PanThe DefectorThe book is ill-conceived and poorly wrought, a cynical scripture from the Church of Taylor Swift that relies on circular, shallow argumentation leading the reader nowhere. The central premise, that Swift and Plath are both victims of the patriarchal distaste for prolific woman artists, comes off as tired and outdated; parts of the book read like they belong back in 2015, on the shelf beside a Ruth Bader Ginsburg mug ... There’s a notable absence of many of Nelson’s usual strengths ... The reader is rushed through a series of progressively harder-to-swallow claims and meandering paths of contradictory evidence about Swift and Plath’s careers ... The landscape of repression upon which Nelson’s entire argument relies is only somewhat persuasive on a first read and nearly vanishes upon review ... Her \'feminist\' argument is so poorly supported that one wonders if Nelson herself believes it.
