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These Violent Delights: A Novel

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Format: Paperback


Description

A Literary Hub Best Book of Year • A Crime Reads Best Debut of the Year • A Newsweek 25 Best Fall Books • A Philadelphia Inquirer 10 Big Books for the Fall • An OLGBTQ Books That Are Changing the Literary Landscape • An Electric Lit Most Anticipated Debut • A Paperback Paris Best New LGBTQ+ Books To Read This Year Selection • A Passport Best Book of the MonthThe Secret History meets Lie with Me in Micah Nemerever's compulsively readable debut novel—a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence.When Paul enters university in early 1970s Pittsburgh, it’s with the hope of moving past the recent death of his father. Sensitive, insecure, and incomprehensible to his grieving family, Paul feels isolated and alone. When he meets the worldly Julian in his freshman ethics class, Paul is immediately drawn to his classmate’s effortless charm.Paul sees Julian as his sole intellectual equal—an ally against the conventional world he finds so suffocating. Paul will stop at nothing to prove himself worthy of their friendship, because with Julian life is more invigorating than Paul could ever have imagined. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian is also volatile and capriciously cruel, and Paul becomes increasingly afraid that he can never live up to what Julian expects of him.As their friendship spirals into all-consuming intimacy, they each learn the lengths to which the other will go in order to stay together, their obsession ultimately hurtling them toward an act of irrevocable violence.Unfolding with a propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is an exquisitely plotted excavation of the depths of human desire and the darkness it can bring forth in us. Read more


Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (September 14, 2021)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Paperback ‏ : ‎ 480 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0062963643


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 42


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.6 ounces


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 1.08 x 8 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #122,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #1,360 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books) #2,692 in Psychological Thrillers (Books) #5,535 in Literary Fiction (Books)


#1,360 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books):


#2,692 in Psychological Thrillers (Books):


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • Gripping & disturbing in equal measure
A deeply disturbing, utterly gripping book. Its sources are clear - Raskolnikov, Leopold & Loeb, the tortured souls trying to find their place in a world they fail to understand. It's unyieldingly harrowing, but brilliantly composed. Paul comes from working-class Pittsburgh. In college, he falls desperately in love with Julian, from a rich family outside Washington, DC. Julian's mother comes from European wealth - but Jewish money, which makes them parvenus in their rarified circles. Still, money is money, and Julian's family plays by the WASP rules; they join the right clubs and throw the right parties. Their son being gay is utterly unimaginable to both families. Far worse, Paul's social anxiety is off the charts. He cannot afford to live on campus, and takes the bus to school. He is desperately out of his depths in class and in Class. His self-loathing is so profound that he cannot accept his lover's affection as anything other than a malignant strike at Julian's upper-crust parents. The two teenagers share a deeply tortured relationship, with each twisting the other in knots to prove their affection. Needless to say, their sexual encounters easily turn violent. Although discreetly portrayed, these intimate moments are nonetheless a vivid depiction of their profound troubles, with themselves and each other. Like Raskolnikov, they hit upon the Nietzschean solution - to kill another, less worthy person. Somehow, this will cement their abiding love for one another. To say more will ruin the unfolding of events - the tortuous family encounters on both sides, the poisonous nature of their relationship, the dreadful uncertainty that both teens share that each is unworthy of the other. It's deeply upsetting, but completely gripping. I'm not sure I've seen such a naked portrait of two young men with such complex identity issues, whose insatiable thirst for one another drives both of them toward madness. The story is told entirely from Paul's perspective, thus Julian remains more than a bit opaque. But that is both our antihero's fascination and their mutual ruin. A tough read, but a brilliant debut. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2023 by Bway Jack
    • 'dark academia' at its most psychological and introspective
To give this three stars... to give this four stars... I'm still not sure where I land on this book overall. It's impossible to avoid comparisons to other dark academia books and I kind of hate doing it because, like, I don't compare two fantasy books for both having magic systems and wizards, but I think that within the genre (of those I've read so far) this one is just okay enjoyment wise, but definitely a lot more theme-heavy and has a real point of view as opposed to a lot of other stories that lean into the tropes of ~dark academia~. I love a bit of murder, I love a bit of darkness, I love a psychological study of somebody borderline off the rails, but although the actual murder section of this book was really good, it lacked the page-turner OOH WHATS GONNA HAPPEN factor that things like A Lesson and Vengeance, The Atlas Six, and If We Were Liars really had going for them. That being said, I think that the characters of Paul and Julien were really well done even though I didn't like either character very much at all (then again, they're not good people so I don't think I was supposed to). The author mentions in his author's note at the end that Paul and Julien are supposed to represent the obsession and toxicity that can occur in what he refers to as 'identity-consuming romantic friendships' and I think that aspect of the story was executed perfectly. I put this book down for a really long time because Julien, one of the central protagonists, was really getting on my nerves since he seemed to exhibit every single aspect of the 'dark, dramatic, wannabe hipster/rich kid befriends shy, poorer kid' archetype and I wasn't really in the mood for reading that kind of unbalanced dynamic again. Paul was so much more interesting at the beginning but by the later half of the book, I loved how the power dynamic shifted and as Julien reveals more of his true feelings and care for Paul, Paul grows darker, meaner, and, frankly, more annoying. I think last 200 pages of this book bring it up from a 3 to a 4 star read and I really liked the ending. I tore through the last few chapters. This book is more character study than it is plot-driven and if you can get past the kinda cliché first hundred pages or so when your like 'yeah, I've read this before, okay I see where this is going' then it's worth it. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2022 by Mandy G.

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