{"id":5979,"date":"2016-10-03T13:30:24","date_gmt":"2016-10-03T13:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?p=5979"},"modified":"2016-10-03T13:48:10","modified_gmt":"2016-10-03T13:48:10","slug":"viral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?p=5979","title":{"rendered":"Viral"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Viral\"<\/a>Helen Fitzgerald, Viral, Feb 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

Review by Lee Horsley<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI sucked twelve cocks in Magaluf.\u201d From its attention-grabbing opening line on, Helen Fitzgerald\u2019s Viral<\/em><\/a> sets out to make readers share the sense of shock and violation felt when a humiliating experience is exposed for all to see. This \u201ckiller sentence,\u201d as The Independent reviewer writes, is\u00a0\u201cnot suitable for a family newspaper\u201d.\u00a0But its blatant unsuitability for public viewing is what guarantees that a video of the event goes viral on the internet:\u00a0 \u201c#shagaluf is trending worldwide on Twitter. If you type the word slut into Google, I am the first news item to appear.\u201d<\/p>\n

This very public ridicule and slut-shaming threatens to change out of all recognition the identity and life of Fitzgerald\u2019s young protagonist. A sensible, studious teenager, Su had led so sheltered a life that she \u201chonestly didn\u2019t know that the word slut was an okay one to say out loud\u201d \u2013 let alone to be splashed across the internet. Sent by her mother to Magaluf to keep an eye on her wayward sister Leah, Su herself is drawn into a drink- and drug-fuelled night of partying: \u201c\u2018Are you ready to get cock?\u2019 Millie, Natasha, Leah, Me: \u2018YES YES YES!\u2019 I hadn\u2019t said the c word. But I do believe, looking back, that I was ready to get it.\u201d When she wakes the next morning the film someone took is already online, and she feels she has no choice but to go into hiding.<\/p>\n

Alternating with Su\u2019s chapters, Fitzgerald gives us the equally compelling narrative of her mother Ruth, a judge in the Scottish courts. Ruth, who has spent her life upholding the law, now feels driven to take revenge, to inflict as much suffering as possible on those responsible:\u00a0\u201cIn the two days that followed the posting of Su\u2019s video, Ruth\u2019s desire for blame and punishment had risen to an all-time high.\u201d The impulse briefly dissipates when her husband dies, \u00a0\u201cBut then it came back. Oh boy, did it come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fitzgerald\u2019s tightly structured novel holds the reader\u2019s attention to the very end. Her sharp dialogue and darkly humorous scenes carry us along at a cracking pace. Viral is a tense thriller that explores serious and pressing themes. It is a subtle, insightful representation of online abuse and misogyny, victimization, and the limits of the law in an age when instant world-wide notoriety can redefine people and ruin their lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Helen Fitzgerald, Viral, Feb 2016 Review by Lee Horsley \u201cI sucked twelve cocks in Magaluf.\u201d From its attention-grabbing opening line<\/p>\n

Continue readingViral<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[107,35,109],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5979"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5979"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6013,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5979\/revisions\/6013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}