'Bleak' is too kind a word.

I bought The Exhibitionist because it's listed as one of 'the 14 best books of the year so far 2022' at the BBC. That was my first mistake. I wonder what level of masochism a reader would need to consider it the 'best' of anything. Two years of pandemic must have severely compromised the skill of literary critique in the UK. Scratching out my eyeballs would be a more welcome occupation than reading it. 'Bleak' is too kind a word.

Here's a story about a family of passive-aggressive adult children and a permanently cowering wife who've spent their entire lives propping up the enormous ego of a domineering egotistical man, a 1970s has-been 'art icon' who has achieved nothing of lasting note, and whose wildly inflated sense of self is based on a few past glories, and is the long-term result of decades of terrorizing everyone within his reach into worshipping him.

The adult children are all terrible but who I really want to strangle is his 55 year-old wife--for deliberately sabotaging herself, her self-esteem, her career, her life, to this man. It's 2022 and the fact that this kind of story is still being written and considered ground-breaking, or even entertaining, is completely insane. The wife, once his pregnant student at age 17, has lived her entire adult life under the iron fist of an intolerant ego-driven boy-man who deserves no respect, and who she continues to live for, justifies, promotes at her own expense, and enables, despite the fact that she sees him, she's aware of how her own actions have diminished her, and she sees the damage that tolerating his abuse has done to her.

The most I hoped for while fast-forwarding through chapters was that, in the end, the decrepit rotten family home would combust and everyone in it would die. There is not one character who deserves to go on living. But alas, that doesn't happen. The atrocity continues to its very last agonizing breath.

The only saving grace of this audiobook is vocal actor Juliet Stevenson who is, as always, impeccable in her delivery, even with this absolute turd of a novel.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful