Inexcusable, by Chris Lynch, reviewed.

To quote my LSG friends: Sherman Alexie, I am disappoint.

If you’re into YA lit, you probably heard about this article from the Wall Street Journal. If you want to read it, go for it; I found it to be a ridiculous portrayal of YA from someone who clearly doesn’t know about the genre, but it’s your blood pressure. But anyway, that article inspired this one, where Sherman Alexie explains why the best young adult novels are written in pain and anguish and blood. In that article, he compared Chris Lynch’s book, Inexcusable to Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak. If you hang out with me for more than three seconds, talking about YA literature, odds are you’ve heard me go on (and on) about Speak, and how this book is a paragon of genius to me, and how I would have Laurie’s love children for her, if, you know, she didn’t want to use her own uterus for some reason.

So I bought Chris Lynch’s book. I think I was under a heady delusion that I was actually buying a Chris Crutcher book; I thought I’d read something by this author and loved it, so I never bothered to find a sample chapter or anything.

I was so mistaken.

Like Speak, Inexcusable takes as its subject date rape. Only, instead of looking at the subject from the point of view of the victim, as Speak does, Chris Lynch tries to take us through the point of view of the rapist, show us what kind of justifications and denials and madness goes through the mind of someone who is going to overpower another human being and force them to do something unthinkable.

His character is Keir, a high school senior, who has two sisters, each a year older than him. His mother died, either in childbirth, or when Keir was very young, it’s not clear. His father is one of those YA fathers where Keir thinks he’s a hero, and an adult reader (hopefully a teenaged one, too) quickly realizes that Ray, the father, is an alcoholic, and is in no way parenting his son.

This book exposes the limitations of writing in a first person present tense. It starts with a scene between Keir and Gigi, and if you have ever heard of sexual assault, it’s instantly clear what they’re fighting about; Gigi is saying that Keir raped her, and he’s denying it. Then, through flashbacks, we are taken through Keir’s senior year, and we get a laundry list of other things he denies. His family dynamics. Crippling a kid while playing football. His dad’s alcoholism. In a later scene, we get an idea that even his vision of who his sisters are is distorted. But the POV is so narrow, so tight in Keir’s head, that it’s just a he-said-she-said game. I can’t evaluate, can’t think where he’s gone wrong, where others have led him astray.

Perhaps the issue is that Lynch is trying to show us why someone might do this, and the simple truth is that there is no reason good enough. Not one. Also, there is nothing to love about Keir, no reason to root for him. I think he’s a dirtbag from the beginning of the book, and nothing is presented to me in the text to convince me otherwise. He isn’t really an anti-hero either; he’s just kind of a drifter, and a partier, and his absurdly casual drug use makes me insane. So I realized, half way through the book, I didn’t *care* why he did it, he did it, and I wanted to cut his dick off. I finished the book just so I could talk about it here. I’m awfully sorry that this character is so deluded about life that he doesn’t fucking comprehend the word “no,” in the penultimate scene, he doesn’t even register that it is said, since it is not narrated to us (although the scene is not graphic, so it’s kind of hard to tell what’s happened). I feel like Chris Lynch wrote this book, and either he or the publisher slapped the title Inexcusable in place, because otherwise, I would probably think that he thought it was excusable. Or at least understandable.

Not only did I not like this book, I’m frustrated that I spent money on it, and wish I could get my $8 back. No thanks.