Book Review: The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West
Rating: a generous 2 stars of 5
I really wanted to like this. The Witches Are Coming started out so well and then just went completely down the toilet. I ended up being glad I borrowed it from the library instead of purchasing it from Barnes and Noble any of the sixteen times I eyed it in the store.
I found the very beginning to be so poignantly, refreshingly scathing. The author holds a mirror up to the utter nonsense spewed by men and shatters the illusion many of them have bought into in such a blatant, unmistakable way. That first part reads like a brilliant social essay that I think would stand on its own quite well.
Then she descends into an endless, rabbit-trailing, mad-rant that she delivers in such an off-putting way that even when I agreed with what she was saying (which was a lot of the time), I just couldn’t stand to listen to her anymore. Her delivery is so…icky. I don’t know how else to put it. It just leaves the reader feeling so depressed and kind of gross. It’s like the feeling you would get if you had been forced to listen to a woman on a street corner go off on an unhinged tirade about all the things she hates about the world whilst holding her big homemade signs and spewing spittle in your face for three hours. You’re too polite to just walk away and she won’t let you get a word in edgewise. Even if you think she has good talking points, you find yourself looking for any excuse to leave. It’s just so tiresome to listen to.
I can appreciate feminine rage, but this didn’t read like that. It read like a self-aggrandizing sermon delivered by someone completely lacking in self-awareness who likes to dehumanize anyone who dares to disagree with or criticize her.
She could have made such a poignant, necessary statement and instead, she let it get the best of her.
I marked it as DNF at 50%.
Content advisory: strong language (frequent)
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