Hurt people hurt people. Say there was a novel in which Holden Caulfield was an alcoholic and Lolita was a photographer’s assistant and, somehow, they met in Bright Lights, Big City. He’s blinded by love. She by ambition. Diary of an Oxygen Thief is an honest, hilarious, and heartrending novel, but above all, a very realistic account of what we do to each other and what we allow to have done to … what we allow to have done to us.more
What is up with Diary of an Oxygen Thief? It’s one of the top searched books over the past few weeks. I don’t get it…..
This book had me hooked from line one.
Very good book
“I like hurting girls.”
That’s how Diary of An Oxygen Thief by “Anonymous” begins. And from a lot of the reviews of this book that I read before picking up a copy of my own, it sure seems like that’s about as far as a lot of readers got into it. Which is an outright shame.
Not only is that a remarkably strong opening line, but it’s a great setup for the story that follows – which turns out to be one of my favorite books I’ve read in quite a long time.
The back cover description says “Say Holden Caulfield was an alcoholic and Lolita was a photographer’s assistant and somehow they met in Bright Lights, Big City.” And I guess it’s kind of like that, but honestly it’s much, much more.
On the surface, Oxygen Thief reads like a story of misogynistic fuckboy culture, but that’s honestly just the frame in which this story is told. Personally, I’d compare it more to The Picture of Dorian Gray than anything else, as it’s a modern (as Dorian Gray was at its time) look at the culture of self-gratification by any means necessary. It’s rough and it’s dirty and you pretty much hate everyone in the book. But the reason you hate them so much isn’t just that they are bad people, but instead that they are realistic people.
What “Anonymous” has done here is write a straightforward, modern novel about relationships, love, and hate. It holds up the mirror to our modern day selves, and while the reader might think that everything reflected is dirty and distorted because of flaws in the mirror, we end up even more disgusted when we realize all those flaws aren’t in the mirror after all – but flaws in our own selves.
To go into the actual story here would be to cheat you all of an amazing read, and so in this review I will refrain from it. Just know that if you like your stories raw and realistic and maddening and heartbreaking, you need to pick this one up.
This book hooked me in with a very intense (albeit twisted) account from the main character of the story (who also happens to be the author and remains anonymous). The author’s reflection of abuse and a slide into alcoholism ensues. Based on the writing alone, I decided to give this book five stars. Before Aisling, the “evil girl”, can get her portfolio of him published, the author wrote this piece to tell his side of the story. The pain of the main character throughout it is so easy to feel, it’s powerful. A very amazing memoir, Diary of an Oxygen Thief will leave you wondering what happens next.