Served Him Right

Served Him Right, by Lisa Unger

Okay, this is fun. I'm not really the target audience here, since I almost never read mainstream/contemporary fiction and am not a woman in the way of women who like to read women's lit mysteries. But, things have been pretty fucking heavy here in real life lately in a way that makes me fantasize about murdering a certain type of man, and this book caught my eye at the library at just the right moment.

And honestly, Served Him Right is great. The characters are complex, mostly authentic-feeling (the lawyer and the lesbian were a little flat, but you can only focus on so many side characters in a book), and their actions/choices resonated with me. Nobody here is a saccharine angel or a devil acting out for no reason. Women make dumb choices because they're horny; women choose practical men even though they're not in love. I really, really love that there was space in this book for the teenagers as well as the adult women; I'm kind of in the mood now for a multi-generational murder mystery. Give me generational trauma in the suburbs!

The plot is entirely satisfactory, which is tricky in a mystery. I've tried it, and not done it nearly as well, I'll admit that. I love that the resolution of the plot has all these resonances with gender and power and the secret lives of women men don't see. The best part of the book, for me, was the clear-eyed assessment of how the everyday misogyny of ordinary men damages women's lives. There's nothing that happens to the characters in this book that hasn't happened to many women I know. An honest view of that means there are so many motives for murder, and not just a crime of passion but legitimate motives for the kind of conspiracy I hope people get away with. It's not that common that I read a murder mystery and end up rooting for the murderer, but this book not only managed it, but made me cry with rage along the way. Like I said, things have been heavy in real life. I'm not about to break out the poison, but. Well.

Pairs well with: Tiptree's "The Women Men Don't See", which I haven't read in a long time but which I ought to find a copy of. I ought to buy some hardcopies of Tiptree, probably--before it's impossible to find her stories that are out of print.