Dear Dickhead

August 15, 2024
A provocative French writer and filmmaker explores #MeToo, the fate of aging actresses, and addiction. "Dude, screw your apologies, screw your monologue, screw everything: there's nothing about you that interests me." This is the opening line of Rebecca Latt�'s email response to Oscar Jayack, a novelist who's trying to apologize for a (since deleted) post in which he excoriated her for no longer being the same person--the same body--that boys like him once fantasized about. Despite her claim that Oscar is boring, Rebecca continues to reply to his emails, and the two develop a relationship that is vital to both of them and shaped not just by their shared working-class childhood, but also by the fact that Oscar's older sister was Rebecca's best friend back in the 1980s. There is a third party in this story: Zo� Katana, a feminist blogger who has publicly accused Oscar of sexually harassing her while she was assigned by his publisher to work as his publicist. This is an epistolary novel shaped by contemporary modes of communication, but it's still an epistolary novel, which is not a forgiving form--or even a believable form, much of the time. Opinions about whether or not Despentes pulls this off depend largely on how much the reader enjoys listening to three hyperverbal, theory-inclined people talk to and at and over each other. That said, Despentes gives readers plenty of reason to stick around, beginning with Rebecca's refusal to put up with Oscar's shit. His response to being canceled after he's outed as a sex pest is predictably self-serving, and his new confidante will have none of it. At the same time, Rebecca comes to see Oscar as a role model in sobriety. Meanwhile, she serendipitously connects with Zo� while Paris is locked down because of Covid-19, which complicates her relationship with Oscar. What makes this novel work as a novel--rather than a collection of rants presented as a novel--is that Rebecca, Oscar, and Zo� come across as real people and their interactions with each other manifestly change them. Confrontational and often abstract, but grounded in real human emotion and experience.

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August 30, 2024

In this novel, Rebecca and Oscar are a contemporary French version of Edward Albee's George and Martha. They cannot stop hurling insults at each other, even as that very act wears away the veneer of antipathy to reveal the true fondness each harbors for the other. Borrowing structure from the Great Dialogues of Plato, French author Despentes's (King Kong Theory) latest to be translated into English is a study in friendship masking as truculence. The two argue and expound over the internet on current issues, such as the Me Too movement and the COVID shutdown, and personal problems, such as substance-use disorder. Complicating their already Freudian relationship are Zoe, a feminist blogger who accuses Oscar of sexual aggression, and Corinne, Oscar's sister, who is a lesbian and Rebecca's childhood friend. VERDICT Despentes's unsparing directness and fluid style are well served by Wynne's translation; nothing is lost. The novel is funny, raw, compelling, and well worth readers' time.--Michael F. Russo

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 19, 2024
A movie star and a disgruntled writer engage in an epic war of words in the brash and provocative latest from Despentes (Apocalypse Baby), set during the Covid-19 lockdown in France. Rebecca Latte, a legendary sex symbol who’s now pushing 50, gets called a “wrinkled toad” in a vicious Instagram post by novelist Oscar Jayack, prompting her to clap back hard (“I hope your kids die under the wheels of a truck”). The heated exchange, which forms the entirety of the novel, sprawls from typical keyboard-warrior retorts into each character’s personal history. It turns out Oscar’s older sister, Corinne, was Rebecca’s best friend when the women were teens, and Oscar fills Rebecca in on Corinne’s life after the women grew apart, including Corinne’s coming out as a lesbian. As Oscar and Rebecca share with each other, they examine their battles with addiction (Oscar laments losing his “best self” now that he’s quit drinking, and Rebecca notes how heroin lost its positive effect on her). Despentes also slips in the voice of Oscar’s PR agent, Zoe Katana, who vehemently accuses him of sexual harassment, adding to the riveting exploration of feminism and sexism, and revealing how argumentative communication can bring its participants onto common ground. Readers will be awed.