Tamblyn, a poet, activist and actor (she starred in the films The Ring and The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and as the title character in the TV series Joan of Arcadia), wrote the bulk of the novel while pregnant with her first child. I’m not religious, but my mom is Christian and she hates when people hear she’s a Christian and assume she probably doesn’t like gay people, or that she’s probably against immigration. There are characters who are just like you and me, and then there are characters who are obviously inspired by real-life figureheads who perpetuate certain aspects of how society is currently functioning. I checked out this book being super skeptical cos like Amber is a celebrity and I was worried it would be a big pretentious or detached from reality.

It’s about how survivors grapple with their new reality and their upended perception of themselves, their relationships, their bodies and the world around them. It would be hard to talk about complicity without mentioning Tamblyn’s husband, the comedian David Cross, who plays Tobias Fünke in the sitcom Arrested Development. She has spoken openly, for example, about an ex-boyfriend who assaulted her at a nightclub in Hollywood, dragging her out of the venue “by my private parts”.You can't shut me up about the shit I got up to in college but I've only just started telling that story. I did enjoy the Twitter section - I think this was a good way of showing how violence like this is glamorized and portrayed in the media, and which sensationalized stories truly garner the public’s attention. I didn't elbow him in the crotch or slam my foot down on his or even make blistering eye contact with him as he got off the bus. I will take the guilt and the second guessing and the fear of people staring and wondering what I did to make him do that and I will tell it to fuck right the hell off.

I actually thought about writing a character based on Yiannopoulos (who, like I said, is vile, but also kind of fascinates me in a ‘watching-a-trainwreck’ way) but I guess Tamblyn beat me to it. In that way, Tamblyn's book is critical because it believes so wholeheartedly in the most fundamental power of art: to awaken minds by evoking empathy. With Sebastian they applaud his strength and celebrate his upcoming book while with Michael all they can talk about is his criminal record and his assigned at birth gender which has absolutely nothing to do with the attack but there are also those that support Maude and believe that men are finally getting what they deserve after putting women through this treatment for centuries which I didn’t agree with at all, that isn’t an experience you’d wish on your worst enemy let alone the average person whose done nothing wrong. She did a great job figuring out the crimes itself and probably actually got through to the readers re brutality and discomfort.When he started moving against me, grinding (there I said it) I told myself it was just the bus swaying back and forth. I think Tamblyn intended for this to be a subtle social commentary but the commentary screamed from the pages. Tamblyn takes the potentially-cringeworthy concept of a female rapist raping men and makes it potent because it doesn't so much focus on the perp as it does the victims. So she encouraged her young daughter to pray that god would handle it and some days later the neighbour’s house was burglarized.