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    These Violent Delights: A Novel
    These Violent Delights: A Novel
    These Violent Delights: A Novel
    Audiobook14 hours

    These Violent Delights: A Novel

    Written by Micah Nemerever

    Narrated by Michael Crouch

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    A Literary Hub Best Book of Year • A Crime Reads Best Debut of the Year • A Newsweek 25 Best Fall Books • A Philadelphia Inquirer 10 Big Books for the Fall • An O Magazine.com LGBTQ Books That Are Changing the Literary Landscape • An Electric Lit Most Anticipated Debut • A Paperback Paris Best New LGBTQ+ Books To Read This Year Selection • A Passport Best Book of the Month

    The Secret History meets Lie with Me in Micah Nemerever's compulsively readable debut novel—a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence.

    When Paul enters university in early 1970s Pittsburgh, it’s with the hope of moving past the recent death of his father. Sensitive, insecure, and incomprehensible to his grieving family, Paul feels isolated and alone. When he meets the worldly Julian in his freshman ethics class, Paul is immediately drawn to his classmate’s effortless charm.

    Paul sees Julian as his sole intellectual equal—an ally against the conventional world he finds so suffocating. Paul will stop at nothing to prove himself worthy of their friendship, because with Julian life is more invigorating than Paul could ever have imagined. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian is also volatile and capriciously cruel, and Paul becomes increasingly afraid that he can never live up to what Julian expects of him.

    As their friendship spirals into all-consuming intimacy, they each learn the lengths to which the other will go in order to stay together, their obsession ultimately hurtling them toward an act of irrevocable violence.

    Unfolding with a propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is an exquisitely plotted excavation of the depths of human desire and the darkness it can bring forth in us.

    Editor's Note

    More Hitchcock than Shakespeare…

    Though the title suggests Shakespeare, Micah Nemereve’s wonderfully intense debut is more inspired by Hitchcock than the Bard. Set at a 1970s Pittsburgh college, this is the story of two freshmen, Paul and Julian, who quickly form a tight friendship. As their bond becomes sexual, the intensity of their relationship ratchets up until the unforgettable conclusion.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateSep 15, 2020
    ISBN9780062963666
    Author

    Micah Nemerever

    Micah Nemerever studied art history and queer theory at the University of Connecticut, where he wrote his MA thesis on gender anxiety in the art of the Weimar Republic. His fiction and poetry can be found in SLICE Magazine and The Carolina Quarterly. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

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    Reviews for These Violent Delights

    4/5

    274 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Great but so dark and destructive it took me forever to get through.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book is so weird, I love it. It's beautifully written and the relationship between Paul and Julian fascinating in it's beauty and devastation. If you're looking for a Dark Academia novel that will make you doubt your definitions of love and hate, search no further, this is all you need.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Delightfully twisted and complex, the main duo has such intense intriguing chemistry together. I liked the first half and the ending, the second half was a little bit weaker thus four stars.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Whoa!!!

      Profound and devastating, and very dark indeed. A harrowing but beautifully written novel with mind blowing narration by Michael Crouch. Two very deeply emotionally disturbed young men find each other and become intertwined with dire consequences. Somewhat cerebral at times but altogether mesmerizing. Bears listening to more than once.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book overall was brilliant and wistful and I felt this book down to my bones. If you want to take a slow descent into obsessive and codependent love while experiencing some of the best writing I've ever read, read this. And OMG, the chess analogies were so perfect. This is going on my best books of all time.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The writing was absolutely amazing. One of my new favourites.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Narrator was amazing. Story was pretty good, actually. Took some turns and twists I didnt expect and had a satisfying ending. Got a bit draggy toward the middle act, surprisingly around the "endgame," but picked up soon after. The romance between the boys is not played cheaply, and I appreciate that, though it carries with the a lack of tenderness which also matches both the boys' character and the time and place in which they lived. It lacks the sophistication of The Secret History, but we'll be chasing that dragon forever, huh? The writing felt young, and in that way matched the false cosmopolitan of both the boys. It scratches a similar itch, though. I'd be interested in more from this author.
    • 5/5
      From the beginning I was intrigued by the darkness. I found myself hopeful that they would grow together and get things figured out. I thought they were meant for each other and regardless of their tendencies, they had each other. The ending, which I won't spoil, isn't what I anticipated.
    • 3/5
      3.5 ⭐
      WTF!!!!!
      מה לעזאזל שמעתי עכשיו??!!!!!! ???
      סוג של מותחן פסיכולוגי לא הכי מובן , קצת מעוות וקצת גאוני
      שני סטודנטים, כל אחד עם העבר הקשה שלו,
      מפתחים אובססיה אחד כלפי השני אשר מביאה אותם לבצע פשע אלים במיוחד (ולא, זה לא ספולייר)
      קודם כל אני יכולה לומר שזה ספר ייחודי מאד,
      אבל הבעיה העיקרית שלי עם הספר
      היא שהכתיבה הייתה מאד יומרנית ואולי זה הסגנון של הסופר אבל אני אישית פחות מתחברת לכתיבה כזאת ??‍♀️

      אני מאד מתלבטת על הדירוג שלו , אולי אני אשנה בהמשך ?
    • 2/5
      Rather dull. There wasn’t enough actual violence in it to justify the title and the 2 main characters were irritating. I finished it because I’m just one do those people that has to finish a book or movie just to see if it gets any better but this was a bore. How do you have a boring murder? Congrats on that I guess??

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Just as Paul and Julian feel about each other in These Violent Delights, I both loved this book and I hated it too. Three stars from me, which splits the difference between five for the love and zero for the hate.

      This book did have the impact on me that I suspect the author was aiming for. I read the first three parts of the book and almost stopped because I couldn't relate to where this story was going / had gone, and I was really revolted by the self pity and the rage. But I plowed on and finished it, and I'm glad I did because the fourth part of the book eased back on the intensity and brought at least some humanity back to the characters.

      It's a roller coaster ride, and if that intrigues you and it sounds like a ride you'd like to go on, then by all means pick up this book. Just don't say I didn't warn you...

      I read the audiobook, and Michael Crouch did a fantastic job with narration.

      Some of my other thoughts on the book:

      Fantastic writing - evocative of the characters young age and strong intellects, great atmosphere, flowed really well. Many stories / levels within the overall story that add to the depth of feelings this book will get from you. Astounding that this is a debut novel.

      Complex characters - first you feel empathy, then disappointment, then revulsion, then disrespect. And at the same time you understand who these people are, even though you do not understand many of the things they do.

      Familiar plot (ala Leopold & Loeb) - Set in the 1970s at an unnamed college in Pittsburgh, the book is in four Parts - boy meets boy, needy boy falls for needy boy in a love with increasingly violent undertones, boy couple plots a heinous crime to cement their love, boys get away with it (okay, that part is not familiar). Four parts, four emotions from me - empathy, disappointment, revulsion, disrespect.

      Unreliable narrator - Though told in the third person, the narrator closely hews to Paul's story. Julian never really comes into equal focus, and while that seems intentional on the author's part, to me it is the book's biggest weakness. It's clear that the two boys love and understand each other with life altering intensity, but its much clearer why Paul was drawn to Julian than vice versa. And when you think you've figured out what Julian sees in Paul, something happens that lets you know that you're wrong. And that's when you realize that you aren't getting the "true" story of what happened, but only Paul's version of it.

      Missteps - There were a few others, but these two stuck out to me - 1) Paul is seventeen when the book starts. When the book ends, Paul is seventeen. A full academic year at college and part of a second occur during the course of the book. So how is Paul still seventeen? 2) Paul visits Julian's parent's palatial home and wishes it were one of the lesser mansions he sees on the drive there, because they seem more "nouveau riche", and so perhaps more something he could better understand than the "old money" estate he arrives at. I found this maybe a bit too worldly wise for a 1970s working class city kid, even one as precocious as Paul. 3) Almost everything that happens at Julian's parent's house seems cliched and one dimensional (except for the boy's destruction fantasy). Again, this seems to have been the author's intent, but it reads as the weakest part of the book.
    • 3/5
      This is an explosively erotic and erudite thriller that the reader either really likes or really doesn’t. I don’t believe that I have read a single review that the reader is on the fence about this one. From the very first page it is filled with a tremendous sense of dread and urgency that remains until the final page. Paul is drawn to Julian like a moth to a flame and soon they develop much more than a friendship. Both are freshmen in 1970 at the University at Pittsburg. Paul is painfully shy and awkward where Julian presents the physical presence of excitement for Paul who constantly feels he must proof himself worthy…two boys so different… but yet so very chillingly alike. The two boys are extremely unlikable in spite of the author attempt early in the story to make the reader feel some sympathy for them. Don’t waste time trying because you just can’t. Paul soon recognizes that he’s “in love” with Julian and wants to have/do something that will seal Julian to him and Julian encourages the “game” rather than stopping it. Perhaps the sentence that best sums the feelings up is …Julian: “I can’t believe that you are the first person not to notice how twisted I am.” Paul: “You’re the first person to not want me to be”. That having been said… neither boy is prepared, nor do they really care that their “act of devotion” will yield such devastation. I read a lot of this genre of novels… but this author has almost outdone himself with the nearly unbearable tension and dread the reader feels throughout the entire story. I found myself searching desperately for an end to the events that these boys had caused to take place. I still give the book credit for accomplishing what I believe was it’s goal. 2.5 stars because, while it isn’t such a “page turner”…it certainly does have the ability to make the reader feel so many deep, dark emotions to the extent that you feel like you need a long hot bath for a month or two.

      1 person found this helpful