A violent serial rapist is on the loose, who goes by the name Maude. She hunts for men at bars, online, at home— the place doesn’t matter, neither does the man. Her victims then must live the aftermath of their assault in the form of doubt, shame and alienation.
Any Man tracks the criminal exploits of a female serial rapist through the stories of her six victims, as they attempt to recover and live normal lives. The book is part poetry experiment, and part transtextual commentary on the media frenzy surrounding rape cases in real life ... Tamblyn took inspiration from her friend Rose McGowan — who was appalled that every article about her bore the face of her assailant — and gave her rapist character no voice or POV ... Any Man is nothing if not expansive in vision.
Amber Tamblyn...prominent voice of the Me Too movement — has written a book about a female serial rapist who preys on men. Any Man is her debut novel, and it has a few interesting things to say about rape culture and social media, shame and survival. These flickers of insight are spread thin across a short, experimental novel, built with odd parts that never quite come together ... Tamblyn takes some admirable stylistic risks, but the book reads like a first draft — a handful of good ideas thrown out and left where fallen, without the rich language or disciplined structure needed to give them power.
...poet Tamblyn nimbly flips the usual dynamic of sexual predation, writing about a female serial rapist who preys on men. The first victim...is Donald Ellis, a grade school teacher in Watertown, N.Y., whom she drugs and sexually mutilates. Donald’s experience becomes the lens through which the assaults of at least three other victims are viewed, and though Maude’s method of assault is very different for each, the fallout in every case is very much the same: shame and humiliation for the victim, feelings of helplessness among their family and friends, and exploitation by the media ... The suspense of whether Maude will be apprehended and her motives understood propels this powerful meditation on the horrors of rape culture.
