Baise-Moi (Rape Me)

Rating:
Summary: Completely Unsuccessful
Review: This book is horribly written. I thought it would say something new about the first-world culture, about how women and men are both capable of enjoying sex, that S/M can be a positive thing. I was so wrong. This book says nothing, nothing, nothing at all, and it says it for about 230 pages. The kill-sex-kill-sex routine gets old fast. The main characters are so flat and lifeless that it's impossible to care about them. At first I wondered if the translation was the problem, but it's really the fact that Virginie Despentes cannot tell a decent story to save her life.

The movie got a lot of press because it starred porn actresses in the lead roles and only the violence was simulated. You should also know that Baise-moi most accurately translates not to "Rape Me", but to "F..k Me" (as an amazon.com reviewer, I'm not allowed to curse). That's about all you need to know about this book. It's not stylish, nihilistic, or groundbreaking - it's just mindnumbingly boring, badly written, and ultimately pointless.

Rating:
Summary: Shocking and incendiary, but that's the point
Review: Virginie Despentes is a bit like the A.M. Homes of contemporary French literature--a young woman writer who doesn't really care who she offends with her work. She has another agenda, even if it's not immediately apparent to most readers.

This is the story of two young French women, Nadine and Manu, who live in the squalor of "les HLMs," the government-subsidized housing projects outside major French cities. Les HLMs are breeding ground for every kind of corruption--drug use, crime, violence, rape.

The two main characters finally snap when one of their friends is brutally raped, so they start off on a campaign of a little raping and pillaging of their own, seducing men, killing them, then stealing their money.

Despentes doesn't let anyone off the hook, neither the alleged victims or the alleged aggressors. Her point, it seems to me, is that people today can't help but be a little bit of both.

The style isn't particularly interesting or groundbreaking, but then again, it is a translation. Despentes isn't trying to be subtle and artful here, she's more interested in making a point.

This is the kind of book you'll either hate or appreciate for the point she's trying to make about contemporary French society and contemporary human beings.