The other day a book titled Haunting Adeline popped up on my IG feed and some comments were praising it, so I decided check out the reviews on GoodReads.
The reviews are all over the place, but I noticed a number of them saying how “triggering” the book was. Apparently a character repeatedly rapes another character and the reviewers were shocked. (Which they have every right to be). I’m in no way passing judgement on anyones personal reactions. That’s not what my post is about.
But it got me thinking about Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho. The book not the movie.
I first read American Psycho in ‘93 when I was 23 and I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I’m sure today there are equal or even crazier books on the market but at the time horror novels for the most part had a certain look and feel to them. Think Stephen King, James Herbert, Richard Laymon paperbacks etc. you know what I’m talking about.
Anyhow American Psycho came in a trade paperback format looking like a perfectly respectable piece of literature lol. But holy shit. At the time it was the craziest thing I have ever read. If you’ve read it you know what I’m taking about. The book makes the movies feel like a children’s nursery rhyme.
So I’m just wondering if it was published today with the internet being what it is, and with sites dedicated to book reviews what would the reaction be? Would it have even made it to print?
Maybe I’m just naive and there have always been books with that same type of explicit material.
by GuzPolinski