The protagonist is struck with the curse of being a handsome and magnetic flâneur, a drunken creative to whom women gravitate, and fall in love. The hype that follows this book is intense, and continues today even after ten years, and will be the primary reason any reader may pick this book up.Īn Irish ex-alcoholic creative confesses to his past emotional abuse of women, with the opener, “I liked hurting girls.” Somewhere between JT Leroy and Bret Easton Ellis, the anonymous author looks back with some regret – and some pride and sentiment – to the times that have shaped him to reach the place he greets us from, a near-future from the events told. The narrator also admits that he experiences bouts of paranoia, further problematizing the relative truth of his narrative.It is impossible to know if this book is literally a confessional of someone who then published as fiction, because the author remains unknown. It is also easy to believe that the narrator has blown his so-called relationship with Aisling way out of proportion, and that the reason she acts so cruelly towards him is because he is a creepy older guy who becomes obsessed with her. As such, the audience is disinclined to believe some of his suppositions about how deeply he hurt these women, especially when the narrator himself sometimes slips up and admits that this may not be the case. He believes he is the most important person and thinks that other people believe this as well. Similarly, he is also incredibly narcissistic and believes that the world revolves around him. The narrator does not seem to be trustworthy, mostly due to his apathy towards other people. While this retrospection allows the narrator to reflect on various aspects of both his behavior and his relationships, it also is partially responsible for the disbelief the audience feels towards the narrative. The narrator’s writing of the novel takes place eight years after his entry into AA and about two years after his alleged relationship with Aisling has been terminated. The novel is told retrospectively, as the narrator looks back at his actions after he has been hurt. He writes this book in the hopes that it will be published before her photos, to palliate the humiliation he feels. The narrator realizes that she hates him. At the end of their so-called relationship, she takes him to a bar and has a male friend humiliate him and try to get into a fight with the narrator, which she photographs. He believes she is toying with his emotions and using him as the tragic subject of her art, a book of photographs. Once in New York, and still at the job that he hates, he begins to pursue her shamelessly, and she treats him very coldly. He claims she convinces him to move to New York, although there doesn’t seem to be any evidence to support this. After they have sex, he falls in love with her, although she seems lukewarm at best towards him. He starts looking for a way out on one business trip to New York, he meets Aisling, a beautiful, young photographer’s assistant. He buys a house there and ends up getting stuck, realizing that he hates this job, as well as Midwesterners. He works on improving his career, eventually moving to Saint Lacroix, Minnesota to do so. The narrator enters into AA, finds a stable job as an advertising executive, and stays away from women for five years.
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