Book Review : Charlene Elsby - The Devil Thinks I'm Pretty (2023)
Charlene Elsby is not the easiest author to read. She's not the most difficult either, but she's quirky in unique and unexpected ways. Her unreliable narrator like to bend time and space to their liking. Elsby has perfected what it means to "occupy the consciousness of someone else" in literary, with all the lurid private thoughts and difficult logical loopholes in implies. Her upcoming novel The Devil Thinks I’m Pretty is perhaps the Elsbiest Charlene Elsby has ever been. If you’re familiar with her work, you know what it means.
The unnamed narrator (it's always an unnamed narrator, isn’t it?) of The Devil Thinks I’m Pretty is a young, blooming woman working at a restaurant and getting to experience new pleasures with her horny boyfriend Brian. But this young woman has a devil within. Her empowerment through sex and desire will usher her into a world of deviance, control and supremacy. Don't get me wrong, she's not the victim. Charlene Elsby's narrators are never ever the victim at the end. They are unbreakable and savage.
Desire as a form of creativity
The Devil Thinks I’m Pretty is, primarily, a novel about desire. Although it has an important sexual component, it’s not exactly a novel about sex. Our narrator's desires are a little broader than that. Everything starts when she first has sex with Brian, but this occurrence liberated other, darker desires within and from that moment on, sex becomes a mean to an end and not an end in itself. Our narrator starts using sex to create a new future for herself, but also as a weapon of mass destruction.
If you’re familiar with the work of Georges Bataille, you will find familiar themes echoing through The Devil Thinks I’m Pretty, although there are less schlongs. Notably the aforementioned power of sex as an instrument of destruction and creation. Our narrator uses sex to put herself in a position to unleash darker desires upon the damned souls who are fiends to the cravings of the flesh. She is a fiend to the cravings of the flesh in her own ways, but… her cravings are a little less conventional.
I’m not gonna lie. The Devil Thinks I’m Pretty is somewhat of a tough and demanding read even if it's short. One of the most demanding I’ve read from Charlene Elsby, who’s not a walk in the park to begin with. It’s a book where the inner world takes a lot of real estate. It distorts our perception of the outer world up to a point where you feel trapped inside our narrator’s perspective and wondering what the fuck is going on, but when that inner world in unleashed. Whew. Get ready.
It’s fucked.
The Joys of Getting Your Soul Brutalized
Why should one read a difficult and shocking novel where the latent brutality of sex emerges like a shark’s fin on the ocean’s surface? Glad you asked. Because it’s a divergent perspective on a mostly consensual phenomenon. Sex is perceive to be either a life affirming endeavor or a a sinister tool of control and coercion used by men over women. Not the opposite. That’s what Charlene Elsby introduces in The Devil Thinks I’m Pretty. The unlikely and uncanny inner life of an “object of desire".
My point of view as a white heterosexual male is as privileged as they come and The Devil Thinks I’m Pretty was as uncomfortable as it gets. Reading about someone who doesn’t share my perspective or point of view using sex in such a brutal and unyielding way was unsettling. Fortunately, I crave challenge and discomfort when I’m reading. Why wouldn’t you? It’s very much a safe space to experience it and the only thing that will happen is that your output on certain topics might broaden.
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The Devil Thinks I’m Pretty was a struggle at times, but it did deliver an unforgettable Bataillian (some would say Lynchian) finale that made it all worthwile. Charlene Elsby is one of these writers who does something very precise. She had her thing that nobody does quite like her and delivers just that, book after book, kind of like Cannibal Corpse deliver death metal record after record. It’s either for you or against you if you know what I mean. Pre-order this bad boy to find out. It comes out on October 13!
