Virginie Despentes' DEAR DICKHEAD (Tr Frank Wynn)

Epistolary novels have never been my favorite, but when its author is someone like Virginie Fucking Despentes I'm going to drop everything and read it anyway. 

Especially since it kind of sounds like an epistolary novel of hate, as the title, Dear Dickhead (Cher Connard in French), heavily implies. 

The correspondence that unfolds here is between a world famous French actress and celebrated beauty, Rebecca, and an almost as famous French novelist, Oscar. As we quickly learn, both of them have seen better days; Rebecca has hit middle age, is no longer much of a sex symbol and isn't getting much in the way of work anymore; Oscar has recently come to the attention of the #MeToo movement for his treatment of one of his first publicists, a woman named Zoe Katana (gotta love Despentes' character names; this is the best since Vodka Satana in the Vernon Subutex trilogy) at the start of his career.

They knew each other slightly as children, when Rebecca was the best friend of Oscar's older sister, Corrine, who makes a kind of side appearance in the novel as a topic of discussion between the two, but Corinne is not terribly important. What matters is that Oscar, newly in shock, as he excuses himself, from his exposure via his former publicist's blog, recently made some very unkind remarks to the press about Rebecca's appearance these days. And Rebecca, not one to suffer dickheads gladly, emailed him a scathing personal reply that is... very much the kind of thing I read Virginie Despentes for.

I don't think anyone would truly want to read a novel-length flame war, however, and Despentes has other things in mind than just a moderately novel storytelling device. Not long after the opening exchange of fire, Rebecca and Oscar settle down a bit, not only out of mutual respect for Corinne or their own childhood connection to one another and the memories they share, but out of a simple curiosity that blossoms into empathy and then into a combative kind of friendship. Part of the catalyst for this is Rebecca's own investigation of Oscar's sudden #MeToo infamy, exposed when the publicist becomes a middling internet-famous feminist blogger and tells her side of the story, which we get to see in interludes quoting entries from her blog. 

Rebecca neither leaps to Oscar's defense nor takes Zoe's side, but, through her imperfect understanding of Zoe's experience as filtered through her own, makes a very good attempt at leading Oscar to consider how his behavior might have seemed very different from the point of view of an unwilling object of his attentions. Very good, but not perfect: Rebecca hasn't been as powerless as Zoe was since she was a young teenager, and has since lived the cosseted and insulated life of an international superstar. Still, she starts getting through to Oscar, enough to lead him to start reconsidering many aspects of how he has lived his life and treated other people -- and his relationship with drugs and alcohol.

Before we know it, Rebecca and Oscar have more or less talked each other into getting clean, with Oscar starting to actively go to Narcotics Anonymous meetings and soon realizing that he's actually finally found the only people in perhaps the world that don't care about the sexual harassment allegations against him, and, once the COVID-19 epidemic first hits and changes the world/ Rebecca eventually follows him, first lurking on the online meetings Oscar has to resort to when Shelter In Place becomes the new norm and then, discovering the same value that Oscar has found in his participation, cautiously turning on the camera and allowing others in recovery to know that she is there and is also finally ready to admit that her own drug use has maybe been a problem.

The two never share a physical space; everything unfolds in true epistolary fashion through their emails and bits from Zoe's blog that allow us not only to see an outside perspective on what they are doing but also, at least from Zoe's side, the price that Zoe is paying for speaking up as part of #MeToo, because of course Manosphere internet trolls start harassing her, threatening her, letting her know via disgusting physical parcels that they know where she lives and driving home that she is trapped there while the epidemic rages unchecked.

The character arcs thus explored are extraordinary and moving without ever feeling sentimental or manipulative; both Rebecca and Oscar are acerbic, brave and, eventually, honest. They never stop needling each other; Rebecca never really stops calling Oscar a dickhead even after they've both come to realize that they genuinely care about each other. Their individual voices are wickedly fun and brutally entertaining. Zoe's is less so, but she still gets a chance, if somewhat indirectly, to appeal to the reader's understanding and empathy. The result is a novel that not only met my exceedingly high expectations of Virginie Despentes as a novelist (who, let's face it, made my automatic buy list long ago) but exceeded them. Despentes is an absolute wonder, and I can't wait to see what she does next, if she chooses to do anything next at all, which I sincerely hope she does!