even when the subject is women, men will still be the ones in the title. Try as you might to eliminste thr men, so much continues to be about them. Disguised as science fiction, then further disguised as social commentary, this novel, like all good novels, turns out to be about relationships. Jane Pearson (related to Nabokov's Hugh Person?) tries to make sense of a crazy world but (spoiler alert?) fails. She fails by succeeding but it turns out "We have no real face; they are masks that are borrowed and passed on, that live for millenia and are what a human is. ... There is no truth about life."
March 15, 2022
The idea behind this novel isn’t exactly novel – the world has been de-manned before fictionally. Y The Last Man comes to mind immediately, for one thing. So the novelty here is in the spin. Wherein YTLM did the arguably misogynistic thing of telling the story of a man-free world from the perspective of the last man alive, The Men is a women’s story, a story of women surviving in a suddenly and strikingly changed world.
Then again, a. I never found YTLM misogynistic, I found it poignant and fascinating and very clever and b. I like a large sprawling take on dystopia that informs of all the ways society changes and this novel tells a much more contained story.
The Men is essentially several separate narrative strands of different women that eventually weaves itself into one, and that one is mainly a tale of Jane Pearson, a wife and a mother, who finds herself alone and adrift and that drift takes her right back to her ex, once an infamous political voice and now a potent political power.
In the past, Jane and her ex have both been victims of the system. Jane is now forever associated with a sex abuse scandal and her ex is officially a cop killer. That alone allows the novel to pontificate the societal evils elaborately and thoroughly, covering the justice system, racism, gender, sexuality, the court of public opinion, etc.
Their relationship is fraught and complicated and only gets more so as the time progresses.
And all the while, there’s a strange footage that everyone’s watching that show the disappeared men going on about their business…adding a strangely surreal element to the already somewhat surreal proceedings.
All in all, it’s a very strange book. The narrative is dense and light on dialogue, but it has a very nice flow to it. There’s a hypnotic quality there even, it’s immensely readable in all its strangeness. And it’s positively laden with morals and messages that are strategically targeted to the modern woke audiences. It’s an interesting and an intriguing novel, but it leaves something to be desired. In no small way, due to that cheat of an ending. Not sure what to make of that twist, can’t discuss it – it would give too much away, but it kind of cheapens the novel and distracts and detracts from its overall poignancy. Or at least, it did for me.
Either way, interesting enough of a read to be worth your time, especially for the gender-based dystopian fans out there. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
Then again, a. I never found YTLM misogynistic, I found it poignant and fascinating and very clever and b. I like a large sprawling take on dystopia that informs of all the ways society changes and this novel tells a much more contained story.
The Men is essentially several separate narrative strands of different women that eventually weaves itself into one, and that one is mainly a tale of Jane Pearson, a wife and a mother, who finds herself alone and adrift and that drift takes her right back to her ex, once an infamous political voice and now a potent political power.
In the past, Jane and her ex have both been victims of the system. Jane is now forever associated with a sex abuse scandal and her ex is officially a cop killer. That alone allows the novel to pontificate the societal evils elaborately and thoroughly, covering the justice system, racism, gender, sexuality, the court of public opinion, etc.
Their relationship is fraught and complicated and only gets more so as the time progresses.
And all the while, there’s a strange footage that everyone’s watching that show the disappeared men going on about their business…adding a strangely surreal element to the already somewhat surreal proceedings.
All in all, it’s a very strange book. The narrative is dense and light on dialogue, but it has a very nice flow to it. There’s a hypnotic quality there even, it’s immensely readable in all its strangeness. And it’s positively laden with morals and messages that are strategically targeted to the modern woke audiences. It’s an interesting and an intriguing novel, but it leaves something to be desired. In no small way, due to that cheat of an ending. Not sure what to make of that twist, can’t discuss it – it would give too much away, but it kind of cheapens the novel and distracts and detracts from its overall poignancy. Or at least, it did for me.
Either way, interesting enough of a read to be worth your time, especially for the gender-based dystopian fans out there. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
June 18, 2022
I was initially interested in this because I enjoy dystopian sci-fi, and I loved The Leftovers and even some of Left Behind. I think this book tried, but it just didn’t hit the mark for me.
We start with a woman camping with her son and husband. When she wakes up, they’re both gone. She calls for them and searches, finally calling emergency services. She then learns there’s been a mass disappearance of everyone with a Y chromosome. She can’t believe what she’s hearing and keeps searching for them.
Finally back in civilization, women are crying and hugging each other. The gravity of the situation is becoming clear. Government is in shambles, nuclear plants are understaffed, planes have crashed because the pilots disappeared leaving no way into the cockpit.
We cycle through other women searching for the men in their lives or looking for ways to adapt to this new reality. Conspiracy theories are flying and a lot of women are having to face their issues. Then The Men appear on TV. What’s that all about?! They don’t know if it’s real or a deep fake. Credits show and it replays. Very creepy stuff.
I didn’t know about the controversy surrounding this until I had started the audiobook and was looking at some reviews. So I was sure to be alert for any bigotry and I did not see any. Trans women disappeared and it was seen as an injustice. So that’s all I can say on that front. I hate that the author had to set her accounts to private over this.
It simply wasn’t the kind of dystopia I like. The narration was good. It started off strong but as the women were traveling around I got bored and I got people mixed up. We lost the creepy factor and moved more into thriller movie type of content in my opinion.
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and author for the chance to listen and review!
We start with a woman camping with her son and husband. When she wakes up, they’re both gone. She calls for them and searches, finally calling emergency services. She then learns there’s been a mass disappearance of everyone with a Y chromosome. She can’t believe what she’s hearing and keeps searching for them.
Finally back in civilization, women are crying and hugging each other. The gravity of the situation is becoming clear. Government is in shambles, nuclear plants are understaffed, planes have crashed because the pilots disappeared leaving no way into the cockpit.
We cycle through other women searching for the men in their lives or looking for ways to adapt to this new reality. Conspiracy theories are flying and a lot of women are having to face their issues. Then The Men appear on TV. What’s that all about?! They don’t know if it’s real or a deep fake. Credits show and it replays. Very creepy stuff.
I didn’t know about the controversy surrounding this until I had started the audiobook and was looking at some reviews. So I was sure to be alert for any bigotry and I did not see any. Trans women disappeared and it was seen as an injustice. So that’s all I can say on that front. I hate that the author had to set her accounts to private over this.
It simply wasn’t the kind of dystopia I like. The narration was good. It started off strong but as the women were traveling around I got bored and I got people mixed up. We lost the creepy factor and moved more into thriller movie type of content in my opinion.
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and author for the chance to listen and review!
September 7, 2022
I’m hesitant to write a review because of the weird transphobic witch-hunt happening. My hesitance comes from a feeling of “missing something,” in that the book didn’t seem transphobic to me? There were only a couple scenes that featured trans characters and the scenes were there to illuminate that the disappearance of the “men” was rooted in biology, e.g. anyone with a Y chromosome, so some trans women were gone. There was a scene regarding trans men who didn’t disappear because they didn’t have a Y chromosome. This doesn’t seem transphobic to me. It didn’t disregard their transitioned social identity/gender as invalid, only explained that the disappearance was rooted in a genetic component that could not be changed, thus it was about biological sex and not social expression of gender wrt who disappeared and who didn’t. It would have been interesting to flip that so that the expressed gender was what determined their ousting from the world, but that path would have been far more complicated as social commentary and that just wasn’t the thesis of the novel. The novel’s intention isn’t to explore these social gender dynamics at length, and that’s ok, that doesn’t make it transphobic. MOST novels don’t have trans representation AT ALL so the fact that this author purposefully placed these couple of scenes to show how the vanishing impacted trans folks actually felt very progressive. They were recognized and their social identities were validated as social despite their underlying fixed biology.
With that said, I thought the book was entertaining, but nothing groundbreaking. It certainly fell into a myopic perspective of what felt like “man hating,” rhetoric, but I don’t think that is something people should be attacking the author for (what’s with everyone being so mad at her?). It’s provocative. It’s an extreme take and it’s meant to be an extreme take. That doesn’t mean the author is this terrible man hating wench or something, it means she thought it would make interesting fiction.
People grabbing their pitchforks over this need to chill. It’s fiction. It’s extreme in one direction to be controversial and get you to think critically about what you agree and disagree with in this COMPLETELY MADE UP society. Vilifying the author for it is weird and immature. It’s like saying Nabokov was a pedophile because he wrote Lolita.
With that said, I thought the book was entertaining, but nothing groundbreaking. It certainly fell into a myopic perspective of what felt like “man hating,” rhetoric, but I don’t think that is something people should be attacking the author for (what’s with everyone being so mad at her?). It’s provocative. It’s an extreme take and it’s meant to be an extreme take. That doesn’t mean the author is this terrible man hating wench or something, it means she thought it would make interesting fiction.
People grabbing their pitchforks over this need to chill. It’s fiction. It’s extreme in one direction to be controversial and get you to think critically about what you agree and disagree with in this COMPLETELY MADE UP society. Vilifying the author for it is weird and immature. It’s like saying Nabokov was a pedophile because he wrote Lolita.
June 14, 2022
I opened this novel when I boarded a flight from New York, read nonstop and barely looked up. The Men carried me along swiftly and deposited me at Midway Airport in Chicago with my head spinning and full of topics to discuss on the cab ride to my destination. Sandra Newman is, no doubt, a genius, and anything I say here can’t measure up to what she can achieve in one tweet, a paragraph, or a single page. She definitely knows how to tell a story and what makes a good book. Her interpersonal insight impresses me and her plot moves. The Men grapples with all kinds of love and conflict, power and lack thereof, force of personality and frailty of character, the world we live in and the world we recoil from. It looks at forgiveness and perseverance and what we put up with, what we *keep* putting up with. But that part might just be me. Read it for yourself before you let anyone else decide what this book means to you. Side note: There is nothing transphobic about this book. Sandra Newman clearly took great care as she wrote it.
May 31, 2022
I know Sandra, but her new book unexpectedly fits into a category of book I've been reading lately and I had no idea that it would. (I've been so caught up in my own research I haven't talked to her about what she was working on.) I don't have a name for the category yet, but the best examples of it are The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel and Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. I'm not talking about structure, I hope I remember to come back here to explain just what it is I am talking about when I can speak about it more coherently.
But I will say that The Men is the kind of book you finish in one sitting if you can, and you close the book saying something along the lines of, "Holy shit." But a good holy shit. It took my breath away it was so exquisite. And comforting, but not a false comfort. Still, I feel like I can rest easier now, even in the face of terrible times.
But I will say that The Men is the kind of book you finish in one sitting if you can, and you close the book saying something along the lines of, "Holy shit." But a good holy shit. It took my breath away it was so exquisite. And comforting, but not a false comfort. Still, I feel like I can rest easier now, even in the face of terrible times.
March 12, 2022
This one time I write a review to a book I haven't read, because the premise alone is horribly transmisogynistic. Every person with XY chromosmes vanishing, including trans women and nb people, is not the hot take the author thinks it is. This is not inclusive, none at all. This is in fact extremely violent towards genderqueer people. Don't read it, don't give it any public space at all. Let it flop horribly and vanish into nothingness, because literally nobody needs transmisogynistic shit like this.
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