Customer Reviews

Valentine's Day: Women Against Men - Stories of Revenge

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a book of short stories, stories about revenge, stories written from the point of view of a wronged woman. Some of them are very entertaining. Some are predictable. Some of the writers are very, very good. If you are having a moment, or a day, or a chunk of your life when men are on your big-time s**t list - this is a book for you. If, on the other hand, you are OK with the men in your life, the writing is mostly good enough to make this a worth-while read.

when i picked this book up at the library and saw artemisia gentileschi's painting, "judith slaying holofernes", on the cover and the title "women against men: revenge stories" i was thinking, "oh boy, this looks like it'll probably have some stories about women getting some sadistic revenge on rapists, or girlfriend/wife beaters, or child molesters or some scumbags like that." i was curious to see what ahem, imaginative forms of revenge some women came up with. i wanted to read these stories and smile or chuckle, and say "yeah! right on!" instead, i found that almost all the stories were incredibly stupid. most of them were either about women getting revenge on cheating husbands, or you couldn't even figure out what form the revenge took (some stories, the revenge just simply seemed nonexistent), or even figure out who was the recipient of the revenge. one of the stories, a mom gets revenge on her slutty daughters by sleeping w/one of the men they were all battling to get into bed! uh, i thought this book was women against men?!?. many of the women characters were spoiled rich wives, or just people you couldn't even really sympathize with because of their pettiness, pathetic-ness, or just plain out crappy personalities. about 20% of the stories the women got revenge through feeding the man something yucky or lethal. not a single rape revenge story. only one story was about revenge on a cruel, physically abusive husband, and in the other stories where the husbands may have been physically abusive, that fact was mentioned nonchalantly, like it takes a backseat to his cheating or calling his wife "fatty" (sticks and stones, people, sticks and stones... if he treats you like crap, leave him!). now, of course cheating is not a good thing, but it's not like women don't cheat either, and there are worse things a person could do to you. human relationships are too complex for cheating to be a crime punishable by death. anyway, i don't think this book is something that feminists can be proud of. the only reason i give this book two stars instead of one is to acknowledge a couple of the decent stories... probably agatha christie's is one of the best of the lot. all i can say is, if you're curious, check it out from your local library, or buy it used at a really cheap price... maybe someone else would find something worthwhile in many of the stories, but for me i found most to be very stupid, either badly/cheesily written, or crappy story-wise.