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Innocents

Cathy Coote

Start date: May 1, 2014

Finish date: June 1, 2014

Discussion: DB book club - currently reading

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DB book club - currently reading

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Mar 19, 2024 J.M. Keep rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literary

Innocents is a masterstroke of storytelling wherein to understand, fully, the story, you have to understand the self protective lies a neglected, abandoned 16 year old girl would tell herself to avoid the reality of her powerlessness.

Every aspect of this book felt intentional and carefully crafted, a mask behind which lay the truth.

This isn't a book about a nymphet playing at being a femme fatale. It's about a young girl who is so powerless that she creates elaborate fantasies about how she is Innocents is a masterstroke of storytelling wherein to understand, fully, the story, you have to understand the self protective lies a neglected, abandoned 16 year old girl would tell herself to avoid the reality of her powerlessness.

Every aspect of this book felt intentional and carefully crafted, a mask behind which lay the truth.

This isn't a book about a nymphet playing at being a femme fatale. It's about a young girl who is so powerless that she creates elaborate fantasies about how she is the one in control. If she's in control, she can't be hurt. If she's in control, then no one can disappoint her or let her down. She'll take all responsibility, all blame, as long as it means she can deny the reality of her life, and how vulnerable she is.

The prose further reinforces this; alternatingly stilted and flowery, saccharine and cloying. It is the writing of someone trying to project an image of maturity and confidence that reads as a clunky imitation of authenticity.

To take it at face value robs the reader of the deeper well of vulnerability and fear that the protagonist is desperate to deny. She's in need of someone who will take care of her, while giving her the illusion of her own feminine power.

Her sketches, while sexual in nature, were not sexual fantasies. In fact, the character seemed nearly entirely asexual in desire, and her obsession with sexual dominance was a transmogrification of her need to feel in control. She easily offered up submission when she was able to learn that she could feel just as in control in that manufactured vulnerability and childishness. It was desperate, naïve attempts at getting her needs of receiving love, protection, and care met, while not offering up the truth of her own loneliness and fear.

It reminds me of that Wilde quote, “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.”

The intention of the storytelling becomes clear in the final acts. (view spoiler) ...more

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