All is fair in love and war, as the old saying goes, and our work is surely situated somewhere between the two.
Yeah, this is the book I wanted Hey, Zoey to be-- a thoughtful meditation on the ethics of sex robots as AI becomes increasingly intelligent. What does this mean for the robots? What does this mean for "real" women?
With the exception of, I think, a weak and odd ending, The Hierarchies gives a pretty good examination of the above questions. Sylv.ie is a robot created for her husband's pleasure. Impossibly beautiful, programmed to serve, unfailingly obedient... until she isn't. Until she starts to question the life she has and those who have control over her. Until she realises she is not ready to accept what she has been forced into without her consent.
Sylv.ie is seen as a sex toy by many men of the novel, but many "born" women also hate these new "created" women, for a variety of reasons. Some clear-- such as them leading their husbands astray and making a mockery of what they think it means to be a woman --and some more vague and tied into the politics of this strange dystopian world where the story is set.
"How hard it must be, to be a Born woman," Mais.ie says philosophically. "Imagine playing a game where the main rule was that you had to lose every time."
There is a very discomfiting part of this book when the naked robots are being tossed around and having new vaginas fitted by male workers who obviously see them as just pieces of plastic. Something about this particular scene called to mind Bazterrica's Tender is the Flesh and the way the characters there disassociated themselves from the humans they were farming.
While plenty of stuff does happen in this book, some of it dramatic and horrible (warning for sexual assault/rape), I would primarily describe it as a philosophical book that explores the nature of personhood, fear of technology, and exploitation.
“I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.”
4 1/2
“I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.”
4 1/2 stars. Wow. This tiny, disquieting book carries a sadness that the most popular tearjerkers could never hope to capture.
It sits outside of genre, outside of time, outside of the reality we know, introducing the reader to a world unfamiliar to both them and the unnamed protagonist. The result is a palpable feeling of wonder and loneliness.
I have decided to round up because this book made me feel so deeply, and because I have decided that my personal frustrations are perhaps misguided. There were things that I was hoping for from this book that I didn't get, but then I was never promised them, and, in fact, the past tense narration forewarned I would not get them. So that's my problem.
The story starts in an underground bunker where thirty-nine women and one young girl-- our narrator --are imprisoned in a cage. They don't remember how they got there and they have no idea why they are there. The women remember a life before the cage with families, friends and jobs, but the child remembers only their current existence. They are watched over and fed by male guards who tell them nothing. It seems they are doomed to live and die in this cage... until one day a combination of chance and ingenuity provide an opportunity for freedom.
It is part eerie pastoral dystopia, part a deeply introspective novel about hope, loneliness and the things that give life meaning. The novel swings between the invigorating feeling of hope and the numbing despair of hopelessness.
I found myself wondering at one point if it was supposed to be a metaphor. (view spoiler)[The relentless pursuit of answers, of meaning, in a world that ultimately makes no sense. (hide spoiler)] But perhaps I am overthinking things.
Either way, this short novel sat like a ball of anxiety in my throat from beginning to end. What a sad, evocative little story....more
I was really disappointed with Hey, Zoey, but I will admit that it is partially my fault. The major problem was wrong expectations.
The premise soundedI was really disappointed with Hey, Zoey, but I will admit that it is partially my fault. The major problem was wrong expectations.
The premise sounded fantastic. Interactions between humans and AI have been done to death, but I’ve never come across this particular premise— the interaction between a woman and her husband’s sex robot. I was extremely interested in what the book would have to say.
Perhaps I did too much expecting from this book; I went into it anticipating a certain type of story-- a sci-fi/speculative fiction about the ethics of having sex with what is essentially a mindlessly-compliant woman --and what I actually got was a contemporary about a woman using her present to confront her past.
Zoey wasn’t as important a character as I wanted her to be. I think she could have just been a doll, minus the AI aspect, and the same message would have come across. I was really interested in seeing the conversations between these two women now that AI are coming up with intelligent, complex responses, but that was never the point of this book.
So... what about the actual story, not the one I thought I should be reading?
I think I would have liked it better if I went in with the right expectations, but it would not have been more than a 3-star read for me. There was way too much of Dolores and Gavin having these weird awkward conversations about nothing. It made me think of someone trying to emulate Sally Rooney, which always comes across as weird to me (see Cleopatra and Frankenstein).
There was also a lot of darting back and forth between the past and present, sometimes in very short snippets, to the extent that I often found it jarring. Also-- unless I am very confused, which is possible --the flashbacks did not appear to be in chronological order, making it quite difficult to follow sometimes.
I honestly do get the popularity of this book. I'm a big fan of Richard Osman from many years of watching Pointless, and The Thursday Murder Club is cI honestly do get the popularity of this book. I'm a big fan of Richard Osman from many years of watching Pointless, and The Thursday Murder Club is cosy and funny.
But the reason I have avoided it for so long is because I suspected this mix of comedy and mystery wouldn't be my cup of tea. And I was right. There were some entertaining bits, but I like my mysteries to be more suspenseful (and a bit darker, if we're being honest). Definitely not a bad book, but not really for me either....more
I have thought about reading one of these mens’ issues books for years. My instinct is to dismiss them as it's hard to listen to men complain how hardI have thought about reading one of these mens’ issues books for years. My instinct is to dismiss them as it's hard to listen to men complain how hard it is for them, but then I’ve always prided myself on being someone who is open to at least hearing differing viewpoints.
And, to be honest, I am a bit worried about what is going on with guys these days. I think we are getting to the point where we cannot continue ignoring the increasing number of boys being radicalised online and turning into Incels. Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women) convinced me we should be concerned, and I am. While Incels are trash, I am inclined to think this is a mental health crisis playing out in the worst way. I don’t think it’s enough to call them losers and forget about them; I think they are a real problem. Plus, I have three sons and want a good world for them.
It’s hard to find sympathy for some of this, though. It’s really hard. Basically… men have spent centuries barring women from education because we are just less intelligent, our brains are just not suited to critical thinking, we should leave the learning to the men… and now that they’ve let us in, it turns out girls are outperforming boys at every level of education. We are better at the system men built. I mean… it’s hard to feel bad. But I will try.
I agree with a number of things Reeves says.
I agree that we are actively getting more women into traditionally male-dominated roles, but not balancing that with more men in traditionally female-dominated caregiving roles. Though I also believe this is because we still perceive the feminine as weak and lesser, so a woman becoming more stereotypically masculine is bettering herself, but a man taking on a stereotypically feminine role is lessening himself.
Reeves also makes a big deal out of the fact that boys seem to respect male role models more than female ones, whereas the sex of a role model doesn’t seem to matter for girls— which he seems to take as a sign that we need to get boys more male role models, not that we need to teach them to have more respect for women.
I agree that this intersects with a class issue. Upper middle class men are doing just fine— indeed, Reeves states himself that 97% of venture capital goes to male founders —but it is men at the bottom of the social order who are struggling. This is largely because the jobs they traditionally filled are now being replaced by robots. I think boys need to be prepped from a young age to deal with this changing labour market. I have a thought— and this is just observational as someone who grew up working class but would now likely be considered middle class—that it seems it is mostly working class communities who are obsessed with traditional masculinity. I see it less amongst middle and upper middle class men.
Though Reeves doesn’t acknowledge this, one of my biggest takeaways from the numbers he gave is not the rise in women’s position compared to working class men, but the extravagant (and growing) wealth of the richest men compared to the poorest. It’s hard to look at these numbers and see anything other than the rich man keeping the poor man down.
In Part III: Biology and Culture, Reeves makes a lot of arguments that I just saw very effectively dismantled in Delusions of Gender, and this is also the part of the book that I think weakens his argument the most. It is the part where I started to think that Reeves has not fully organised his own beliefs on the definition of masculinity, the role of men, and the importance of biology. His thoughts on biology are along the lines of “there are biological differences between the sexes, not too much difference and they overlap, but still very important differences like men are less nurturing and more aggressive and lustful.” (not a direct quote)
He spends some time on the impact of culture on sex differences, even mentioning the studies that have suggested cultural roles create brain differences, not the other way around (if you’ve got some time, I recommend researching this because it is fascinating stuff), but defaults back to the fundamental differences argument. Despite providing strong arguments to the contrary, he is reluctant to let go of his insistence on the importance of innate neurological differences.
His marriage to neurological differences is at odds with some of his progressive policies. Men are naturally more aggressive and sexual, but let’s put more in charge of our young kids. Men are less nurturing, less likely to prioritise caregiving, but let’s give them equal paternity leave and get more into teaching roles.
I mean: which is it? Are men beholden to their aggressive biology, or should we expect them to adapt to caregiving roles in the workplace and at home? Personally, I think it’s the second, but Reeves spends a lot of this book emphasising the importance of biological differences.
Like too many men I have read, he seems to want sex differences to be immutable when it suits his argument, but flexible when it does not. Ambition, for example, has long been considered a male trait, but now Reeves says of girls “their appetite for success is just higher”.
He also, like Hans Rosling (his self-described “hero”), carefully emphasises the importance of numbers that support his argument while downplaying others. “Strikingly” is used to describe “the proportion of girls versus boys getting high grades” which is 47% vs 32%. Then a couple paragraphs later he admits that boys still score higher on standardised tests but he dismisses this with “But this gap has narrowed sharply”.
Similarly, he says “three in ten wives now out-earn their husbands, twice as many as in 1981” like this is supposed to be a shockingly large amount. That’s seven out of ten husbands still out-earning wives— hardly reason to panic we’ve gone too far in the other direction.
While he insists he does not want to reverse the gains of women, Reeves is happy to quote misogynists (Case & Deaton) and patriarchy-deniers (Dench) when they say things he likes. He finishes one section with this: “The economic reliance of women on men held women down, but it also propped men up. Now the props have gone, and many men are falling.” I can’t believe I have to say this in 2023, but women are not your props.
My personal opinion, both as someone who has read quite widely on this and as a mother, is that the real change needs to happen in the nursery and preschools. Raise kind, sensitive boys who people will want as a partner. Sure, give them legos and tool kits, but give them drama classes, for example, to encourage interpersonal skills— which will be way more valuable in the changing labour market. And talk to them! Studies have shown that mums talk to boy babies less than girl babies (but of course men are less talkative because they’re biologically programmed that way).
Reeves says:
“Boys are five times more likely than girls to be frequently aggressive by the age of seventeen—seventeen months, that is.”
and
“Remember, boys under the age of 2 are five times more likely to be aggressive than girls. This is surely not because 1-year-olds have picked up gender cues from around them.”
That use of “no, not seventeen years— seventeen months!” is very Hans Rosling-style. It implies, of course, that seventeen month olds are so young that they cannot possibly be exposed to culture and stereotypes (and this is a man who has kids?) Let me tell you as a parent— a LOT has happened with development by seventeen months. My youngest is currently eleven months and he already has a personality of his own. 1 year olds are absolutely picking up on gender cues all the time and it took me becoming a parent to really appreciate the sheer amount they are exposed to. The subliminal messaging goes way beyond pink princesses and blue trucks.
On the lookout for more gender-neutral clothes for my babies, I was thinking that animals would be a safe bet. Animals aren’t gendered, right? Everyone likes animals. But just go take a look at the difference between animal themed clothing in the “Boys” and “Girls” sections. We dress our newborn girls in cute kitties, puppies and bunnies— the kind of animals you keep as pets. And our boys? Tigers, crocodiles and dinosaurs. How can anyone dress a newborn boy in predators and not for one second question that boys are “naturally more aggressive”?
I am all for equal paternity leave, getting boys into caregiving careers and changing the way we see mum as the default parent. Reeves sees this latter issue as being one of dads being barred from parenting, sometimes by a gatekeeper mother when the parents are separated, but that doesn’t reflect the experiences of any of the women I know. All I ever hear from other women— together or separated —is about how little fathers are willing to do.
I am less convinced by Reeves’ argument to hold all boys back a year and start school later than girls. I think if everything else he suggested is achieved, that would not be necessary. Though I am not strongly opposed either.
So I don’t agree with all Reeves’ arguments, but I do agree there is a problem. I think it starts from birth with boys being immersed in a culture that tells them they are more aggressive, more into building things than people. In a world where, as Reeves puts it, women increasingly don’t need men, they have no reason to stay with an aggressive partner or one who puts tinkering with his toys before the kids. Women have spent a couple centuries defying the cultural stereotypes assigned to them; it is my belief men can do the same if we stop telling them these stereotypes are natural or desirable....more
“Mama, you said monsters didn’t exist.” She lowered her head, feeling a great weight descend. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I lied.”
I hated this boo
“Mama, you said monsters didn’t exist.” She lowered her head, feeling a great weight descend. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I lied.”
I hated this book. Every horrifying, infuriating, anxiety-inducing page of it that had me staying up late reading, then unable to sleep. The suspense! The impossibility of looking away! The desperate need I now have for Sierra to write another book! It's just not fair.
Nightwatching drops you right in the middle of the horror with the very first line: "There was someone in the house."
A mother, alone and helpless in the house with an intruder, must do everything she can to keep her kids safe. As they hide in the house, she starts to feel she knows this man, recognises his voice, but at the same time come doubts for her memory, her sanity. The story alternates between the terrifying present and flashbacks that fill in the story of this woman and her family.
I picked this book up thinking I was getting some trashy fun fast-paced thriller-- which, don't get me wrong, I'm fine with --but what emerged was something I'm tempted to liken to The Push: a story equal parts intense, unputdownable, and a thoughtful, sad, frustrating psychological portrait of a woman and her fragile mental state.
I cannot overstate how much this book made me feel. It was genuinely horrifying. Parts were sad. I was so angry and frustrated for her that I wanted to scream. Nightwatching is one of those books that is so suspenseful that I felt very real panic and anxiety reading it. And now I have to return to the real world! And read something else! Tell me... how?...more
“I only wish I knew what we were dying for.” “Way of the world, luv. Very few people do.”
I jumped at the chance to read an arc of this, having enjo
“I only wish I knew what we were dying for.” “Way of the world, luv. Very few people do.”
I jumped at the chance to read an arc of this, having enjoyed the previous two Frankie Elkin books-- Before She Disappeared and One Step Too Far. And I did enjoy it in the end, but it took me longer to get into this one.
The prologue is excellent. Really dramatic, bloody and exciting, and it introduces us to a serial killer nicknamed 'The Beautiful Butcher.' After said prologue, we quickly learn she is on death row and her final wish is to discover what happened to her sister who went missing many years ago in Hawaii.
This task takes Frankie to a very small, remote (fictional) Hawaiian island where a filthy rich business tycoon ( and possible crime lord) is overseeing his latest project. By his side is his ward: the missing sister.
I felt like there was a huge chunk of the book after Frankie got to the island that moved very slowly. As is always the case, Frankie befriends an interesting cast of characters, but all they seem to do is prep stuff in the kitchen, discuss conservationism, and avoid coconut crabs.
I've felt in the other books that Frankie is less an investigator and more an observer, and once again she seems to do a bit of halfhearted looking around until the answers fall in her lap. When shit goes down-- when mystery turns to action --is when she really steps up and isn't afraid to get her hands dirty. Unfortunately, here that meant it seemed like not much happened until the later chapters of the book....more
The COVID-19 pandemic is only the beginning. Anti-science has become a new normal that threatens American democratic principles and our way of life
The COVID-19 pandemic is only the beginning. Anti-science has become a new normal that threatens American democratic principles and our way of life.
I appreciate the effort here and the important work Hotez is doing, both as a scientist and as someone trying to reach across political divides to halt the spread of anti-vax/anti-science conspiracies, but parts of this were really dry and difficult to get through.
I was interested in what the author had to say about the way authoritarian regimes have historically waged war against scientists, and the parallels he draws between the use of misinformation by the modern right (primarily in the US, but not always) and similar campaigns by the Soviet Union and Nazi Party. Other parts of the book were less interesting and felt like a rehash of what left-wing media has been writing about for years now.
Similarly, while I do understand why Hotez was keen to drive home the point that scientists are under attack, his doing so became tediously repetitious. ...more
This book is pretty old now-- as books about gender and sex go --but it's still highly relevant. Fine did a great job of exploring the "research" intoThis book is pretty old now-- as books about gender and sex go --but it's still highly relevant. Fine did a great job of exploring the "research" into sex differences and explaining what it actually shows and, more importantly, what it doesn't.
Possibly my biggest takeaway from this book is just how suggestible humans are. Both in terms of young children, even babies, who absorb gender stereotypes like sponges, and also adult researchers who interpret weak studies to mean what they already suspected was true.
Fine notes studies where girls taking a maths test were reminded of their gender prior to taking the test and performed far worse than girls in the group who were not reminded they were girls. Another study found that women outperformed men on an empathic accuracy test until men were offered a monetary reward, then-- guess what --they suddenly gained those empathy skills that are apparently hardwired into women.
She takes a look at the supposed "evidence" from MRIs, and finds that alleged differences between male and female brains is inconsistent, impossible to apply to real world behaviour, and differs pretty much every time these studies are repeated. She is especially scathing of the authors who confidently claim brain differences whilst citing studies that have shown no such differences.
I'm also glad she addressed the whole "gender-neutral" parenting thing, where parents claim that despite being super liberal and raising their children gender-neutral, those children still showed preference for gender stereotypical toys and clothes. As Fine points out: it is not possible to raise a child gender-neutral in a world where gender is constantly reinforced since before the child was even conceived. Believe me, I've tried.
I now have that feeling that hits me whenever I finish a good book about women, gender and sexism-- that kinda sad feeling that all the people who most need to read this book never will....more
But the truth is, men who want to protect women should never be trusted because we only feel the impulse to protect the things we think of as weake
But the truth is, men who want to protect women should never be trusted because we only feel the impulse to protect the things we think of as weaker than ourselves.
I thought about saying that One of the Good Guys is not as it first appears, but, thinking about it, I'm not sure that's true. As a woman who has dealt with her fair share of male bullshit, online and off, I actually think in many (miserable, tiring) ways this book was exactly what I expected. Though I don't mean that as a criticism.
I read through some reviews that said this book was over the top and unbelievable, which I'm glad is true for others. Unfortunately, there was very little in this book I found it difficult to believe. I won't spend my review rehashing the plot and giving stuff away, but let's just say this is a book for any woman who's had to listen to a man say "I support women's rights, but..."
The story didn't grip me straight away, but it didn't take long. There is a sense of wrongness about the first part of this book, a feeling that all is not right and something is coming, which kept me interested until the reveals started happening. After this point there was a lot of powerful social commentary, unveiled through the use of social media posts and podcast transcripts. I usually enjoy use of mixed media in my thrillers and it worked to keep the pacing up here.
To be clear, I don't think this is an especially strong mystery. One of the Good Guys is full of thought-provoking discussions but it is not really about pulling out a surprising answer to the whodunnit.
It's a book about the way women are treated in the modern world-- as victims, as bitches, as incubators --and it's about women finally saying yeah, you're not going to like me for this but it's time I stopped caring because:
[..] there is so much to fear as a woman, but what people think of you shouldn’t be one of them.
There was definitely a point in this book where I thought "god, I don't like any of these women" but then I smiled to myself because I think that was kinda the point....more
When other reviews called Eileen (the character) crazy and awful, I couldn't help being intrigued. I do so love a complex and unlikable female charactWhen other reviews called Eileen (the character) crazy and awful, I couldn't help being intrigued. I do so love a complex and unlikable female character. However, I found Eileen to be... honestly quite boring.
This is a character-driven mostly-plotless book in which Eileen seems to try to appear edgy by talking about shit and masturbation. I kept reading because I was under the impression that something momentous was going to happen, but it all fell rather flat in my opinion....more
Michaelides' third novel is my least favourite by far. This book is so weird and messy. I found it impossible to suspend disbelief for.
The main issue,Michaelides' third novel is my least favourite by far. This book is so weird and messy. I found it impossible to suspend disbelief for.
The main issue, I think, is that I never liked the narrator or the narration. The author opts for a very meta style, with Elliott constantly addressing the reader, side-eyeing his audience, and acknowledging his own flaws as a narrator. But I did not feel I got to know him very well. I neither liked him nor felt any strong dislike for him… he was just uninteresting. In a way he felt like a literary device, not a real person whose story I could become interested in.
Also, at times Elliott seems to know things he wouldn’t possibly know, witness scenes he couldn’t have. For this type of story to work, it needed to be in first person, yet certain scenes required an omniscient narrator. Elliott tries to play both roles and it just comes off as unbelievable.
The plot and pacing are all over the place. The first half of the book is very slow-going, following these bunch of characters as they holiday on a private Greek island and make it clear they mostly hate each other. But then when the drama went down, shit hit the fan so hard it took a farcical turn. I found no reason to like, or connect with, any of the characters. And I found the second twist to be ludicrous-- (view spoiler)[the fact that they were all like "ooh, let's all stage it like he's in control to give him a scare" was just nuts. (hide spoiler)]
A number of choices were made here that drained all tension out of the story-- the slow first half, the narrator constantly promising a wild twist (so much so that the wacky climax fell flat), the narrator repeatedly revealing himself to be unreliable like "haha, but here's what I didn't tell you..." to the point where I took nothing seriously.
In the end I didn't care who had done it. I didn't care which of these flat characters would live or die.
Also, the epilogue gives away a major twist for The Silent Patient if you are still wanting to read that....more
2 1/2 stars. I think, structurally, this is excellent. The plot is clever and I didn't find the reverse-chronology to be gimmicky as I'd feared it wou2 1/2 stars. I think, structurally, this is excellent. The plot is clever and I didn't find the reverse-chronology to be gimmicky as I'd feared it would be. Also, twists and turns galore. Some I predicted, plenty I didn't.
The problem, for me, was that long stretches of this felt so... monotonous. I would go from "ooh twist" to spending fifty pages bored and trying to force myself not to skim ahead. The secondary characters like Kelly and Todd weren't bad, but Jen was such an uninteresting narrator. I felt unmoved by certain major events because they were from her dry perspective....more
Am I who I think I am, or am I who others perceive me to be?
What a fascinating, hard-to-define book. It's a cultural critique, I guess, but quite
Am I who I think I am, or am I who others perceive me to be?
What a fascinating, hard-to-define book. It's a cultural critique, I guess, but quite unlike any I've read before.
Klein begins her descent into the Mirror World-- the dark side of today's culture where climate deniers, antivaxxers and QAnon devotees invent "facts" and the Internet propels them around the globe-- with the story of her own personal doppelganger. The one time feminist writer, now conspiracy theorist, Naomi Wolf.
Klein has been getting confused with Wolf online for many years now, to the point where she has received countless hate messages aimed at Wolf. What's interesting, for Klein, is that she kind of understands it. Both writers, both dark-haired women, both writing about society and culture. Wolf is a conspiracy theorist, but then you could argue that there was an underlying element of that to Klein's The Shock Doctrine.
This premise opens up the floor for an in-depth look at modern society, predominantly in the United States and Canada. The difference between the real Naomi Klein and Naomi Wolf is a bit like looking in a funhouse mirror-- almost the same, yet a distorted, slightly wrong version of oneself --and Klein likens that to the way rational skepticism and activism has been morphed into wild conspiracy theories in today's world.
This, Klein explains, is why so many of us have lost friends and family down the "rabbit hole" of online radicalism in recent years, and especially during COVID. A healthy skepticism of the government and medical industry turns into belief in outlandish claims.
Because here is the inherent problem: the state and government, the laws and medical industry, are indeed flawed and we should be able to question and challenge this… but what happens when that gets distorted beyond all reason? What happens when “maybe we should question the overprescription of drugs in a for-profit industry” becomes “doctors are in collusion with the government to install tracking devices in our arms”?
The notion of the doppelganger, the other, our mirror self, comes up repeatedly throughout. Klein deconstructs various examples of the doppelganger in media, from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Operation Shylock, and likens this doubling to many aspects of life today. We each create a kind of doppelganger in our online presence-- an avatar, a brand, that is us but also not fully us at the same time. This Klein describes as:
a doppelganger we perform ceaselessly in the digital ether as the price of admission in a rapacious attention economy.
She also laments a “mass unraveling of meaning”. This refers to all kinds of things like regurgitating slogans to show political alignment regardless of whether one agrees with-- or has even thought about --what it says, the right-wing appropriation of terms like "racism" and "enslavement", and the way small tweaks to the truth can result in outright falsehoods. Whoever can scream "fake news" first and loudest is right.
One area of this book I found especially interesting was one that explained to me something I did not understand until now. In the past, if someone mentioned New Age body fanatics, I thought of hippies... so left-wingers, basically. I lived in left-wing hotspot Los Angeles for close to seven years, and wellness-obsessed, holistic yoga moms who know the colour of their auras were the norm. It was very odd for me to see, especially in the wake of COVID, these women fleeing into the arms of Steve Bannon and embracing conspiracies. I had thought they were kooky, but I also thought they were solidly on the left. But here Klein explores the long history of the fascist/New Age alliance, including the Nazi Party obsession with health fads in their pursuit of a pure race.
Far from the unlikely bedfellows they first seemed to be, large parts of the modern wellness industry are proving to be all too compatible with far-right notions of natural hierarchies, genetic superiority, and disposable people.
I guess it makes sense in an awful way.
This review is getting long, but that's because I made so many notes about it. I'll try to wrap it up now.
I'm not sure all the sections were relevant to the doppelganger idea; some worked better, and were more interesting, than others, but it was an overall really engaging read. It looks at the train wreck that certain parts of the Internet have made of modern politics and the ability to have open discussions and apply reason. It's so crazy it's almost funny at times, until you remember it isn't.
In Klein's own words: "It all would be so ridiculous— if it weren’t so serious."...more
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