‘Rejection’ by Tony Tulathimutte   (2024) – 258 pages

‘Rejection’ is an over-the-top collection of linked stories about personal affairs, mostly sexual, in the 2020s. It attempts to come to terms with our new reality of the 2020s, no matter how difficult that may be. This is the era of cell phones and texting, and most of the real conversations take place via texting. Both the straight and the gay use dating apps to hook up with potential partners. Gaming is ubiquitous. These stories deal with the ironies in the way we live now.

The first story, ‘The Feminist’, is about a young guy who is ingrained with all the feminist values. He has read the feminist literature and respects women, and he has several female friends. However, when he actually tries to date these women, he gets turned down. They tell him how much they value his friendship, but they don’t want to get romantic with him. He thinks he is rejected because of his narrow shoulders. The young women still want to go out with the strong good-looking guys, no matter how misogynistic these guys’ attitudes toward women are.

The second story, “Pics”, is about a young woman, Alison, who has a first date with a guy named Neil. Alison has sex with Neil on their first date. She lets him take cell phone pictures of her doing a sexual act. But when they wake up in the morning, he tells her that “he doesn’t want to give the impression that he’s looking for anything serious”.

Neil never calls her for a second date. Here is a text between Alison and one of her friends:

“So now I feel stupid for letting him take pics.

Maybe that was his goal to begin with.

Who knows! Who fucking knows.

Seems like he got everything he wanted.”

Later she hooks up with The Feminist from the first story, but that falls through too.

“It furnishes him with an opportunity to demonstrate caring, which is not the same as caring.”

She is still hung up on Neil.

“What hurts the most is knowing that his rejection of her was fair.”

I thought these first two stories were very well done. At that point in reading the book, my enthusiasm level was quite high.

The third story is a vivid imagining of an exaggerated graphic sadistic sex act between two men. For me, this was a bridge too far, farther than I wanted to go. A later story, 70 pages long, is devoted to a non-binary transgender who gives us a perhaps over-the-top account of what its like to spend 19 hours a day in the internet. He (She?) spends their time “fabricating online personae and experimental digital narratives”.

“Oddly I’ve hit the point where I’m too depressed to scroll the internet, which is like being too hungry to eat.”

The novel winds up with a long letter of rejection for the book of ‘Rejection’ itself.

One problem I had was the use of new terminology and abbreviations. What is DARVO used as a verb? What is QPOC? I occasionally couldn’t follow these.

I do believe in live and let live, but I don’t necessarily want to spend my time reading about these alternative life styles. I suppose if I were a whole lot younger I would have appreciated these stories more.

Grade :   B