Member Reviews

I'll join the scores of reviewers stating how important this book is. Not That Bad is an incredibly necessary and powerful collection of essays from a wide range of contributors on rape and sexual assault. I've never before read essays which so accurately and honestly examine rape culture and the impact sexual assault has on its victims. Nothing I say here will come close to conveying the impression this book has left on me, and I can't imagine I'll read a more impactful or well written essay collection this year.

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This is a powerful, yet raw, collection of individual experiences of rape culture.  It show how easily lives can be ruined at the hands of others - those who don't even realise they have done anything wrong. 

Sadly, I don’t believe this book will change the world but I do hope it encourages more people to talk about this painful subject which will, in time, bring about a much-needed change to todays world. 

I hope the book sends a message of hope for the future and I would recommend everyone should read this, regardless of gender.

I had a personal interest in reading this book as I was sexually assaulted a number of years ago.  Even now, I blame myself for being in that situation.  That event changed my life forever - I will never again go out alone after dark.  

Thank you to Roxane Gay and all contributors for bringing these stories together.  

Thank you to NetGalley and Atlantic Books for the opportunity to read and review this anthology prior to publication.

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This is a fantastic collection of essays that I found incredibly hard to read without having a secondary book to cushion the blows (something I very rarely do).

I really hadn’t expected to find it as difficult as I did, but I think the title really sums up why. I thought I was reading a book about rape in very plain and simple terms, but it’s also about everything else - the simple, everyday comments, glances, grazing of hands and microagressions that we as women often brush off as being not that bad or ‘it could’ve been a lot worse’.

I think I had expected to read a selection of essays contained stories and experiences that I could sympathise with, but ultimately keep at arms reach, that was not the case at all. I was truly surprised by how many of the experiences resonated with me and I think that is why this collection is in part so important.

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This was a hard book to read. It is a collection of stories of lives that have been touched by the rape culture of our society. Truthful and honest and should be shared with any person who has been told their experience was 'not that bad'.My thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Not That Bad is desperately difficult to read but should be read by everybody and very soon. The stories written by people that have experienced varying levels of assault really bring home the level of abuse that so many people are subjected to all of the time.

Roxane Gay has done a wonderful thing by bringing all of these stories together. It’s hard reading but that makes it even more important.

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The toughest book I have ever read. Everyone needs to read this. Everyone. So many brave stories. Absolutely recommend.

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This is a very difficult read. No matter whether you're a survivor of a sexual crime or not, this book will haunt you in ways you cannot conceive.
The anthology hits you right at the core of your emotions. Each story leaving you feeling the emotions that the survivors all went through.
This is a book that is very relevant right now. This is a book that allows people who haven't been attacked to feel some of what goes through the head of someone who has had this sort of crime committed against them.
Be warned, there are plenty of triggers in this book. The book isn't graphic, it's just highly emotional.

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This book hurts. As it should.

And I don't really think there is anything else to add. Roxane Gay has collected women's stories, dispatches from the rape culture that we have to live in. There is not so much Roxane in there, she has given the space to those, whose voices could be left unheard. For that I'm grateful.

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Oh boy! This book...urrgg...I just have so much admiration for the bravery of the people that decided to speak out. I wish I could hug every single author of the entries and tell them how amazing they are! This book could not have come at a better time, 2018 has seen the rise in the #MeToo movement and a lot of brave souls have spoken out for the first time!
The essays featured within the anthology made me cry and NEED change! It is an enlightening read full of raw and personal encounters with rape and I did have to put it down a few times to breathe and take it all in.
I was shocked by how sexual assault is still a prominent downfall of the twenty-first century and how often it happens. I truly hope this book shocks people into change because HOW is this still happening, no one deserves to have their bodies violated and it MUST stop. As I put the book down I found myself actively searching my brain on how I can contribute to the understanding of rape culture and how everyone needs to be aware of it - I started by recommending this book and giving it to a friend to read.
This eye-opening encounter and insight into something that not everyone can understand is vital in everyone’s life. It is not an easy read, but it is sooo worth it!
Every essay presents the reader with a different encounter of sexual assault which makes the anthology truly special as it gives people agency to express themselves in a culture where they are often silenced.
One aspect that I really admired was the voice given to male victims, often society associates rape victims with being a woman but that is so far from the truth. A victim is a victim no matter their gender, race, class or the culture they grew up in.

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Throughout our lives, we, women, are told that what we live everyday - cat-calling, street harassment, sexual assault and everything in between - is just not that bad, it could have been worse. We are told to get on with it, that we are simply being drama queens, seeking attention, making a fuss where there is no reason to. But no , we are entitled to feeling like it’s bad, like it’s our end of the world. We are entitled to our anger, to our screams and protests. No one, no one , has the right to tell a woman that what she has lived is not that bad.

This anthology explains this in different ways through brilliant and heartbreaking essays. I felt angry and sad and disapppointed by the way we, as women, are still treated by today’s society. And this book is a powerful tool to widen a conversation that has been opened and brought to light by the Me Too movement across the globe. It is a depiction of what it means to be a woman today, how hard it is.

I do have my small reproaches towards this anthology - the confusion sometimes between essays, the repetition too. But it still remains an important book that I truly believe everyone should read - no matter the age, the sex, the beliefs.

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This isn't a cover to cover read. The experiences documented with this book are raw, painful, and devastating. I found myself putting down the book every so often, just so I could process what I'd read. Many of the stories here were like a punch in the stomach.

While enjoyed is certainly the wrong to use in this instance, the quality of Roxane Gay's writing was extremely compelling. I believe that Not That Bad will still with me for a long time.

This was an ARC in exchange for an honest review. With thanks to Netgalley and Atlantic Books.

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This book is an anthology of essays about rape, rape culture and what these things can do to a person. There were so many things that was breathtaking about this book. It left me speechless on many different occasions. Roxanne Gay and gang did a marvelous job in manufacturing this artistic piece full of inspiring essays. If only the people, who really needed the essays, would actually read them rather than people who don’t. It’s always the sympathetic people or as many trolls call them, SJWs that read these kinds of things, rather than the trolls themselves as they are the ones that truly need to know what rape culture and rape does to a person. When writing this review, I’m struggling to express what I truly think about it. It’s simply left me breathless and in awe of such brave people who go through what these people have.

5 out of 5 stars.

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This is a soul-scorcher, whether you're male, female, trans, non-binary, gay, straight, white or a person of colour. The collection crosses the spectrum of the human experience and forces you to look beyond the boundaries of your own comfort, recognising along the way that the experience of sexual assault is a unifier for so many people.

These stories are hard to read and they'll stay with you long after you put the book down, bot least because they're real life and truthful as they are heart-splitting. If you're likely o read these stories and feel pain or be triggered, I would suggest reading it with help and support- or not at all. Though an incredible read, I wouldn't force this on anyone because it is so very challenging to conceptualise the grief and pain that comes with this topic. It is, however, terrific.

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I found this a real struggle to get through.
In fact, it took me a good couple of weeks - picking up, putting down and then coming back to it.

It is uncomfortable reading - accounts of sexual violence, rape, misogyny and gender bigotry.

But bravo to the brave people who contributed to the anthology.

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We live in a world where unfortunately rape culture exists, Not that Bad is a haunting, raw, tragic collection of experiences, which makes for extremely difficult reading most of the time.
However these types of anthologies are so important if we are to change the way sexual violence is viewed and reported.

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A book of personal accounts of rape and all the effects of the act which can last a lifetime spreading out like the ripples on the water when a stone is skimmed across it. . Some of the accounts are heart breaking and very moving. Each account is different, some by men others are women's stories but its a book that makes you want to rise up and just shout 'Stop', why some people never tell what's happened to them becomes explained, how they were afraid and thought they wouldn't be believed and just kept their secrets, letting the rapist continue without punishment. Its a book that can make you feel very angry. This is a subject that needs to be spoken of.

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Essential reading for all, whatever their gender, this book contains the testimonies of a selection of those who have suffered from the rape culture prevailing in our society up to the present time.

It's hard reading. Triggering. Distressing. Yet so important, so desperately necessary for us all to hear and acknowledge that this is the reality for so many, that things need to continue to be brought out into the open, uncomfortable as that can be, that this way of life has to stop being seen as normal and accepted as such. The inequality, the power play, the fear of living in and with rape culture needs to be eradicated.

Roxane Gay, who herself has written powerfully about her own experiences, collated and edited this short but entirely powerful book of essays, choosing quite a variety of eloquent voices to speak about the truth of their lives and the further harm that is then done by our tendency towards down playing our pain and comparing it unfavourably with the pain and suffering of others. So often we think (wrongly) in terms of a hierarchy of pain... that what we go through is "Not That Bad" comparatively, that "it could have been worse" as though that negates how we are suffering, that whatever horrific a thing was done to us "at least I'm still alive".

Through this book, these essays, the work of opening up to each other, dismantling the secrecy, continues. This is the era of #MeToo, of millions marching and gathering, voices raising together for hope of a better future. We need books like this, open truthful voices like this, eloquently and elegantly written and spoken. I will certainly recommend 'Not That Bad' and adapt parts of it's essays for use as discussion material with older teens. Eyes and minds need to be opened.

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Raw and powerful, this read will stay with me a long time. Essential reading, though very tough in parts. In the culture we are currently living in, these are conversations we need to be having. We cannot afford the silence which perpetuates the culture any longer.

A wonderful collection put together by Roxane Gay.

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This collection of essays is a very enlightening one: about people who were raped and/or sexually assaulted, about those who work with them, about the rape culture that permeates so many places and societies.

The latter especially is worth mentioning, because little gestures, little ‘jokes’, little everyday sexisms and attitudes and ‘if you wear those clothes then You’re Asking For It’ sayings are the foundations of something deeper, something that leads to rape, and make it so that no matter what, the victims are still the ones who have to justify themselves. Justify the amount of times they said ‘no’; or whether they said it clearly enough (apparently, for many people, a woman who says no actually means yes… and they never question it, and make a decision based on what -they- want to hear). Justify and quantify their pain: if it was ‘so bad’, shouldn’t they be dead? Shouldn’t they be grateful that ‘at least they’re not dead’ (as if that could erase and negate what was done to them)? And so on.

I guess I should be grateful that the ‘only’ aggression I had to go through dealt with random guys deciding that fondling my thigh in the train was something they had a God-given right to do. Or grateful that they ‘only’ flashed their dick in front of my face. It wasn’t ‘that bad’, right? Well, screw that. At the root of it, our stupid, crappy society is still stuck on Man Sees, Man Takes (sometimes women do that, too, but it’s nevertheless much more often the other way ‘round, because Boys Will Be Boys, and all that rubbish we dump into boys’ heads when they’re still so little). And as long as we don’t wake up and grow up for a change, this won’t go away.

The styles are varied, by various authors (female, male, trans), including even an essay in comics format, while being close enough to clearly resonate as a whole. They read quickly and easily in terms of grammar/vocabulary, and yet remain powerful and hard to stomach as well, due to the theme they explore and the pain they deal with, whether they are actually depressing or carrying some form of hope.

These essays are definitely worth reading: as an eye opener for some, as a reminder in general of what is at stake, of the day to day attitudes towards sexual harassment, of all the tiny ways well-meaning people can and will say/do the wrong things.

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I was given this book for free via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I have found myself reading a lot of books that make me question myself and my thoughts, make me uncomfortable and more often than not sad. It doesn’t make me regret reading them but I find I have to take a break and escape into something easy, childlike or completely fantastical… almost to cleanse my mind and pretend that what I read isn’t real. The horrible part of that point is that the people who’s stories reside in this book probably try and fail to do that too, they can’t ever erase what happened to them and they have to learn how to live with those moments.

In a slight segway before I get down to the main review this brings me onto Germaine Greer’s recent comments about victims of sexual assault and rape. Greer is calling for the decriminalisation of rape, yes she does this from a view that it will lessen the need for a criminal court case for the victim, but she completely ignores the impact that rape can have on people. Mainly because she wasn’t impacted in that way.

So here’s my open letter to Greer: read this book. ‘Not that Bad’ is a collection of experiences ranging from clear rape and abuse of trust and status, to the grey areas around consent and sexual assault where many victims would then be forced to explain their position: why did you wear that? Why did you go there? Why did you drink that? Haven’t you done a, b ,c and d in the past?

I found myself crying at some stories, agreeing and nodding along with others (sympathising in relation to my own minor experiences of assault… and now I’m doing my own version of ‘not that bad’) and questioning others on their actions before, quite rightly, checking myself on my thought process.

A comment I read on Facebook recently really put the act of victim blaming into perspective for me whereby the commenter described various dubious situations she had been in hen she was younger e.g. falling asleep on a train whilst drunk and alone, getting drunk at a house party and finding herself in a room with a guy etc. She described how every time nothing happened to her because there simply were no rapisits or sexual abusers in the vicinity.

There are scenarios that I recognise throughout this book and they could have happened to anyone at anytime, but they happened to those involved because they were in the presence of someone who thought it was their right to violate and manipulate these individuals. These individuals didn’t always open up about these incidents because as a general rule of thumb, there was no one to open up to, or in the case of a lack of violence, they brushed them off as ‘not that bad’, it doesn’t however minimise their impact and this is something that I feel Greer needs to learn.

This was an incredibly difficult book for me to read because of the subject matter. It brought back times when friends had disclosed their own events, my own (what I have always seen as ‘not that bad’) incidents of assault and made me worry about the world that my young family members are coming into. But then I reminded myself of great movements like #MeToo that are bringing these events to the fore, and hopefully stopping these things from occurring in the future.

For me, this is a book that everyone should read. It’s tough but so are the lives of survivors.

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