Virginie Despentes’s ‘90s feminist punk pulp fiction makes for the best summer reading—all of her sparkling rage goes incandescent in the sunshine with a glass of something effervescent ... It’s pulp in every sense: propulsively readable, violent, sexy, with all the satisfaction of an inevitable ending. And yet it’s also a feminist parable, blunt and unrelenting in its wrath.
...a forceful, visceral novel about femininity, violence, and personhood ... Despentes’s novel is chilling and wonderful, coolly presenting the raw, jagged edge of womanhood.
As relevant now as when it was first published in French in 1998, this novel shreds the feminine ideal to pieces ... Despentes is a French writer, critic, and noted feminist, and this novel shows her at her best: It is a mean little book, wickedly funny, totally lascivious, often pornographic ... Unfortunately, the book suffers from the kind of flatness that afflicts all ideological fiction ... A sharp, screwy, messy take on modern femininity.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
