Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows comes recommended by many lists and all of them promise this is both an Important novel and an Enjoyable one, and I’m not convinced its either.
Sure there are some stark descriptions of LA and the madness of the traffic and the absurdity of the people and what they wear/eat/consume/do. Descriptions that are well written and evocative and spectacular in ways that mirror their subject matter AND YET.
We follow Mae and Chris as they investigate (first for money and then for #principle) kidnappings and murders demanded by men with #power and #money and largely at the expense of young women without the same.
The hammering of the point that money allows power and abuse and privilege and abuse and a free pass and abuse is a lot. And the excess – to the point of capitalization throughout – that everybody knows of the abuse of power and the abuse bought and the escape from justice. Well it might be that in this – and here we are again – political moment the reminder that men with money can do whatever they want to women’s bodies is just… hard to dig into as a thriller when it reads as altogether real. I guess that’s to say it’s hard to read a #metoo book right now.
So maybe go back and read this in 2018 and you might really, really enjoy it.
Literary Vice 