Dear D******d
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- £10.99
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- £10.99
Publisher Description
"The book of the moment" Sunday Times
"Highly entertaining . . . subtle and complex" Guardian
"Despentes at her very best" New European
"Full of emotional suspense" FT
"Brilliant - funny, wise and completely addictive - a work of angry, outrageous and hilarious genius" VICTORIA HISLOP
"Full of energy and blistering rationality" LISA McINERNEY
Dear D******d,
I read the piece you posted on Insta. You're like a pigeon shitting on my shoulder as you flap past. It's shitty and unpleasant. Congratulations: you've had your fifteen minutes of fame! You want proof? Here I am writing to you.
Rebecca Latté is a famous actress in her fifties, perhaps past the peak of her career.
Oscar Jayack is a middle-aged, moderately successful author who, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, has been accused of sexual harassment by his former publicist-turned-feminist blogger Zoé Katana.
When Oscar insults Rebecca's appearance on Instagram, she sends a scorching reply and the pair fall into a spiral of mutual antipathy. In back-and-forth emails, they vie for the last word, finding common ground in their experiences of addiction, assessing the changing world around them as Covid locks down Paris, and reluctantly beginning to lean on one another.
A novel of rage, irreverence and vulnerability, exploring ageing, gender, privilege, addiction and consent, Dear Dickhead is an excoriating encapsulation of our times and of the broken human beings trying to make sense of it.
Translated from the French by Frank Wynne
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A movie star and a disgruntled writer engage in an epic war of words in the brash and provocative latest from Despentes (Apocalypse Baby), set during the Covid-19 lockdown in France. Rebecca Latte, a legendary sex symbol who's now pushing 50, gets called a "wrinkled toad" in a vicious Instagram post by novelist Oscar Jayack, prompting her to clap back hard ("I hope your kids die under the wheels of a truck"). The heated exchange, which forms the entirety of the novel, sprawls from typical keyboard-warrior retorts into each character's personal history. It turns out Oscar's older sister, Corinne, was Rebecca's best friend when the women were teens, and Oscar fills Rebecca in on Corinne's life after the women grew apart, including Corinne's coming out as a lesbian. As Oscar and Rebecca share with each other, they examine their battles with addiction (Oscar laments losing his "best self" now that he's quit drinking, and Rebecca notes how heroin lost its positive effect on her). Despentes also slips in the voice of Oscar's PR agent, Zoe Katana, who vehemently accuses him of sexual harassment, adding to the riveting exploration of feminism and sexism, and revealing how argumentative communication can bring its participants onto common ground. Readers will be awed.
