So, I just finished the book, watched the interview of the author with Dua Lipa and have the urge to talk about it.
Right at the beginning Dua Lipa asks him about the "affair" with the neighbor and that doesn't sit well with me. For me it was very obvious that this whole "affair" was not one, it was more likely SA? He was 15 and got "seduced" by his 42 year old neighbor. Phrasing it as an affair just plays it down. In my opinion this is the whole premise of the depressed tone of the book, because Istvan is obviously traumatized? Every other intimate relation he has with a woman is reflecting the one he had with his neighbor: They are older, married and from his point of view somehow ugly. I wouldn't say, that this is just his type of woman, I rather think that the experience he made with 15 marked him.
Aside from that I felt really uncomfortable reading the intimate scenes with his neighbor. All the other ones he had in his adult life were not nearly described that detailed and since the SA topic was never picked up again in the book (especially as what it is, even not with his therapist?) nor by the author itself in interviews – I wonder why he even wrote about it? I tried to make some research about this but couldn't find anything. At one point Thomas even says that Istvan is a primitive man which attracts his mother to him so I wonder if the author even realized what he wrote about?
In the interview it seemed like he wanted this book to be seen as one about masculinity but in my opinion it is a book about a deeply traumatized boy/man who never processes all the negativ things that happen to him.
So after reading this book l had the feeling, that SA of boys by grown women are not seen as a serious crime. This actually shocked me.
Did I missed a point here? Because I feel as if the author missed the point of his own book.
And I also wonder how the "affair" would have been received if the gender roles would have been switched.
by Bookfriennd