The Horrors Of Modern Literature

 Sometimes one gets tired of reading Agatha Christie all the time, so I decided to give modern thrillers a try. Luckily, most of these books came out of thrift stores, so they didn't cost me a fortune.

I won't name any authors except one, it's just a general review, so to say (also some had difficult Swedish names and since the novels ended up in a trashcan anyway, I can't go and check them). 

So book number 1 by a popular Swedish author was really quite interesting and pretty conventional, too. It was a story of a modern family with the husband working in advertising business and travelling a lot, while his wife stayed home with 2 kids and had a cooking blog. Some woman started stalking his family, tried to kidnap his daughter and later killed his wife and son with an axe. There were several suspects. First of all, his half sisters.

His mother was a single mom who later got married but her new husband didn't want to raise someone else's kid and so she dumped him by grandma. Later his mother, stepfather and grandma died, but his two half-sisters cheated him out of an inheritance and there was lots of bad blood between them. Then there was his ex girl-friend who couldn't forget him after like 12+ years and stayed unmarried. 

But the reality was much simpler. The guy constantly cheated on his wife with any moderately attractive female, including her own sister. One woman he met abroad was a psychopath who got a crush on him (he was apparently so good in bed that no woman could ever forget him, lol)

S8x didn't start until the 2nd half of the book, and it was between him and his wife, but then it became worse since we had to read the extracts of the stalker's dairy and her s*xual fantasies in great detail. The book ended with a church service but the preacher was female and instead of telling the husband to repent and convert she told him to concentrate on raising his daughter. It was in any case, an entertaining read, but I didn't appreciate the vulgarity. 

Swedish book n2 was loosely based on the story of Julian Assange with him portrayed as a scoundrel in the pay of CIA. In fact, everybody in this book was pretty much a scoundrel and the tone was dark. The main character was an ex Stasi alcoholic agent, with great detail given to the description of his hangovers including the colour of his vomit. Didn't finish this one (but read the last pages) as it was too depressive.

These two books simply pale in comparison to the masterpieces produced by the modern British authors. Book n1 was ostensibly about the Ottoman Empire. It dealt chiefly with s*xual life or lack of it of eunuchs, transg*nder pr*stitutes and the functioning of br*thels. Plus, the grisly details of various murders, of course.

Book n2 started innocently enough. A child looks back at her Edwardian childhood. It quickly developed into the child relating the details of her father's adulteries, her brother's adventures with his male servants and later, as the said child grows up into one of the most disgusting rape scenes. So much for a "family saga". Am I glad my family aren't like that, it probably goes along with being the British aristocracy, I guess.

Book n3 was by the popular author known for her Harry Potter stories. She also wrote fiction for grown ups. Somewhere in the 1st Chapter she went into detail of m*sturbation habits of 15 year old boys. It was after this I closed the book and threw it away. Pity I couldn't burn it as I have no open fireplace. In some countries, she'd be probably investigated by child protective services. 

And finally, the American literature. I bought a couple of books of a certain author. One was more or less OK though quite politically correct, but I kept it since I enjoyed the story. It was written quite some time ago. It was a breath of fresh air because it had NO s8xual descriptions of any kind and was pretty conventional boy saves girl story though the girl in question was a spirited independent woman, but still. 

His 2nd book though. It's only several years old and it's a story of a suffragette. She flies around on balloons and promotes women's rights. All men love her and despair. They all support women's rights, too, except a couple of creepy idiots. But there is more to the story. The lady leads a double life.

 In her youth, she ran away, dressed like a man and joined the army where she won prizes as a sniper. In the whole of US Army there was not one man as good as her. Girl power extraordinaire. However, she's also a psychopathic murderess who killed her own brother for being a wimp, and among other things, burned one woman alive. In the end, she gets her just desserts at the hands of a man who loved her. 

I don't know if the author was trolling his readers with this story or meant it quite seriously but it was too much for me to bear. So I went and bought a couple of Agatha Christies again and have been happy ever since:)