Choosing Red Pill by Hari Kunzru was a big mistake on part. The reviews for his previous novel were outstanding, how could I not like it?
‘Exquisitely attuned’
‘Electrifying, subversive and wildly original’
‘A book that everyone should be reading right now’
‘Haunting, doom-drenched, genuinely and viscerally disturbing…’
The only one of those quotes that applies to Red Pill is “doom-drenched”
Red Pill is about an academic writer who has lost his motivation to write while experiencing an existential crisis. He is awarded a grant to spend 3 months residency at a cultural foundation in Wannsee near Berlin where things go from bad to worse. I don’t know where the story might have gone as I gave up after dragging myself through about a quarter of the book.
Maybe I missed out, but I found Red Pill to be a slow paced, overly wordy, self indulgent dirge. This is literary fiction at its absolute worst.
1/5