I Will Fear No Evil
I am on page 442 of 510 I Will Fear No Evil by Robert Heinlein. I loathe this book in so many ways that my rants are barely coherent.
First off, it's very wooden. I thought, for a moment, that might be me. Knowing that it was written in 1970 but set in 2015, maybe I put a robotic tenor to it. I mean, people were suddenly making out when I'd sensed no flirting. Breaking into tears when there were no clues of sadness. I re-started, to see if I could reset my tone of voice, but that didn't help. Okay, so that's annoying, but I decided to work through that because the story was sort of fascinating.
Then the story started to creep me out. Look, I'm not easily squicked, but I was getting freaked. The premise is that a 95-year-old man's brain is put into the body of a hot 25-year-old woman, and then he has to basically figure out how to be a woman. And since it's Heinlein, that means a very. sexual woman. So much potential! But... the transition just happens too fast! I mean, suddenly she's throwing herself at her lawyer - a 65-year-old man that "he" has known for 30 years as a straight male friend. Of course, that's complicated by the fact that the lawyer was having an affair with the girl before this whole thing, so the poor guy has to be pretty confused. But then he basically gives in! I couldn't wrap my head around this idea: "Ick, you're a crotchety old man who's been my friend and boss for 30 years, but, well, since you're in this hot body... Besides, I've always loved you - and 'love' is 'love,' right?"
And this happens with pretty much every male employee of the 'old man.' So easily. It's confusing.
And when the old-man-in-young-woman-body decided to get impregnated with his own stored sperm, my head wanted to explode. And then I started wondering when I got so frumpy, because that doesn't sound so bad when I say it out loud. I finally figured out that my issue there was more about the fact that the woman's voice is still in the old man's head, and she's really sycophantic about wanting to have his baby.
Some of the interactions are interesting. I was looking forward to the protagonist visiting the young woman's widow, and I did like how that was handled. It's just that a lot of times I'm confused by the characters' motivations. Like when someone emphatically refuses to marry someone ("NEVER!"), and then (literally) 2 pages later they're calling for a marriage license.
Literary whiplash.
And I'm sure there's a printing error, a big chunk missing. It was the same feel as if a few pages are missing. You're reading along, and suddenly you turn the page and realized you skipped something important. But this happened in the middle of a page! Maybe this is a collector's item.
But I'm still fascinated, and I'm so close to finishing it. I'll just be glad when I'm done. I think next I will read something very fluffy. I'm thinking Charlotte's Web or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Different enough?
First off, it's very wooden. I thought, for a moment, that might be me. Knowing that it was written in 1970 but set in 2015, maybe I put a robotic tenor to it. I mean, people were suddenly making out when I'd sensed no flirting. Breaking into tears when there were no clues of sadness. I re-started, to see if I could reset my tone of voice, but that didn't help. Okay, so that's annoying, but I decided to work through that because the story was sort of fascinating.
Then the story started to creep me out. Look, I'm not easily squicked, but I was getting freaked. The premise is that a 95-year-old man's brain is put into the body of a hot 25-year-old woman, and then he has to basically figure out how to be a woman. And since it's Heinlein, that means a very. sexual woman. So much potential! But... the transition just happens too fast! I mean, suddenly she's throwing herself at her lawyer - a 65-year-old man that "he" has known for 30 years as a straight male friend. Of course, that's complicated by the fact that the lawyer was having an affair with the girl before this whole thing, so the poor guy has to be pretty confused. But then he basically gives in! I couldn't wrap my head around this idea: "Ick, you're a crotchety old man who's been my friend and boss for 30 years, but, well, since you're in this hot body... Besides, I've always loved you - and 'love' is 'love,' right?"
And this happens with pretty much every male employee of the 'old man.' So easily. It's confusing.
And when the old-man-in-young-woman-body decided to get impregnated with his own stored sperm, my head wanted to explode. And then I started wondering when I got so frumpy, because that doesn't sound so bad when I say it out loud. I finally figured out that my issue there was more about the fact that the woman's voice is still in the old man's head, and she's really sycophantic about wanting to have his baby.
Some of the interactions are interesting. I was looking forward to the protagonist visiting the young woman's widow, and I did like how that was handled. It's just that a lot of times I'm confused by the characters' motivations. Like when someone emphatically refuses to marry someone ("NEVER!"), and then (literally) 2 pages later they're calling for a marriage license.
Literary whiplash.
And I'm sure there's a printing error, a big chunk missing. It was the same feel as if a few pages are missing. You're reading along, and suddenly you turn the page and realized you skipped something important. But this happened in the middle of a page! Maybe this is a collector's item.
But I'm still fascinated, and I'm so close to finishing it. I'll just be glad when I'm done. I think next I will read something very fluffy. I'm thinking Charlotte's Web or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Different enough?