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Boris is the name.
It reminds me of a diving backhand volley in the late '80s; that blond kraut-eater was just over 17 years old, and on a worn-out grass court with a net in the middle, he was consecrated to the world. Arrogant, nearly impudent, he astonished everyone by winning the most prestigious trophy and securing my everlasting tennis love. As I reminisce about his career, I am already leafing through it. This other Boris, I mean the book. I find myself in a room that looks more like a damn Cold War bunker than a bookstore room, except that on the shelves, instead of food, drinks, and blankets, there is paper. A mountain of it, mostly useless. But let's not digress.
Vian is the surname.
If he's not the smallest in the room, wedged haphazardly between a horrid teenage fantasy and a never-opened brick of a book, he's close enough. Yet this little book, seemingly slender and harmless, has the power to knock you out: like a punch from Tyson in his badass days when his matches lasted seconds. A handful of thin and airy pages.
I’ve read a couple of reviews online, and they all start by highlighting the fact that this work is, take your pick, an outstanding absolute superlative, because it was written in just two weeks. It may be an isolated opinion of mine, but the time the author took to birth these chapters interests me as much as remembering the score and scorers of San Benedettese - Castel di Sangro from 13 years ago. Not much. And if he polished and corrected everything in 14 days and won his bet, well, I'm happy for him and can be impressed by his talent and demonstrated fertile creativity, but that remains his business.
A book that remains extreme even now, over 60 years after its publication. It hits hard with its steady pace formed by short, raw, and dirty chapters where unfolds a plot centered on the insatiable and patient cooking of a large bleeding slice of the protagonist's revenge. Lee is a negro; only he has white skin. Supported by the text's descriptions, you too can clearly see this affable, milky angelic face which actually conceals a dirty negro who, disguised in the skin of a magnetically attractive white man, starts weaving his web to avenge his murdered brother.
Lee is not in a hurry; he has all the time he needs. In fact, the more days pass, the better he infiltrates the wasted youth of a useless little town where, among other delights, pedophilia and alcoholism flourish as distractions to kill reigning boredom. He starts from the bottom. A bit like when you start playing a new video game. At the first level, screwing and overcoming local girls and bullies gives him sufficient pleasure, but soon the routine of his bastard living pushes him to try raising the bar. He progressively enters a circle of higher-standing acquaintances and thus, browsing distractedly in the living room of an arrogant party, he finds the right prey. His prey, because they are very young twins of icy beauty and good prospects.
Patience has indeed paid off. This is what Lee thinks as he begins to construct the enormous scaffolding that he now considers obvious and inevitable will lead to their infatuation. And he revels as it, plank by plank, slowly takes shape to finally close that dark red circle opened with his brother's death.
Dense. “I Spit on Your Graves” is a streamlined book, written by a superior pen and as direct as few others I have had the pleasure of reading. In a violent, vengeful, and fast-paced noir, a snapshot of a generation at the limit placed between racism, alcohol, and pedophilia.
Reading the title, sunny and accommodating as few others, it was exactly what I expected when I ventured into the first page.
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