It’s a thrill to hear the characters develop on the page ... One of the better portrayals of addiction I’ve encountered in literature, up there with books by Jean Rhys and Leslie Jamison, and one that almost convinces you of the exhilaration in using ... There is a stubbornly idealistic streak across Despentes’s fiction, and in Dear Dickhead it’s unmissable.
A more nuanced and redemptive novel than fans might expect from this poète maudit of the marginalized ... This is the most optimistic novel of Despentes’ career. It also may be the most subversive.
In many ways, a sentimental book, forbearing toward its characters and essentially optimistic about the human capacity to change for the better. In clumsier hands, it could have devolved into an apology for men behaving badly ... . In a world that offers little in the way of consequences for abusers—indeed, where abusers can be rewarded for their temerity—we might decide, as Zoé does, to get up, get out, and build another world with anyone willing to try. A life worth living is its own form of revenge, and so is a self you can live it with.
Despentes reveals the epistolary as maybe the perfect form for the pandemic era. In those months and years spent distanced, maybe the only true form of storytelling is that of distant communication, of words sent over wires as our sole tool for empathy. Despentes captures a surprising amount of growth in these letters, revealing the odd truth that, for some, the pandemic was a catalyst and not just a pause or an end. In realizing that truth and the way she depicted it, Despentes may have written the first great pandemic novel—one that is funny, emphatic and real, as all great epistolary novels are.
If you’re in the mood for this sort of thing you’ll enjoy it. If you’re not, it’ll drive you mad. I kept wondering why I wasn’t falling into the latter camp, but the energy of Despentes’s voice kept me on her side.
