I’m really torn between giving this two and three stars. I love the influences of militant second wave feminism. I love the writing style which feels very real and breezy (even if it sometimes grates). I love the characterisation—Plum Kettle really feels like a fully alive person, and her transformation from self-hatred to self-confident feminist felt natural.

But there’s just so much about this book that is baaaaad. Firstly the plot threads just never really cohere. A whole bunch of stuff just happens, feeling like it’s going to come together at the end, and when the plot threads finally do meet it’s like, “um is that it? really?” It’s supposed to be this really character defining moment for the protagonist but it just isn’t, and then the book ends.

Which leads to the second problem. What is the message of the book? It seems to be that random murder, kidnapping, general violence and bribery against men and anyone who supports or sleeps with men is good, as long as someone else is doing it and not you. Instead what you should do is join a tiny feminist pressure group which publishes exposes of beauty companies and unsuccessfully lobbies parliament to pass laws restricting certain diet drugs. I loved the book’s critique of the fashion, diet and porn industries, but when it branched out from there it lost its way. Instead of directing its anger at government and corporate sexism, it lashed out mainly at random acts of sexism by men in the street. The message seemed to be most encapsulated by one character who said, “There are far more haters than there are us. You can’t smash all of them.” While the book ended with the protagonist feeling “free”, it was the freedom of an individual who still felt that everyone around her was an enemy and there was little she could do about it. Not very liberating.

The last problem, and the one which probably hampered my enjoyment of the book the most, is the racism. This book is super racist. The terrorists, who we seem to be encouraged to support, target a Mosque in London for being sexist, but there is no mention as far as I can remember of them targeting any Christian churches. The names of rapists listed were nearly all stereotypically Black and Latino names—seemingly all rapists are poor men of colour, not rich white frat boys. There is a weird and pointless recurring subplot about a group of Jews who are (mistaken for?) Israeli spies and have multiple bomb threats made against them by (presumably) Palestinian terrorists. There is a chapter set during the invasion of Afghanistan where US soldiers are besieged by crazed Taliban fighters who are described as babbling in a “nonsense language”.

The book was mostly very enjoyable, but in the end it left me feeling let down.