Baise-Moi

Virginie Despentes is a French feminist. Actually that isn't quite the right word. Baise-Moi is her chez d'oeuvre. It's a novel about two women who are brutally raped. They steal cars and go on a brutal tear murdering everyone in sight, men, women and children, including mothers wheeling strollers. Despentes obviously studied Pierrot Le Fou. It's really a timeless book but also a metaphor for the Middle East, particularly with respect to sexual violence. You start off feeling empathic naturally in terms of the anger for the depredation, until the brutality of the revenge begins to set in. Any sense of the humanity of innocent and random victims is lost, but the anger ultimately self-implodes. You see this on a macro level say in the Bosnia Serbian war where both sides ultimately set their country on fire.

Question of the day: Is your life an embarrassment?