Any Man: A Novel

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I loved the insightful inner-monologues of the male victims which was somehow both poetic and straight-forward in its rawness. She tries not to give Maude a backstory as to why she’s doing this for the most part but she’s definitely the most intriguing part of the story. Hell, my favourite fiction genres make a pretty good living thinking up new and exciting ways to kill women - put them in cages or chain them to walls or stuff them in freezers. It made all the anger and guilt and bullshit kind of rise up and turn into a sort of righteous feeling of pride. I didn't elbow him in the crotch or slam my foot down on his or even make blistering eye contact with him as he got off the bus.

How the survivors grapple with their new reality, and their upended perception of themselves, their relationships, their bodies and the world around them. It’s ironic that this character would then go on to be raped and have feminists rally around him, even though he's spent years demonizing them. In “Any Man,” Tamblyn steps further into the abyss, “imagining every extreme” she could think of for her characters to have endured in the past — from excision of genitalia to forced bestiality.

Taking you away from your timelines and newsfeeds, and forcing you to see how we behave as a group from a clearer, more distant perspective. Any Man follows the victims of a depraved female serial rapist named ‘Maude’ who manages to evade the authorities for years and creates a whirlwind of controversy and media attention.

let it be known that i am not (usually) squeamish with my literature; i am not penalizing the author for daring to tell a gritty story, for structuring said story uniquely, or for giving the victims in the novel the liberty to be realistic/multifaceted/unlikable. In her blazingly original and unforgettable debut novel Any Man, Amber Tamblyn brings to startling life a specter of sexual violence in the shadowy form of Maude, a female serial rapist who preys on men.With the exception of stream-of-consciousness fiction, which I actually really like, I generally prefer writing to be more straightforward, and Any Man sometimes felt like Amber Tamblyn was trying way too hard to be ‘different’ and clever. Pear sees Jamar’s attack as lesser than his or Donald’s since Jamar’s assault started out as a consenting encounter.

It does what good fiction is meant to do: challenges me to re-consider my views, my responses, my gut reactions through creative, fresh prose and storytelling. Tamblyn takes “the terms and the words that are used to describe [powerful women] and create a woman that is those literal things”.exploitative sensationalist media does so much harm, often under the guise of "news" or raising awareness. When he started moving against me, grinding (there I said it) I told myself it was just the bus swaying back and forth. They were unique instances of horror and violation that felt more believable because they happened to men. As vile as Yiannopoulos is, I couldn’t help feeling that writing a fictional version of him and having a woman rape him seemed a little inappropriate. I also want to note I really respect Tamblyn's decision for Maude's intention- it's not as simple as you may think.