"Over the past few decades, one particular question has played out across numerous books, films, and essays: Can men and women be friends? That debate can seem awfully quaint. The concern has now hardened into a much gloomier one: Can men and women even get along? Recently, the retrograde gender politics of the right have influenced young men through podcasts, websites, and other " manosphere" content."
"Into the fray slips the British-born writer Claire-Louise Bennett with her third book, Big Kiss, Bye-Bye. Set in the period after a breakup, the novel contains moments of sharp analysis that appear, at times, to endorse this fatalistic vision, termed "heteropessimism" by the writer Asa Seresin in an influential 2019 essay. Heteropessimism is an attitude, Seresin wrote, "usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience."
"Bennett is a writer of great linguistic inventiveness; her previous books, the short-story collection Pond and the novel Checkout 19, use surprising wordplay to evoke their narrators' unique ways of interacting with the world. Big Kiss, Bye-Bye offers something else, too: a subtle riposte against gender pessimism. Its protagonist-unnamed, like those in Pond and Checkout 19 -is a writer who has recently ended a doomed affair with an older man, Xavier."
Retrograde gender politics, manosphere content, rising female education and economic autonomy, and dissatisfaction with app-based courtship have combined to foster heteropessimism and doubts about the future of heterosexuality. A post-breakup narrator reflects on a recently ended affair with an older man, offering moments of sharp analysis that sometimes align with heteropessimism while ultimately providing a subtle rebuttal. The narration relies on linguistic inventiveness and surprising wordplay to render the protagonist's perceptions and emotional landscape. The voice interrogates gender dynamics, modern dating norms, and the complex feelings left in the wake of romantic disillusionment.
Read at The Atlantic
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