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Claire Harris
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English
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ANY MAN

Amber Tamblyn

In her blazingly original and unforgettable debut novel Any Man, Amber Tamblyn brings to startling life a specter of sexual violence in the shadowy form of Maude, a serial female rapist who preys on men.
A violent serial rapist is on the loose, who goes by the name Maude. She hunts for men at bars, online, at home - the place doesn't matter, neither does the man.
Her victims then must live the aftermath of their assault in the form of doubt from the police, feelings of shame alienation from their friends and family and the haunting of a horrible woman who becomes the phantom on which society projects its greatest fears, fascinations and even misogyny. All the while the police are without leads and the media hound the victims, publicly dissecting the details of their attack. What is extraordinary is how as years pass these men learn to heal, by banding together and finding a space to raise their voices.

Told in alternating viewpoints signature to each voice and experience of the victim, these pages crackle with emotion, ranging from horror to breathtaking empathy. As bold as it is timely, ANY MAN paints a searing portrait of survival and is a tribute to those who have lived through the nightmare of sexual assault.


Amber Tamblyn, author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Dark Sparkler, has been nominated for Emmy, Golden Globe, and Independent Spirit awards. She has published two additional books of poetry, Free Stallion (2005), which won the Borders Book Choice Award for Breakout Writing, and Bang Ditto (2009), an IndieNext bestseller. Tamblyn reviews books of poetry for Bust Magazine, is poet in residence at Amy Poehler's Smart Girls and is a contributing writer for the New York Times. Her work has appeared in Glamour, Teen Vogue, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Iowa Review Poets & Writers, PANK, and elsewhere.
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Published 2018-06-26 by HarperPerennial

Book

Published 2018-06-26 by HarperPerennial

Comments

Brazil: Primavera Editorial

Poet and actress Amber Tamblyn's debut novel, Any Man blends prose and poetry in a searing exploration of sexual aggression. Tamblyn is able to shed a harsh new light on how real, actual, pervasive sexual offenses are treated (and mistreated) in this country, and the world writ large. (Summer's Ultimate Fiction List)

Amber Tamblyn's debut novel, Any Man, is a beautifully written and carefully curated examination of toxic masculinity, rape culture and our society as a whole.a sprawling conversation about sexual assault and how prevalent it is in our society, regardless of gender.. Everything about this novel is raw and exposed... this is the time to stop denying these things are out there just because hearing, seeing or reading about them makes us want to turn the other wayand that is what Tamblyn has achieved in this novel, a way to make our eyes stay on the page.

An explosive, shapeshifting piece of literary real estate, Amber Tamblyn's arresting debut offers a scathing portrait of American celebrity culture and the way in which it transmutes human tragedy into a vicious circus; victims are forgotten as likes andshares swirl, and 'news' becomes a squalid orgy, a lurid feast. Tamblyn takes every risk in this astonishing and innovative work, and succeeds, gloriously.

Any Man is a breathtaking gut-punch of a novel. Here is the cost of sexual violence: our bodies, our minds, our culture. Flipping the typical narrative of woman-as-victim, Tamblyn follows six different men, each of whom has been viciously attacked by a serial rapist named Maude. In a masterful exploration of literary form, we follow them throughpoetry, journals, talk shows, group therapy sessions, internet chat rooms, letters, voicemails, and an extended Twitter search so real andright nowthe page became a screen in my hands. From the first lightning-bolt sentence it felt impossible to put down. But I had to put it down. I had to breathe. I had to interrogate my own heart.Real talk: this subject matter is hard as hell. Ithurts. It's so much easier not to look, to pretend such violence doesn't exist even when we know--we know. we know and know and know--that it does. Enough,Tamblyn is saying. It's supposed to hurt. That's how we heal.

Get ready to hold your breath. Amber Tamblyn's Any Man is a genre-bending gender-bending brilliant blow torch of a debut novel amplifying the complexities of sexual violence and the radical costs of survival. At the center of the novel is a serial rapist named Maude who reduces the men in her path to objects of prey. We're not used to thinking of this equation, and that's the point. This is the story of a monstrous woman made from the darkness inside all of us, a woman who meets patriarchy head-on and shreds it, leaving men traveling the journey that women must make every day of their lives--not the hero's journey, but the victim's. Not to emerge heroic and victorious, but to emerge from shame and violence with empathy, compassion, and the radical ability to endure together. This book changes everything.

ANY MAN has been selected for Entertainment Weekly's Summer Preview list