At first I could barely put down The Book of Revelation, but about halfway through my interest in it has started to wane and essentially diminished as I reached the end. The strong opening and first half are both an asset and a disadvantage - we have to keep reading to know what will happen, but our hopes are ultimately not met and we end up feeling at least slightly disappointed.The Book of Revelation begins with the first person of an unnamed English ballet dancer, living and working in Amsterdam. He is 29 years old, internationally acclaimed both as a dancer and a choreographer, very in love with Brigitte - his girlfriend and fellow dancer, with whom he has been for seven years. At the time, his life could not be better - until one day everything changes.Despite disagreeing with Brigitte about smoking, the narrator agrees to go and buy her a pack of cigarettes. As he goes along the streets of Amsterdam, thinking about his next performance, he is accosted by three women - dressed in hoods and cloaks. At first he thinks that they are just going to a costume party, but they reveal that they know him - they have seen him dance and are delighted to finally meet him. Before the narrator can do anything, he feels the prick of a needle and his consciousness evaporates. He wakes up in an unfamiliar white room, lying on his back, his wrists and ankles chained to the floor; suddenly the women are there too, hidden in their cloaks. You belong to us, says one of them. You're ours now.The first part of the book takes place during the eighteen days that the narrator will spend in captivity - the fact that his captivity will end (and when) is revealed by him at the beginning, which in my opinion was not a good decision; even if we know that the narrator is telling us the story that already happened, I would prefer to not know how it ends before he even began telling it. This does not ruin the story, but I think it removes an element of suspense from which could have enhanced it.The Book of Revelation makes up for this slight flaw by its main theme - exploration of sexual abuse and male sexuality. The three women kidnap the narrator to keep him as their personal sex slave, and during these eighteen days he will be raped, mutilated and made to perform and participate in bizarre acts. As a dancer, he mastered his own body to perfection, he is disgusted as he sees it betraying him. As he is molested against his will, the same body has an erection as if to spite him; he is disgusted with being physically aroused during his violation. Although the book opens in the first person, this section is narrated in the third - as if to signify the split between the physical and psychological: the narrator's mind observes from the outside as his physical body responds to unwanted stimulation.To survive his ordeal, the narrator gives each of the women a name and tries to remember the differences between their bodies, wanting to discover any detail which would give him a clue about their identity - but his captivity ends as suddenly as it has begun, and he is free again. Or is he? The second half of the book focuses on the narrator's long walk back to the world - he is unable to communicate the truth of what happened to his friends and girlfriend, who believes that he was with another woman. Not able to tell or explain, the narrator leaves to seek refugee elsewhere - he travels the world but finds that he is unable to settle anywhere and with anyone, and decides to return to Amsterdam to find the women who have done this to him.The second part of the novel is nowhere near as suspenseful and disturbing as the first one - it's erratic and fragmented, understandably much like the narrator's psyche. However, despite the rush and movement and the smells and sights of all the new venues the narrator travels to, it is poignant and haunting as his obsession with finding the three women strips him of his identity more than anything they could have done. The aftermatch of his rape is worse than the rape itself, since the eighteen days of his captivity are over but the rest of his life is still there.The Book of Revelation stands out in the sea of novels about abduction and rape as it involves a man being captured, held, tormented and raped by a woman - in the vast majority of cases it's the other way round. John Fowles's famous debut novel and grandfather of all such fiction, The Collector, has the narrator kidnap a young girl whom he admires from a distance, with hope that she will eventually grow to love him. The Silence of the Lambs features a serial killer kidnapping a senator's daughter. Examples can be counted in the hundreds, if not thousands - and the only other example of a book featuring a man being abducted and tormented by a woman is Stephen King's Misery, in which Kathy Bates imprisons her favorite novelist, Paul Sheldon. Even though I thought that The Book of Revelation meandered in the second section and the end is ultimately unsatisfying, it is still definitely worth reading as a rare take of a male protagonist trying to recover after being raped. The New York Times described it as "An erotic horror story, which is a peculiar way to describe it - would the description be the same if it featured a woman being abducted and held against her will for eighteen days and repeatedly raped by three masked men?
This book ostensibly promises to be sexually fascinating, f#cked up, and revelational. Is it?Long story short, there are 99 pages early in the book written -- unlike the rest of the book -- in the third person, which detail how a 29 year old straight male dancer/choreographer is abducted and held against his will by three women. The man is imprisoned in a white room and the three women use him in various sexual, domineering and hedonistic ways, while feeding him, seeing to his needs, rewarding him for 'good behaviour' and punishing him for 'bad behaviour.' This part of the book is rather titillating and appropriately gripping and offers much sexual and power relationship food for thought...even though the protagonist rarely seems 'all there,' and is emotionally lacklustre. Here we see a man virtually and literally raped, a man tortured and toyed with by three women, and we are left to wonder what we would do in this situation, and how much, if at all, it differs from the same ordeal with the sexes reversed.But then it's all over. The rest of the book features (mild spoilers) (view spoiler)[him being ditched by his girlfriend, who somewhat unbelievably assumes he cheated on her during his 18 day absence, his pondering and wandering and wondering and off and on hunting his abductors literally and figuratively, ending with him becoming somewhat of a sexual deviant and his breaking a woman's heart and the law. (hide spoiler)]
Do You like book The Book Of Revelation (2001)?
I found it incredibly easy to read, but not so enjoyable. I felt a bit numb, to be honest, not really engaging with the protagonist at all. Even with all that sex and torture in the first half, the whole thing felt tacky (I really could have done without the strip-tease and all the PVC or leather or whatever it was). Also the fact that you knew from the beginning that he was going to get out somehow created some sort of distance. I found the second half much more interesting, especially the reaction he gets when he is released and how he doesn't feel he can tell his ordeal to anyone. It’s fascinating to think how different it would have been if the genders were reversed. But society thinks that a man in his situation must have at least enjoyed part of it. However, I have always said that just because a man has an erection, it does not mean that he wants to have sex. Not a thing you see very often in any type of fiction, where men are usually portrayed as ruled by their desires: once your penis gets hard, your brain stops to function. Fuck that. That can never be an excuse for anything. Anyway, the best bit for me was his quest to find his aggressors and how all the bodies get blurred after a while. So yes, the whole thing had a lot of potential and I like the underlying themes, but it’s not particularly well written and I am sure I will forget it in 3, 2, 1… The Book of what?
—Ser
I was stuck between giving this a three and four star rating. In the end I gave it a four because the subject matter was handled so well and the book is very well written. I picked this book up on a whimsy, not thinking I would like it, only to find that I could not put it down. The story centers around a male ballet dancer who has everything going for him: fame, looks, a beautiful girlfriend, a wonderful and promising career. On a trip to buy some cigarettes for his girlfriend, he is kidnapped by three women cloaked in hoods. He wakes up and finds himself chained up in a stark, white room. The women hold him captive for 18 days and during his captivity, they rape him, torture him, and humiliate him. Now, I am not giving anything away since this is the summary plot given on the back of the book. It is also what almost made me not buy the book. I thought this was going to go the porn-trash way, but it was actually handled quite well, without ever going into the lurid.The good part of the book comes after this man is released. Who is going to believe such a wild story? The way he deals with his predicament is so poignant and at times maddening. Such an ordeal is tough for women but it must be tougher for men, because it's hard for a lot of people to believe this could happen to a man. The author writes about this so realistically, never giving in to what he thinks a reader might want to hear. My heart went out for this man. It made me think about everything he lost, his sense of bearing in life, his interactions with people, even the ease of sexuality changed, all based on a violation inflicted upon him. It is a book that will make you ponder what if...? It will make you cry, get mad, wish revenge upon those inflicting the pain, and make you want to reach out to comfort this man, even if it's just to let him know that you believe his story.
—Licha
This is what I fall upon when weeding the adult fiction shelves here at the library. I began to read it to see if it was worth keeping and I got swallowed up by the plot. Had to take it home to finish the book and find out what happens. First off, for all you guys who think this is a fantasy come true--here you will learn that this is not the case. The loss of power, the violation, and the ramifications of that violation are here. No wonder feminist women encourage men to read this book! I had questions like "why doesn't he tell someone?" and yet I understand why the character does not, indeed, can not tell anyone of what has happened to him. The book is very disquieting. One wonders if his "police friend" in the end will save him. That all victims could have a special friend to help them pull the fat out of the fire when most needed! Okay, that's why I give it 4 stars instead of 5. Still, really well done. Now I must find his other novels and read those as well.
—Liberality
