Covenant

So many things just made me cringe about this book. I got it partially because it won the Bram Stoker award, but I’m baffled as to how it could possibly win anything.

First thing that bothered me: in the beginning it looks like there’s a string of suicides. So the main character, a reporter, wants to write an elaborate article or series of articles on suicide. Obviously he should look at the journalist guidelines for reporting on suicide so he can avoid publicizing the suicides in ways that might cause suicide contagion, right? Especially given that there have already been several suicides? Well, he doesn’t. I get that this isn’t really a book about suicide, but you’d think he could at least treat the topic with a bit more gravity so as not to be completely tasteless.

Second thing that bothered me: the main character goes around bothering the grieving small town people about the suicide and it’s supposed to be suspicious that they don’t want to talk to him about it. I’m pretty sure that even if it was a straightforward case of suicide contagion, in a small town where everyone knows each other they still probably wouldn’t feel up to chatting with the newcomer young reporter from Chicago about it. So the main character just comes off as an insensitive jerk, heckling people while they’re in pain.

Third thing that bothered me: the main character has to appraise every woman he meets in terms of how sexy she is. It’s super objectifying and super alienating if you aren’t a straight dude. And it’s not just a quick “huh, she’s attractive.” He’s listing off clothing items, speculating about what’s underneath, appraising how much makeup she’s wearing (“her cheeks were violated by scarlet rouge”- she’s an eccentric middle-aged fortune teller, leave her alone), the tightness of her body, etc. In order to take in all this information he would have to be doing a creeper stare upon first meeting these women, which would make any woman uncomfortable, but of course he doesn’t show them being uncomfortable.

Fourth thing: more generally how ridiculous and implausible and misogynistic the interactions with women were. It read like something from the 60s or 70s, but it doesn’t have that excuse, it’s from the 2000s. At one point he bothers two different women at a funeral, they both tell him to go away and mind his own business, then he’s all freaked out that he’s pushed two women away (he specifies that they’re women even though there’s no reason for that to matter) at a funeral where people are supposed to be open with each other or whatever. As though women are extra obligated to be extra nice to him just because they’re at a funeral. He didn’t even know the deceased! He wasn’t being extra nice to them!

There’s a part where he runs into the girlfriend of the dead boy alone outside at night and she just stops to chat with him even though she doesn’t know him and gets in his car for a ride home. Most women I know have a healthy sense of caution when it comes to running into strange men at night. Getting into their cars is how you get sexually assaulted? Okay, fine, let’s assume this particular girl is exceptionally brave/foolish. She and the reporter guy make plans to meet at a park in the daytime to talk about information she knows that he would want to know. That makes sense- making plans to meet a reporter in a public place. What doesn’t make sense is that she shows up in a bikini. I mean, who does that? Of course the reporter dude makes creepy comments about her body, and the girl laughs flirtatiously. Does the author not realize that when women laugh at that kind of comment it’s out of discomfort? The reporter ends up going on a date with the girl, which is a bad idea both because of the age gap (she’s 18-19 ish, he’s 25) and because her boyfriend just died. Other comments indicate that they even have sex later in the book, but I didn’t get that far. On the subject of female characters wearing implausibly little clothing, another female character meets him wearing only a bath robe. Again, who just does that? And it even says this main character isn’t that attractive, just to add to the implausibility. At one point he speculates that the reason the girlfriend of the deceased is flirting with him is because she’s trying to use a harmless fling to help get over the death. The main character does not at all come off as a safe person to have a harmless fling with, if anything she’d be using him as a means of self-harm.

I stopped reading half way through because it was just too cringey.

Ugh, I’m seeing so many review where people are saying “sex and horror just go together” and “if you don’t like the graphic sex then this genre isn’t for you.” Clearly these people think horror is strictly for titillation. Some of us read horror for its deeper examination of the human psyche or for its examination of current issues. In that case, excessive graphic sex scenes are a distraction at best, a cringfest at worst (especially given a misogynistic author). When the sex is mixed with the violence/pain/terror element, it’s one thing if there’s going to be a serious examination of the trauma of sexual abuse- that’s the sort of thing horror is for. But when the sex+violence/pain/terror is presented in a titillating manner (and let’s face it, sexual violence almost always against a woman), then it’s just conditioning more men to get off on women’s pain, thus promoting sexualized violence. Everyone should be disturbed by this, but alas it has been normalized. I’m not a prude or a book burner, but I do think authors, artists, game developers, etc. have a responsibility to be mindful about what kinds of ethics their work promotes and what kind of social impact that might have. I’m not one to promote censorship, but vocal criticism? Yes. Telling people to leave your genre alone is not a fitting response to the criticisms being leveled here.