Toxic tale of rape — not love

365 Days

By Blanka Lipinska, Simon & Schuster , $28.99

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. The only reason I can’t say this is the worst book I have ever read is that I didn’t read it.

Only a few pages in I was shaking my head and rushing to cleanse my mind through some hastily uttered oohms.

Laura Biel and her boyfriend are on a holiday in Sicily to celebrate her 29th birthday. She gets kidnapped by the head of a Sicilian crime family because she is identical to a figure he saw in a dream. He decides to keep her prisoner and give her 365 days for her to fall in love with him. Or kill her family.

I expected a crime novel where people rushed to try to save Biel and a struggle against the incel delusions of a powerful but twisted and dangerous monster. But after the novel began with two violent sexual assaults by Massimo: “I like my things pretty”, he notes before he attacks a stewardess in an assault presented as some kind of consensual encounter despite terror and tears, I’m starting to wonder what on Earth it is that I’m reading here. This is followed by threats to the newly kidnapped Biel that, she says “caused a wave of heat to ripple through my entire body”. Oh. Dear. God.

Worse than the fact that this book has been published is that it has already been made into a “hit” movie. Thinking maybe I was missing something, I watched the few opening scenes. I hadn’t missed anything. The movie, with its poor acting and ridiculous dialogue — similar to the rubbish in the book to be fair — was the same apology for rape that the book is. How in the name of female empowerment this is one of Netflix’s most successful movies of 2020 must be testament to just how screwed up the world is right now.

The author’s blurb claims Lipinska is “annoyed” about the lack of openness about sex so took it upon herself to discuss “the many sides of love”. Bollocks. 365 Days is not about any side of love.

It is about violence, toxic masculinity and a maladjusted teenage boy’s porn inspired fantasy.

Rape is not love. Abduction is not romantic. The way to a woman’s heart is not to threaten to kill her family. None of the above is going to lead anywhere but to destroyed lives. Just don’t. Please. I cannot believe it is necessary to say that in the post-Epstein/Weinstein era.

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