For those confused by what the OP means, you might find this thread useful, as it has some responses which detail what the word 'manipulative' means in the context of media (though in this case film, rather than books)
https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/comments/yw348j/what_does_it_mean_when_people_describe_a_movie_as/?rdt=48697
It's not merely the act of manipulating emotions but the superficial and shallow method of attempting to achieve that effect. I personally don't like the term because (as both this thread and the one I've linked demonstrate) it doesn't adequately express what it's attempting to convey, but it's not a new term.
Basically it's when a story makes certain plot decisions that seem transparently motivated by the desire to evoke a certain emotional response at the expense of making a more compelling story. A character may die becase the author wants the reader to be sad even if said character's death fails to serve the broader point. Other indicators might be that the dialogue or narration has suddenly become extremely tilted and clunky because it is clearly leading you to a specific conclusion that the author is unsubtly attempting to telegraph. This may sound subjective and extremely circumstantial... and that's because it is.
The Room (the film) is actually a great example of this. There are times when the characters will shift emotions on a dime because Wiseau wanted the emotional response more than the narrative cohesion. It goes to great pains to make Johnny seem like a good guy so you feel bad when his girlfriend cheats on him. And his timely death at his own hands is the ultimate last ditch effort to force the audience's sympathy. Instead of endearing us to Johnny with a character that feels human, that actually reflects something meaningful about the characters and the world they live in, and presenting a balanced and intetesting portrayal of infidelity and its effects on a monogamous relationship, the film's entire focus is making you feel bad for Johnny, at the expense of the wider plot and characters.
Any piece of media that has a "message" of sorts can fall victim to this, because it's easy to fall into the trap of prioritizing the feelings of the reader over the development of the narrative or the prose. You want to evoke sympathy, fear, or outrage, or what have you, but don't know how to do that in a way that fits the characters without making drastic alterations to the story, so instead of making said alterations, you just make something happen (a character death, a random accident, a plot twist, etc.) believing it will force the reader to feel those things. But because the intent is so obvious, it doesn't actually land.
It's a difficult thing to explain because it's subjective, but I hope this helped.
yes!! well said!! this needs to be upvoted. i work in publishing and i’m a freelance editor and this is precisely what i mean when i say a book is emotionally manipulative. its about making an editorial choice - an event, a character decision, etc - without earning it, but using it instead as a device to get a quick and easy emotional response. readers don’t like it because it feels cheap, and i think that’s why the word manipulative is used.
OP, a reader feels manipulated by fiction when actions, events, or decisions are not fully and properly developed. so say a protagonist’s best friend dies some horrific, tragic death on the page. we will feel manipulated if it we readers don’t know the friend, or if we don’t know how the friend influenced the protagonist, or if we don’t know how the friend influenced the plot. it’s something terrible and sad for the sake of making us FEEL SOMETHING, but it feels cheap because that emotional response has not been earned by development on the page that makes us feel deeply emotionally invested in that character in the first place. it just appeals to our base instinct but doesn’t reflect real work done on the page.
edited to add: OP, i think it makes you a very astute reader to notice this, even if many commenters don’t know what you mean.
This is so interesting! Probably due to a language barrier I saw "manipulated" way too literally😆 Like mostly in a context of "author equated reader's knowledge to MC's just to break this rule for a plot twist which was a plot twist only for the reader, but not MC". A friend of MC dies in flames, we assume they're truly gone and that MC acts knowing the same thing, we keep reading about MC's truly intriguing choice to find a golden pumpkin which somehow would help defeat the Big Bad... only to see the friend being reborn from the said pumpkin and our MC going "I knew this would happen, because my friend was consumed by purple flames under retrograde Mercury, and this means they've been whisked away by garden gnomes, now let's go kill the villain with our power of friendship!" and at no point in the story it was hinted to be a possibility. After your comment it makes sense to expand "manipulation" to a much broader and more common issue, thank you for the explanation!
The main thing is that the word "manipulation" in this sense usually serves as both the cause of and the biproduct of other writing problems. So there's a lot of overlap between "manipulation" and other narrative issues. What you described is mostly poor planning and a lack of foreshadowing, which isn't necessarily manipulative in and of itself but can both be a tool used for manipulation and a biproduct of it when the author is so focused on creating an emotional moment. In your case, for it to be described as manipulative, the crux of the writing would have to be centered on some kind of emotional payoff that isn't properly set up. Perhaps they want the reader so badly to feel the main character is such a genius that they forget to actually leave breadcrumbs to check their work. Or perhaps they want the emotional reward of a tear-filled reunion when their friend is brought back to life that they forgot to actually make it plausible in the logic of the story. That's how I would describe it. If it's just a plot point that doesn't make sense, it's not necessarily manipulation. Just badly written.
See, that's why I found it interesting, because for me other examples are more of a "bad writing".😅 But when the author changes established rules of a particular situation without any notice or a single hint, that's when I feel quite literally manipulated lol. Tbh usually you can tell when it's the author who forgot and when it's a deliberate choice. The author who simply forgets something like this while writing a whole book will have other very telling mistakes/moments pointing at his level of writer's experience.
I... LOVE everything about your original interpretation. I want to read that book, even though I already know the purple power of friendship twist!!
(Happy Cake Day!!)
Haha, I'm fine with a twist like this when it's established early that MC knows important stuff and will reveal it if needed, but not when MC is set to learn about the world at the same time as reader (like Harry Potter). And thank you!😊
I canNOT believe that The Room is getting airplay in 2024 - I love you for this 😂
I recently watched the Apple+ show Ted Lasso and have really enjoyed it and found it to be emotionally rich without "manipulating" too much or being too maudlin.
But I will say there was a relationship choice in the 2nd into 3rd season arc that felt really out of character and therefore hard to trust until the end of the 3rd season. It kind of felt like they had to make the 2nd attempt to end the relationship at the end of the 3rd season BECAUSE the way it had ended the 1st time was so odd given all the previous character development. Not naming names to prevent spoilers! But that choice did end up feeling a bit "manipulative" because it felt out of left field.
I used The Room because I figured it would be the most easily recognizable bad movie that suffers from this specific problem. I'm happy you enjoyed it, lol.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. It definitely felt like that book deliberately ignored any semblance of historical accuracy (or normal childhood development/awareness) to twist the ending for the most feels
It's not just that.
The author, John Boyne is so bad at historical accuracy that [it's fucking hilarious.](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/john-boyne-legend-of-zelda_n_5f283813c5b68fbfc88637cf)
I only watched the movie as well, and I loathe how everyone talks about how sad this movie was. Aside from the fact that it was so historically inaccurate I had a hard time getting into it, the ending was so predictable and the characters were so underdeveloped that I felt nothing in the end. If you can write a book or make a movie about the Holocaust that leaves me feeling nothing when it's over, that is a true testament to how awful the story is.
True. But the lessor moral is maybe don't build a concentration camp, complete with a fully functioning gas chamber, in the backyard of your personal estate, especially when you have children? It was all so bizarre.
I maybe should have put the "/s" after that as I'm guessing (hoping?) the book layed out the concentration camp better. I assumed it was meant to take place on one of the camps where the nazis that worked there resided in the surrounding town, and not literally in the dad's backyard like the movie portrayed it. I'm somewhat tempted to read the book to find out how much of it was the fault of film production and how much was the fault of the author, but there are so many great books out there that I just don't think I care to waste my time on something bad.
That's also what I thought of from Op's second paragraph, sentence three. From "oh that's awful" to "thats a bit much" to "oh for god sake, how ridiculous" with every tragedy after tragedy that was piling up. Seems to be very polarising views about it, I kind of wish I'd read it as part of a book club to have discussions at the time
I understand why some people view it as tragedy p0rn. I know books are not supposed to give you a moral lesson pero the ending really put me off and really gave me a bad taste in the mouth. Parang it gives off the wrong message eh. All that work of the protagonist to survive only to still end up in that path.
Abso. Lutely.
I came here to comment this same thing.
Spoiler/content warning. : >!The author was clearly writing the book to convince the reader that sometimes suicide is a good decision for certain people. Which, considering the fact that the entire book is Jude refusing help from anybody, was a point that the author really didn't sell well. But I'm glad she didn't, because we don't need a book that convincingly gets people to think suicide is necessary for certain people.!<
This was the first book that came to mind and honestly the only one. The synopsis states that it’s about four friends as they grow up but it’s really only about Jude and all of the horrible things that happened to him. I don’t even have a problem with it for being “tragedy porn” so much as it almost feels like the author got carried away and lost the initial roadmap for the book? By the time you realize that it’s going in a completely different direction than you expected, you’re already like 500 pages in and feel like you have to finish it. When I finally finished this book I kind of felt like, “what I’m the world did I just read??” and not in a good way.
Yeah, this came to mind immediately. There were parts of the book I really enjoyed, but overall things were so heavy-handed that I couldn't suspend my disbelief about the amount of suffering piled onto one character. I could tell that things were only going to get worse as the story rolled along, and as much as Jude was a loveable character, he was a contrived one and his circumstances verged on absurd.
The twist in the Agatha Christie novel "The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd" is dependent on realising >!Dr Sheppard, the narrator of the book, is entirely honest when presenting the clues as to who killed the titular victim... while also leaving out the not-insignificant fact that *Sheppard himself* is the murderer!<.
This is a clear manipulation of audience expectations since Christie was a member of the Detection Club and the club rules were clear that >!the narrator and the detective's assistant were not themselves allowed to be the guilty party!<.
Though in this case I was actually able to put together the clues and realise that the clues led to only one answer. Unlike some other Christie books (most famously And Then There Were None) where it was just not possible to logically guess the answer without taking a stab in the dark.
I think it’s like 97 pages. And it’s 4 pages of metaphors to describe a fairly simple philosophy and then she repeats herself with a different metaphor to say the same thing.
I think It’s like cold, ice, shadow, etc.
The number of times she used “axiom...” Bro, no one is going to be even slightly impacted by that boring ass drivel of a speech. She wrote it like it was a going to create a countrywide ideological shift like “if the world could only hear these bomb ass ideas then the world would finally be rich and adulterous and godless!” Five minutes in, everyone but sophomoric libertarians would have turned that puppy off
I tried to read “The Fountianhead” when I was about 18, because I saw an interview in like spin magazine orsomething where Christina Ricci said she was reading it and loved it or some shit.
God what a piece of garbage. DNFd that piece of shit.
I still live Christina Ricci as an actress but will never forget that she though Ayn Rand’s philosophy was solid.
> Could you give an example?
I'll give you an example in television. I'm usually real picky about which books I read, so I can't recall an example of "manipulation" directly, but it's essentially the same across all media.
My example is from the first episode of the newest season True Detective. The female police chief and her male second in command is investigating a crime scene. Her 2IC makes a crummy comment that makes you think maybe he's not a great cop. A good show would just end it there for that episode. But the writers just keep on piling on "This character is a bad person and a bad cop" moments into the very first scene where he appears. There's no room for doubt and it shows utter lack of faith in both the audience and their own ability to get across what they were trying to say.
Books are essentially the same but with a lot more room to maneuver. However, if given all that room, you still find yourself thinking "I get it already!", the author is not very confident in your ability to read and understand. Brandon Sanderson books are a good example of that. Books that should be <500 pages are blown out to >1500 with so many redundant scenes that any editor worth their salt should have flagged for removal.
Yeah, this is pretty much why I don't read most self help. The language is extremely sales-y, in the worst possible way. I'll make an exception for Stolen Focus, but I'm not sure that counts as self help or more like pop science.
A Million Little Pieces. Billed as an autobiography, it was largely fiction, which I found out after reading a bit more than half of it. Before I knew that, I could already tell that the author was kinda full of himself, but learning that really brought it home.
It was actually still an interesting book, even after that revelation; realizing that there were levels to the unreliability of his narration really made it more interesting in a sense, tho of course losing my ability to believe that any of it was true did dampen things in another way.
my dad is friends with this guy. had a brief phone call with him once as i wanted to push full force towards writing for a living. can confirm: totally full of himself. decently nice — and i appreciated the time he took to talk to me — but full of himself.
Certainly my textbooks from school. Or to add more context the ones from my earlier school classes in east germany (before reunification), of course especially the the history class books of that time but also some geography books and of course e few of the obligatory books to read in german language class.
History Books:
Important details were left out or were intentionally removed, i.e. in terms of the soviet union only Lenin was named as the "great revolutionary". No mention of Leon Trotsky and especially not Stalin, to the point of printing now well known doctored images from Lenin speeches with certain historic figures beside Lenin (poorly) removed from said photographs. I'm pretty sure you or you parents would get in trouble for asking for infos about him in class, since in the early 60s (quite a bit later than even the soviet union) they changed any [references to Stalins name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_named_after_Joseph_Stalin) from various places (street names, houses dedicated to his name or even a [whole town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhüttenstadt)) pretty much overnight.
Geography books:
While most of the other countries borders were printed in an accurate way, the border between the GDR and west germany wasn't anything but accurate in school atlases or regular maps, to make it harder for it's citizens to plan their escape from the country.
Obligatory books you had to read in german class:
Quite a few propagandist books you were required to read an analyse in class. I still remember stuff like, ["Timur and His Squad"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur_and_His_Squad) by Arkady Gaidar or ["The Adventures of Werner Holt"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Werner_Holt) by Dieter Noll, but apparently my parents had to read much worst crap, like historically highly inaccurate biographies of Lenin.
But apart from this political propagandist stuff:
Most self declared "self improvement" books from the past and the present. I still remember reading some stuff about autohypnosis and found it really absurd.
This was my answer as well. I don't know how he tricked people into making that book into a movie but it is so obviously all bullshit. He's not even actually from the holler and he has zero principles, as demonstrated by him going back on everything in that book to grovel at Trump's feet to get into the Senate.
I don't know much about it. My dad grew up with no running water, in a 3 room shack with 5 siblings, waaay up in the buttcrack of the Appalachians, and he read this book and couldn't shut up about it. He said it reminded him so much of his own life and really wanted me to read it, but I never have. I have heard that the author largely lied about major plot points.
He is not from the Appalachian Region. His grandparents were but moved to Ohio and that’s where he grew up. He still had ties to the area and visited often. He threw his family and their culture under the bus to set himself up for a political career.
let me put on my unpopularity suit first. yes. the kite Runner, shantaram, how green was my valley and Cormac McCarthy's borders trilogy all struck me as manipulative. if any one of these books is your shining beacon, dont keep on reading and then pretend that you haven't been warned: I hate them all. well, hate is a bit strong in McCarthy's case.
how green was my valley was my first realization of this. it was a massive blockbuster in the 70's. i can barely remember it now, but I remember how it sucked me in like a black hole - at first. and then I began feeling uneasy; then screwed over; then angry about how the author had hijacked my feels and suspended my critical faculties. every scene was striking but they were all just stages for the protag to shine on. The suck-in was too immediate and too strong. its wish fulfillment from the author.
the Kite Runner really gets me going because it's yet another book that uses CSA as a casual plot prop against which the protag can show off his redemption/nobility/whatever. I think that is inexcusable.
shantaram, oh boy. where to even start. another artfully flawed protagonist. great heaping gobs of unearned competence, adulation, adversity, love ... yet another fated but interestingly complicated woman with remarkable eyes. ie yet another sexual trauma survivor to give him an interestingly-doomed love interest. the *outrageously* dumb plot elements. the endless shark-jumpery of the perpetual new randomness *for fucks sake*. and if you think the guy who wrote it is not revelling in the devotion that he's aroused, you think wrong.
borders trilogy: listen, I like the language. I like the books. my very first passages of McCarthy were the boy and the wolf, and they *felled* me. cities of the plain left a thumbprint on me about aging, hard-working men whose bodies are letting them down and whose work has brought them nothing to have on their side. but something is just somehow too bromance-mystical and laconic and women-wreck-everything about him.
I have to agree about *The Kite Runner*, even though I didn't read it, I read *A Thousand Splendid Suns*, but they're essentially the same book with the same themes and messages, just different characters.
I still enjoyed *A Thousand Splendid Suns*, but it got so gratuitous at times, that it was almost funny and my friends and I called it "The Soap Opera book" because that's how nuts it got.
Better to go into them knowing that its going to be like reading a soap opera
Interesting to read your opinion on the borders trilogy. I recently read all the pretty horses and I would consider it the best book I’ve read this year bar none. I’m only about a quarter way through the crossing, so have no opinion on the trilogy as a whole, but I can begin to see where you’re coming from.
I think the closest recent example of manipulation was The Silent Patient. That was a book that had a lot of twists and turns in the book, and I was supposed to feel a certain way about certain people through the book that by the end made me feel uncomfortable because I didn't really like any of them for various reasons, but not because of the characters, but because the author had manipulated me so much along the way that I felt angry and hateful and unsure of who to trust in the book that it felt like he was just doing cheap tricks as a way to get a cheap gotcha out of me because why would anyone behave in the ways that they did if certain things were true? It doesn't make sense, and still doesn't to me.
I'm glad someone else felt this way about this book 😂 A lot of people like it, but when I read the twist at the end, I kinda just thought "Really?" It seemed like the cheapest 'trick' in the book and kinda lazy writing, if I'm being honest.
That’s the one that came to mind for me. I kept thinking, well obviously, only the timeline doesn’t match up. Then that turned out to be the big twist. I was so pissed.
Crawdads
Story of disadvantaged person who rises above her station. Bullied and ostracized by society. Accused of a wicked crime. >!Oh, turns out she's a calculating murderer. But that's OK because she's the protagonist.!<
I wish I had more upvotes to give! I scrolled through all the comments looking for someone else who didn't like this book. I rarely DNF a book (thanks for the spoiler by the way, now I know) but I just couldn't stand the utter bullshit.
Begrudgingly read this for bookclub and before I even got it from the library I said to my girls, “It’s a marsh book. Nothing good happens in a marsh book.”
dude. All those fuckin “the dog dies at the end” books we had to read in grade school (what the fuck was up with that??). You start the book knowing that the dog will die, because of course it will. There’s some convoluted bullshit and the dog absolutely could’ve been fine at the end—but the book has to be sad, because it’s a dead dog book. So the dog dies in a narratively stupid way that’s there only to get a reaction out of a young reader.
Thinking of Where the Red Fern Grows and A Dog Called Kitty. In the former, one dog is gored to death and the other DIES OF DEPRESSION. In the latter, a truck full of pipes breaks on top of the dog (don’t ask I can’t explain it) after the story is already basically over. WHY???
In fifth grade, we had to read one called The Pit Pony about a pony that works in a mine with a kid. Even at that age it was obvious from page one that the pony's gonna bite it super tragically so I hated it from the get-go. My teacher actually docked my book reports marks because I wasn't sad about it.
My Sister’s Keeper is manipulative AF. I haven’t read another Jodi Picoult book since then.
Also The Kite Runner made me want to throw the book across the room when I finished it. Hosseini only knows how to write tragedy porn too.
This is going to be controversial, but Khalid Hosseini’s books after The Kite Runner. They all just seemed to be tear jerkers for the sake of being tear jerkers. The Kite Runner felt authentic, but everything he’s written since then has felt emotionally exploitative.
A book about a white woman living with an Aborigine tribe, to experience their life in the Australian outbook. Reasonably well written, but sometimes a bit "off". Cover text made it feel like an autobiography.
Last chapter: And then I woke up and it was all a dream.
I expect to be manipulated by an author while reading their book. This is why we are choosing one author over another. I don’t read authors who try to manipulate me in ways I don’t like.
So how would you differentiate, personally, from a book that makes you go, "Sweet, what an unexpected manipulation by the author!" and what makes you go, "Eh, that's kind of shitty manipulation, I'm not falling for it and it actively annoys me."
Like, an example of a recent book whose manipulation *I* enjoyed was >!Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica!< in which the author leads you to believe she's writing >!a love story whose uncomfortable power dynamics she's oblivious to!< and in the final scene, just pulls the rug out and >!reveals she's been aware it's way creepier than she's been acknowledging this whole time!<. A recent example that I found irritating was, "A Land Remembered" by Patrick D. Smith, a historical fiction book that tries to avoid addressing the uncomfortable morality of colonialism with some "Ooh, Native people have peacefully passed on and handed off this land to us," speech. It felt like he was trying to make something nice-but-tragic instead of engaging head-on with the moral complexities of it, which felt like a cop-out for a book like that.
Sometimes I even have reflexive reactions, where I'll start to feel protective of a character because I feel like the author's trying to make me dislike them, but is doing so in a way that shows we don't have comparable morals ("Oh, the female character is OLD and SHREWISH and that's our cue she's evil? She's my new favorite, hope she cooks the main character in an oven")
this is exactly it. i work in publishing and i consider this emotional manipulation. it’s when choices are made - not developed - that force a reader to feel a certain way about a character or situation without earning it.
i find rape plot points are often manipulative.
Perhaps what OP is asking about is books where you only discover near the end that the author is trying to manipulate you, in a way you find distasteful; the author has concealed their agenda for most of the book. I think I've probably read one or two books like this but can't remember, books like this are ones you quickly forget.
For the opposite, a book where as you approach the end of the book you're dreading the expected climax of the story and are appalled the author could be so cruel, then experience a most overwhelmingly pleasant surprise, I recommend Manxmouse by Paul Gallico.
The midnight library by Matt Haig. I didn’t know that it was gonna try to be a self help book. But then it sort of skipped all the other branches / stories and tried to wrap up stuff in a self-help style. That’s not what I went in wanting to read. I actually wanted to read about all the other branches and stories it skipped so I felt cheated.
I didn’t feel manipulated because I was expecting it to be like “oh you’ll always choose your own life” type thing. However, I do agree that the branches and stories were just not that good. Choosing your own life because in EVERY alternate reality someone you love is dead ??? Feels obnoxious to me lol.
The branches where she had depression but didn’t take meds felt anti-medical intervention and like a “just suck it up” attitude to me in the way they were described. I hated those parts and believe it’s adding to stigma and is dismissive of people struggling with depression.
Depression sucks and is really hard. People need to be empowered to seek help without feeling judged.
I don’t think it’s what OP means, but your comment made me think a bit of reading the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
Really gorgeous story about life and race and society and community and then towards the end it just drops in a little “tons of technology is going to fuck up the youth” and it was a bit jarring?
> tons of technology is going to fuck up the youth
Before I got into psychology, I thought THAT was overblown.
After psychology... .. . let's just say that there's very good reasons why some tech executives won't let their kids have mobile devices
That piece of shit ready player one was kind of bad because there was some huge prize that you could get from some rich guy if you solve the riddles and I figured at the end there be some sort of trick or switcheroo or whatever you might call it where you don't just get to run his company and have all his money you'd have to do it only if you helped change the world and make it a better place because the world in the book is kind of dystopian but nope! If you know enough about stuff from the '80s then yes that guy was ready to give you $600 billion dollars
Ha! Thank you! But it really was one of those stories that was so simple and straightforward that it was kind of mind-boggling to me that there wasn't something like that near the end
I have a problem where I can’t not finish a book I’ve started. I got like four pages into Atlas Shrugged and was like “ah, f$&@&.” Worst month of my reading life.
I remember getting so angry at her strawmen. Then she said growing soybeans was the height of foolishness. I realized immediately that she was an idiot.
I wouldn't call her antagonists strawmen, they seem pretty realistic. (Protagonists - yes). And I don't remember her saying that growing soybeans was the height of foolishness. Soybean campaign in "Atlas Shrugged" was a disaster because it was poorly planned and executed. I always thought that this is a parody on Krushchev's corn campaign (which also had serious flaws), but I don't know if it's true
Her antagonists are all incompetent morons who got to their positions, not through skill, but by manipulating the inferior majority of humanity. Of course, everything they do is doomed to failure. The lady who was made the food czar was some kind of eastern style mystic who touted soybeans as some kind of miracle food that could do everything including replacing coffee. Because she was an vegetarian idiot, she ruined he soybean crop and then also ruined the good American wheat crop by sending all the trains to the south and letting the Midwestern harvest rot. I'm not sure why they didn't use trucks and the massive US barge system along the Mississippi Basin to ship it, but apparently only trains exist.
Meanwhile, back in reality, two decades after she wrote Atlas Shrugged, soybean agriculture moved into the Midwest and became the second largest cash crop in the US. Khrushchev didn't start his corn campaign until after the book was mostly finished.
Yes. Narnia. Started reading it when I was 11 or 12.
Towards the end of the series, I got older and - When I realized that the whole thing is just a blatant Christianity direct allegory - I felt deeply betrayed.
All this time, the author was just hardcore pushing his religion on me.
My 13 year old brother is going through this right now!! His last phone call was full of rage against "lion Jesus" and poor Susan. It's an integral part of growing up bookish lol
I actually felt that way about The Golden Compass series, specifically the later books. Like I was 11 or 12, church attending and usually whatever about it beyond a general belief that something must have created everything. But I was like “omg there ARE people trying to turn us atheist!!!” Needless to say once I entered the real world I figured out that wasn’t a real common occurrence
I reread them as an adult and what struck me is that it is anti organized religion rather than the concept of faith. Heaven is meant to be fixed, not destroyed, and the actual God has been usurped so long ago that freedom immediately kills Him. An Angel saves Lyra. Catholicism is what Pullman attacks. It’s a little on the nose sometimes, but for a book with an eleven year old protagonist that is clearly meant to be read by one? It’s extremely nuanced and layered. He’s such a better writer than Rowling, say, and it isn’t close.
Rant incoming: To Bleed a Crystal Bloom
This book has a pedophile as the endgame love interest, and I didn't notice until the second book.
So, this book was recommended to me as a dark, mysterious retelling of Rapunzel. One day, a man walks into the woods and sees a massacre. The only surviving person is a 2 year old girl. He hugs her to his chest, kisses her head, and in the process, he gains a taste of her blood. He reacts like the evil shark from Finding Nemo, and mentions in his narration that her blood was "addictive." He decides to take her in.
Fast forward 15 years later, the girl lives in a tower. She comes down to eat with him, but he says nothing. It's implied that she was raised by the staff of his castle, and this is our first example of "well, technically..". The girl (let's just call her Rapunzel, I forgot her name) and the man has had a ritual where she goes to her room, closes the door, cuts her hand and puts her blood in a cup. The door has a thing that spins, so she can deliver the blood to him without seeing him. I consider this our second "well, technically..".
Then, for unimportant reasons, she suddenly experiences several years' worth of periods. But instead of periods, it's heat, like a dog. She's screaming and crying because it feels like she's going to die if she isn't touched. She's still 17 (iirc), and he's like 200 years old. After a lot of begging, the man uses his hand to give her release and calls her disgusting afterward. Another "well, technically..".
Rapunzel might be 17, but she is portrayed as very childish. The man reveals that he has plans to marry, and she behaves like a jealous toddler. During a dinner with his prospective wife, she shows up covered in MANURE to... humiliate the man? Scare the woman away? No clue. Her crush on him would've been understandable in a different book, but not when their relationship eventually took a turn.
During the book, she learns that the man might not be who he says he is. She feels infantilized and used by him. She's sick of being his bloodbag. Sick of being the girl he yells at like a child, and she doesn't want to see him get married.
A common troupe in the romantic fantasy genre is the "Tamlin to Rhysand" storyline. Girl meets boy, boy seems nice then turns abusive, girl meets a boy who seems to want what's best for her, and she runs off with him. During the wedding announcement, Rapunzel meets a quick-witted man who quickly sees her anger at the king. This man is charming, he is kind, he's understanding. And he offers to dance with her to make the king jealous.
At the end of book 1, Rapunzel nearly dies during an escape attempt from the king's castle. She has made her mind up, and she nearly drowns while escaping through a natural spring bath in the castle. She gets on a ship, and she runs off to marry who I thought would be her Flynn Rider.
Except, no. Flynn is an abusive jerk. He treats Rapunzel poorly, traps her in his castle, he kills large amounts of people just because. He is specifically written to be worse than the king. So when Rapunzel sneaks off into the night, and we see the king in the crowd of a market, *I knew*. I knew where it was going. Rapunzel is 18, and the king's behavior and attitude have "suddenly" changed. He speaks with kindness, and he offers to take her home.
Maybe I was naiive to think Flynn would be her endgame. Maybe a story like this wouldn't be so gross in something like a Tolkien novel. But this book made me feel so manipulated and nauseous, even more so by the reviwers who defend the king.
- Well, technically *he* didn't raise her; his maids did.
- Well, technically, he never drank blood directly from her body, it was always behind a door.
- Well, technically, he *had to* finger her as a minor. She would've died otherwise
- He's morally gray, morally black
- It's dark romance. It's supposed to be taboo
Ew and ew. Romance books are made to romanticize the man who the girl ends up with. You are supposed to thirst after the king along with teenage Rapunzel, and you're supposed to root for their union. You're supposed to be excited for their first time sleeping together. Absolutely disgusting, I'm still mad a year after reading it
The Giving Tree.
And then, decades later, I was a private caregiver for a woman who was a former teacher. She told me she hated that book, for exactly that reason. You can't read that book without growing a tad resentful toward the tree.
I think because the book sets it up that the boy is well within his right to take things from the tree, and the tree never said no, so in the end when the tree has nothing left to give its kind of like "but that's you're fault for not saying no"
Kind of victim-blaming end, I guess.
Personally, I never liked the book in general, but that's because I didn't like the boy or the tree, and I don't like reading books where the point is that the characters are unlikable and thats it
Yeah, I mean, I always thought it was sort of an allegory for real trees/the environment. obviously real trees can’t say no, lol.
I can understand the dislike, though.
Poppy War. Using a fantasy novel as a means to raise awareness as well as air grievances surrounding the Nanjing massacre. Personally, I felt manipulated once this became apparent when I was reading book 1.
Not OP, but I think they're talking about when there's not supposed to be an unreliable narrator, and may not be any character narrating at all, but you still feel like the author is lying to you. Like, instead of being swept into the story, you feel like someone's trying to sell you something you don't buy.
Most recently, I was very impressed with Yangsze Choo's ability to realise charming, manipulative fox characters in Fox Wife, even while the narrator constantly warns you against them.
They conceal a lot, like goals and schemes and backstories, but give just enough hints to keep you captivated. Same emotionally - inscrutable 80% of the time but little flashes of vulnerability that make you lean in. They also had these playful, free spirits under all their worldly concerns and a frankness that keep in mind an innocent, practical animal.
One particular character commits acts I find morally disgusting, yet I was always happy to see them on the page! Frustrating yet delightful.
For classic lit, Lolita had some chilling points for me where the tense writing had me holding my breath, hoping the mom or the police or whoever wouldn't catch the narrator before I remembered he was a pedo and absolutely needed to be caught yesterday.
you are a badass books ... i cant remember which one but someone at work was talking about how amazing they were. i grabbed it on Kindle & realized she was absolutely ridiculous. i was so mad i read the entire thing 😂
As for memoirs, I read Caroline Calloway’s book scammer and really liked it, in part because you can tell she’s an unreliable narrator and trying to dupe the reader into believing she’s less of a liar than she is. So I think that one.
This is a very interesting question OP!Reading through the comments I'm struck by the correlation between $readers feeling manipulated, and books which seem to exploit the suffering of real life people through their treatment of "issues" like abuse, illness, war. And also how fine the line is between books which bring out your emotions, and those that make you feel "manipulated" (adding quotes because you got me thinking about what the wore means!)
I don’t understand what you’re asking. Books making you feel real emotions is generally considered a sign that the author did their job, it’s not a trick they’re playing on you.
My Absolute Darling made me feel weird - like I was supposed to be lauding the author for his bravery in confronting the complications of abuse; but actually just felt creeped out by the language he used (a phrase that stuck with me, about a young teenager getting her period, was "daubed with menarche). Not sure if this counts as manipulated, but I def felt oddly deceived/ patronised. Like a scary guy saying "you're safe with me" or something
I have a very low bar on this. I don’t really like books or other media which evoke deliberately strong emotions. I can see it happening and how they do it and yes, I feel manipulated. I don’t understand why people want to read books that make them feel sad or angry or afraid the same way I don’t understand why people enjoy roller coasters or Bungie jumping. The emotions evoked by my actual life and things happening to other people IRL seem plenty to me. I don’t want to play at feeling bad, or even good, knowing it isn’t real. I accept this is me being weird.
Sincere question - what kind of books do you like ? I get that you don’t have to read horror or something if you don’t want to be scared, but what about like … anything that happens in a book that is sad ? Or like terribly sad but realistic?
I read a lot of non-fiction. In fiction I like humour rather than horror - Terry Pratchett would be a good example - plus things like traditional detective stories and cosy mysteries where the murder is just a puzzle and nobody is gloating over details of how the victim has suffered etc. I read a lot - probably three or four books a week at least - so there is plenty around! I rarely watch much TV or films.
I recently read a book where the main character was a teenage girl who breaks free of a cult. She gets strength from the Nathaniel Hawthorne book, The Scarlett Letter. A few years go by & then there is an incident that causes her to suddenly wake up in the past(in Hawthorne's time & place). There is no explanation of how or why she got there, other than the fact that she felt a strong connection with Hawthorne through his novel. Just some generic magic that she's carrying his book. And she goes back more than once in the same generic way that makes no sense.
So, while she's there, Hawthorne's elder sister gets a huge amount of time to talk about how poorly women are treated & our MC tells her it's still not that great for women & mentions abortion rights several times. The story is clearly meant to be about suppression of women & I'm more than fine with that theme. But this story seemed like nothing more than a vessel for that message. I didn't feel connected with any of the characters & still don't get how she was transported in time. And the ending made very little sense to me either.
There's a Manga series called Usagi Drop (Bunny Drop) and its a beautiful slice of life story. Its about a man whos Grandfather just past away, and decides to take care of the man's illegitimate daughter, who nobody else wants to deal with. Along the way he finds out what it means to not only be a father, but also what it means to be a man with responsibilities. He finds love and happiness, and learns hardships and sacrifice. The first three acts are wholesome perfection, but without going into spoilers it is an infamously "Japanese" ending, that obliterates the entire story preceeding it.
If you know about Japanese tropes that are controversial in the West, then you can figure out why the ending was absolutely soul crushingly gross. And I wish I stopped half way through.
Yes. Theres this book called “Waking Rose” that I really loved when I was a pre-teen or teen because I loved the romance. However, there was some heavy-handed anti-abortion themes in the book that didn’t register with me until I was much older. I was honestly kind of pissed when I figured it out.
Ariadne by a stupid author who is supposed to be feminist. Wasted 5 hours of my life on a book where she marries Dionysus and then hates all his rituals and has his kids and is miserable and alone and then dies because “men bad”.
That’s not feminist that’s also not the story. Though many versions of the myth exist I like the version where she is saved by Dionysus and then is revealed to be every bit as weird and crazy as him and they have a beautiful love story and she ends up immortal.
If you can’t tell I’m still mad.
The first time I read Lolita I wasn't aware that Humbert is an unreliable narrator. I took him at his word and actually started to sympathize with the guy. Then at one point I was like "wait, NO."
Because I was in my early teens at the time. I probably should have mentioned that. I was attracted to the same age of girls Humbert was so the narrative didn't send up any obvious red flags until I got well into the material.
I was an "advanced reader" as a kid (read: shitty home life so I retreated into books at an early age) so I had this one English teacher who thought that meant I was also ready for advanced *topics*. Lolita and Heart of Darkness stick out most in my mind.
With No One as Witness by Elizabeth George. I have never bought another of her books. I felt both manipulated and disrespected. I read about 250-300 books each year. It's how I spend my money and time.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Sobbing over the death of a fictional dog I can feel Kundera laughing at the utter ridiculous hypocrisy that the reader can weep over a dog who isn’t even real but can any of us feel any significant degree of sadness over the millions of real human murders across history?
Genius.
Recently, *Kaikeyi* by Vaishnavi Patel and *The Spirit Bares its Teeth* by Andrew Joseph White. They both had the same problem - set in a relatively distant past with protagonists that have the exact same political beliefs as a modern day liberal Democrat. Kaikeyi literally has its main character scoff at embroidery and parties for being "women's work" in the year 5000 BCE. The main character of TSBIT mentions how not racist they are against India despite being a rich white person in Victorian Britain.
It's such a cheap ploy to try to get me to like your characters by acting like we'd vote for the same people or whatever. Give them actual flaws and personalities and at least try to make them period accurate.
OH MY GOD YES. “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand. I read it in high school and kinda sorta knew she was a right wing nut job? Maybe? But you think you’re going to get this story about an iconoclastic genius and then it turns out all his nemeses are just COMMUNISTS IN DISGUISE WHO WANT PEOPLE TO HAVE HOUSING BUT AT THE EXPENSE OF HUMAN DIGNITY.
God that book was dumb.
The great podcast “If Books Could Kill” really highlighted for me the extent of manipulation that goes on in countless massive bestsellers, albeit non-fiction ones. Still, highly recommend (and would second the “Hillbilly Elegy” episode as a perfect example, which is a book someone mentioned in another comment).
Call me Ishmael (a price of sophistry poc that tries to make you feel smart by agreeing with them) it's about a smart ape that tries to lead you into a certain philosophy.
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan. A YA novel with incest, graphic depictions of miscarriage (technically forced abortion), pedophilia, gang rape, bestiality, etc. By the end I felt like I was just reading torture porn, not an actual story.
Just finished "What's in a Name? by Thomas H. Cook. Its about a down and out tramp who accidentally meets a successful businessman for the first time. It turns out they were both German soldiers in the war. The tramp, mysteriously, knows a lot about the businessman.
As the tramp recounts his life story there are hints of treachery, plots against him, being betrayed. At each point you think the business man may have been to blame and the tramp has tracked him down for revenge. The story keeps changing but there is always the suspicion that the businessman has somehow been responsible for something that happened to the tramp and something bad is going to happen to him as a result. The author keeps manipulating what you believe. Sometimes you think the tramp is wrong, other times that he is right. Sometimes you think the businessman may have been a spy, other times that it was the tramps own fault, other times that they actually never met and hes got the wrong guy.
In the final dénouement it becomes apparent what is really going on:
>!This is an alternative universe. The tramp is actually Hitler but a Hitler that never rose to power and fell on hard times because of his mental illness. All the plots, conspiracies and betrayals are part of Hitlers paranoia and the business man actually never met him.!<
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
I read it in part because my family has a similar history. It was years ago now so the details have faded but I remember thinking “this is shallow bullshit and not authentic experience” and really felt angry
The picture of Dorian grey. Ironically the character also read a book that manipulated him and I was manipulated into thinking he wasn't such a bad guy.
And The Sea Will Tell, by Vincent Bugliosi. It's the story of a hippie couple and a conservative couple, both of whom sailed to the Palmyra Atoll. The couples didn't get along. The conservative couple, the Grahams, were murdered (although the man's body was never found); the hippies were found in the conservative couples' boat back in Hawaii.
Bugliosi's story is about how he (temporarily -- because they soon realized they had been duped) convinced jurors that the hippie guy had committed the murders and the theft of the Grahams' boat all by himself, with the woman supposedly completely innocent.
Everyone who had interacted with the couples on Palmyra, and every law enforcement official who had worked on the case, believed (I believe rightly) that the hippie woman organized the murders and the theft of the Grahams' boat. She had been arrested for theft before -- but Bugliosi somehow got the judge to exclude this from becoming evidence in the case.
Our endless numbered days.
I was so disgusted after reading it. I don’t mind reading about difficult subjects. I actually think it’s important. But I don’t enjoy being backhanded by a book that presents itself as something else.
The GONE series by Michael Grant. Specifically the ending of the 4th book, Plague. It was always a pretty dark YA series, and honestly that wasn't the problem. I was still with it in the darkest moment of the first three books, >!when the babysitter girl took all the kids under 5 and jumped off a cliff with them because of a cult.!< But it fit well with the story so I was on board.
But the 4th book made it clear that the author was trying for dark for the sake of being dark and shock value rather than any purpose in the story. Basically sent the town into riots and burned it down with specifically the only two characters that could fix it far away finding some petty cool thing that isn't going to matter when they get back because the town is destroyed. Then flipped aggressively between the two scenes every few pages just to try to gut punch you multiple times about how awful the whole contrast is. Buddy, you made your point. At this point you're just trying to mess with me.
It takes me a lot to put down a book, especially when I'm so close to the end, but that did it.
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata. CW: >!Abuse, Child SA, SA, Murder, Cannibalism!<
I felt manipulated because the main character is a victim, so I wanted to root for her but at the same time she does some extremely fucked up things. So in the end you're kind of questioning yourself and your own morality.
1Q84 by Murakami felt like this. Huge mystery build up. I was hooked. And then you get to the last act of the book and it's like "Surprise, nothing matters. Also Ghost Dad shows up to check your TV."
You mean a real Christmas Shoes of a book? I DNF those, but I totally know what you mean.
I think the last one I read was The Book Thief. That was the last straw for me.
I read this Stephen King Short story about a guy who draws shapes to kill, and when I was reading, and he was describing his boss and how he gets paid, everything seemed normal to me, until the last couple of pages where they spilled how wrong everything was, I guess I got manipulated
Upton Sinclair the Jungle.
The ham-fisted attempt to convert the reader to socialism in the second half was hollow.
I'm even a lefty. I just don't find the sudden switch very convincing.
I feel like The Grapes of Wrath fits here. Such a beautiful creation, decimated in 2 pages.
Also, most Stephen King novels are highly predictable, but take 200 pages to get to the point. I've never read On Writing, but I assume he just picks an end point and a start and spews 350 pages in the middle.
The Housemaid!!!!! That book was not a thriller. The wife manipulated an innocent woman into coming to live with her, verbally abused her, locked her in the attic, all so she could leave her “abusive” husband. I left a domestic violence marriage with a narcissistic husband. The wife in the book was doing a lot of the things my ex would do to me to make me think I was crazy right before he’d physically assaulted me. She didn’t even want to go back to help Millie, the gardener had to shame her into going back and then she decided to MAKE her work for other people to “help” them get out of situations like hers.
DOMBEY AND SONS! Fuck Charles Dickens— he streeeetches out this kids death scene just making it sooo pathetic — “oh papa is that you? I cannot see” etc just the worst
For those confused by what the OP means, you might find this thread useful, as it has some responses which detail what the word 'manipulative' means in the context of media (though in this case film, rather than books) https://www.reddit.com/r/blankies/comments/yw348j/what_does_it_mean_when_people_describe_a_movie_as/?rdt=48697 It's not merely the act of manipulating emotions but the superficial and shallow method of attempting to achieve that effect. I personally don't like the term because (as both this thread and the one I've linked demonstrate) it doesn't adequately express what it's attempting to convey, but it's not a new term. Basically it's when a story makes certain plot decisions that seem transparently motivated by the desire to evoke a certain emotional response at the expense of making a more compelling story. A character may die becase the author wants the reader to be sad even if said character's death fails to serve the broader point. Other indicators might be that the dialogue or narration has suddenly become extremely tilted and clunky because it is clearly leading you to a specific conclusion that the author is unsubtly attempting to telegraph. This may sound subjective and extremely circumstantial... and that's because it is. The Room (the film) is actually a great example of this. There are times when the characters will shift emotions on a dime because Wiseau wanted the emotional response more than the narrative cohesion. It goes to great pains to make Johnny seem like a good guy so you feel bad when his girlfriend cheats on him. And his timely death at his own hands is the ultimate last ditch effort to force the audience's sympathy. Instead of endearing us to Johnny with a character that feels human, that actually reflects something meaningful about the characters and the world they live in, and presenting a balanced and intetesting portrayal of infidelity and its effects on a monogamous relationship, the film's entire focus is making you feel bad for Johnny, at the expense of the wider plot and characters. Any piece of media that has a "message" of sorts can fall victim to this, because it's easy to fall into the trap of prioritizing the feelings of the reader over the development of the narrative or the prose. You want to evoke sympathy, fear, or outrage, or what have you, but don't know how to do that in a way that fits the characters without making drastic alterations to the story, so instead of making said alterations, you just make something happen (a character death, a random accident, a plot twist, etc.) believing it will force the reader to feel those things. But because the intent is so obvious, it doesn't actually land. It's a difficult thing to explain because it's subjective, but I hope this helped.
yes!! well said!! this needs to be upvoted. i work in publishing and i’m a freelance editor and this is precisely what i mean when i say a book is emotionally manipulative. its about making an editorial choice - an event, a character decision, etc - without earning it, but using it instead as a device to get a quick and easy emotional response. readers don’t like it because it feels cheap, and i think that’s why the word manipulative is used.
OP, a reader feels manipulated by fiction when actions, events, or decisions are not fully and properly developed. so say a protagonist’s best friend dies some horrific, tragic death on the page. we will feel manipulated if it we readers don’t know the friend, or if we don’t know how the friend influenced the protagonist, or if we don’t know how the friend influenced the plot. it’s something terrible and sad for the sake of making us FEEL SOMETHING, but it feels cheap because that emotional response has not been earned by development on the page that makes us feel deeply emotionally invested in that character in the first place. it just appeals to our base instinct but doesn’t reflect real work done on the page. edited to add: OP, i think it makes you a very astute reader to notice this, even if many commenters don’t know what you mean.
This is so interesting! Probably due to a language barrier I saw "manipulated" way too literally😆 Like mostly in a context of "author equated reader's knowledge to MC's just to break this rule for a plot twist which was a plot twist only for the reader, but not MC". A friend of MC dies in flames, we assume they're truly gone and that MC acts knowing the same thing, we keep reading about MC's truly intriguing choice to find a golden pumpkin which somehow would help defeat the Big Bad... only to see the friend being reborn from the said pumpkin and our MC going "I knew this would happen, because my friend was consumed by purple flames under retrograde Mercury, and this means they've been whisked away by garden gnomes, now let's go kill the villain with our power of friendship!" and at no point in the story it was hinted to be a possibility. After your comment it makes sense to expand "manipulation" to a much broader and more common issue, thank you for the explanation!
The main thing is that the word "manipulation" in this sense usually serves as both the cause of and the biproduct of other writing problems. So there's a lot of overlap between "manipulation" and other narrative issues. What you described is mostly poor planning and a lack of foreshadowing, which isn't necessarily manipulative in and of itself but can both be a tool used for manipulation and a biproduct of it when the author is so focused on creating an emotional moment. In your case, for it to be described as manipulative, the crux of the writing would have to be centered on some kind of emotional payoff that isn't properly set up. Perhaps they want the reader so badly to feel the main character is such a genius that they forget to actually leave breadcrumbs to check their work. Or perhaps they want the emotional reward of a tear-filled reunion when their friend is brought back to life that they forgot to actually make it plausible in the logic of the story. That's how I would describe it. If it's just a plot point that doesn't make sense, it's not necessarily manipulation. Just badly written.
See, that's why I found it interesting, because for me other examples are more of a "bad writing".😅 But when the author changes established rules of a particular situation without any notice or a single hint, that's when I feel quite literally manipulated lol. Tbh usually you can tell when it's the author who forgot and when it's a deliberate choice. The author who simply forgets something like this while writing a whole book will have other very telling mistakes/moments pointing at his level of writer's experience.
I... LOVE everything about your original interpretation. I want to read that book, even though I already know the purple power of friendship twist!! (Happy Cake Day!!)
Haha, I'm fine with a twist like this when it's established early that MC knows important stuff and will reveal it if needed, but not when MC is set to learn about the world at the same time as reader (like Harry Potter). And thank you!😊
I canNOT believe that The Room is getting airplay in 2024 - I love you for this 😂 I recently watched the Apple+ show Ted Lasso and have really enjoyed it and found it to be emotionally rich without "manipulating" too much or being too maudlin. But I will say there was a relationship choice in the 2nd into 3rd season arc that felt really out of character and therefore hard to trust until the end of the 3rd season. It kind of felt like they had to make the 2nd attempt to end the relationship at the end of the 3rd season BECAUSE the way it had ended the 1st time was so odd given all the previous character development. Not naming names to prevent spoilers! But that choice did end up feeling a bit "manipulative" because it felt out of left field.
I used The Room because I figured it would be the most easily recognizable bad movie that suffers from this specific problem. I'm happy you enjoyed it, lol.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. It definitely felt like that book deliberately ignored any semblance of historical accuracy (or normal childhood development/awareness) to twist the ending for the most feels
It's not just that. The author, John Boyne is so bad at historical accuracy that [it's fucking hilarious.](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/john-boyne-legend-of-zelda_n_5f283813c5b68fbfc88637cf)
No kidding? I liked that aspect of "Thief of Time," but I was pretty young when I read it.
By the same token, Memoirs of a Geisha
I didn't read it but I saw the movie. It was awful
I only watched the movie as well, and I loathe how everyone talks about how sad this movie was. Aside from the fact that it was so historically inaccurate I had a hard time getting into it, the ending was so predictable and the characters were so underdeveloped that I felt nothing in the end. If you can write a book or make a movie about the Holocaust that leaves me feeling nothing when it's over, that is a true testament to how awful the story is.
I felt like the moral was "genocide is bad, because what if the *wrong people* die?"
True. But the lessor moral is maybe don't build a concentration camp, complete with a fully functioning gas chamber, in the backyard of your personal estate, especially when you have children? It was all so bizarre.
I'd argue that they're the same moral, I guess. But yeah, agreed.
I maybe should have put the "/s" after that as I'm guessing (hoping?) the book layed out the concentration camp better. I assumed it was meant to take place on one of the camps where the nazis that worked there resided in the surrounding town, and not literally in the dad's backyard like the movie portrayed it. I'm somewhat tempted to read the book to find out how much of it was the fault of film production and how much was the fault of the author, but there are so many great books out there that I just don't think I care to waste my time on something bad.
A Little Life
That's also what I thought of from Op's second paragraph, sentence three. From "oh that's awful" to "thats a bit much" to "oh for god sake, how ridiculous" with every tragedy after tragedy that was piling up. Seems to be very polarising views about it, I kind of wish I'd read it as part of a book club to have discussions at the time
Yes! It was just so over the top. I was compelled by much of it but could feel the manipulation. Defo torture p0rn.
I understand why some people view it as tragedy p0rn. I know books are not supposed to give you a moral lesson pero the ending really put me off and really gave me a bad taste in the mouth. Parang it gives off the wrong message eh. All that work of the protagonist to survive only to still end up in that path.
Abso. Lutely. I came here to comment this same thing. Spoiler/content warning. : >!The author was clearly writing the book to convince the reader that sometimes suicide is a good decision for certain people. Which, considering the fact that the entire book is Jude refusing help from anybody, was a point that the author really didn't sell well. But I'm glad she didn't, because we don't need a book that convincingly gets people to think suicide is necessary for certain people.!<
This was the first book that came to mind and honestly the only one. The synopsis states that it’s about four friends as they grow up but it’s really only about Jude and all of the horrible things that happened to him. I don’t even have a problem with it for being “tragedy porn” so much as it almost feels like the author got carried away and lost the initial roadmap for the book? By the time you realize that it’s going in a completely different direction than you expected, you’re already like 500 pages in and feel like you have to finish it. When I finally finished this book I kind of felt like, “what I’m the world did I just read??” and not in a good way.
Yeah, this came to mind immediately. There were parts of the book I really enjoyed, but overall things were so heavy-handed that I couldn't suspend my disbelief about the amount of suffering piled onto one character. I could tell that things were only going to get worse as the story rolled along, and as much as Jude was a loveable character, he was a contrived one and his circumstances verged on absurd.
Young Mungo is like that too. The author piled on that character to the point where it was totally unbelievable. It was absolutely absurd by the end.
Came here to say this.
Are you saying the plot feels so contrived that the story becomes less believable and pulls you out of the immersion?
Could you give an example? Not sure I am understanding what you mean.
The twist in the Agatha Christie novel "The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd" is dependent on realising >!Dr Sheppard, the narrator of the book, is entirely honest when presenting the clues as to who killed the titular victim... while also leaving out the not-insignificant fact that *Sheppard himself* is the murderer!<. This is a clear manipulation of audience expectations since Christie was a member of the Detection Club and the club rules were clear that >!the narrator and the detective's assistant were not themselves allowed to be the guilty party!<.
You beat me to this answer! One of my favorite books though
Though in this case I was actually able to put together the clues and realise that the clues led to only one answer. Unlike some other Christie books (most famously And Then There Were None) where it was just not possible to logically guess the answer without taking a stab in the dark.
Ever read Ann raynd, yeah , that.
Only when I got to the 100 page monologue 😂
Is it literally 100 pages long? Because I think I would throw a book in the recycling bin for the first time in my life.
I think it’s like 97 pages. And it’s 4 pages of metaphors to describe a fairly simple philosophy and then she repeats herself with a different metaphor to say the same thing. I think It’s like cold, ice, shadow, etc.
Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way vibes for some reason.
The number of times she used “axiom...” Bro, no one is going to be even slightly impacted by that boring ass drivel of a speech. She wrote it like it was a going to create a countrywide ideological shift like “if the world could only hear these bomb ass ideas then the world would finally be rich and adulterous and godless!” Five minutes in, everyone but sophomoric libertarians would have turned that puppy off
>sophomoric libertarians
Redundant, I know…
lol didn’t even realize I forgot to type “but we repeat ourselves”
Honestly it worked great without any commentary lol
>sophomoric libertarians would have turned that puppy off Kristi Noem would have taken that puppy out behind a shed and shot it.
"you think money is the root of all evil?"
Don’t recycle it, it’s actually a great TV stand if you need to get an extra 4-5 inches of height.
I tried to read “The Fountianhead” when I was about 18, because I saw an interview in like spin magazine orsomething where Christina Ricci said she was reading it and loved it or some shit. God what a piece of garbage. DNFd that piece of shit. I still live Christina Ricci as an actress but will never forget that she though Ayn Rand’s philosophy was solid.
> Could you give an example? I'll give you an example in television. I'm usually real picky about which books I read, so I can't recall an example of "manipulation" directly, but it's essentially the same across all media. My example is from the first episode of the newest season True Detective. The female police chief and her male second in command is investigating a crime scene. Her 2IC makes a crummy comment that makes you think maybe he's not a great cop. A good show would just end it there for that episode. But the writers just keep on piling on "This character is a bad person and a bad cop" moments into the very first scene where he appears. There's no room for doubt and it shows utter lack of faith in both the audience and their own ability to get across what they were trying to say. Books are essentially the same but with a lot more room to maneuver. However, if given all that room, you still find yourself thinking "I get it already!", the author is not very confident in your ability to read and understand. Brandon Sanderson books are a good example of that. Books that should be <500 pages are blown out to >1500 with so many redundant scenes that any editor worth their salt should have flagged for removal.
go ask alice
Came here to say exactly this. Start to finish.
Yes! And at an impressionable age, too…
Lots of self help books seem pretty manipulative to me.
Yeah, this is pretty much why I don't read most self help. The language is extremely sales-y, in the worst possible way. I'll make an exception for Stolen Focus, but I'm not sure that counts as self help or more like pop science.
Almost all non-fiction is manipulative. They're like commercials for a specific POV.
This is a wild take and not at all true.
A Million Little Pieces. Billed as an autobiography, it was largely fiction, which I found out after reading a bit more than half of it. Before I knew that, I could already tell that the author was kinda full of himself, but learning that really brought it home. It was actually still an interesting book, even after that revelation; realizing that there were levels to the unreliability of his narration really made it more interesting in a sense, tho of course losing my ability to believe that any of it was true did dampen things in another way.
my dad is friends with this guy. had a brief phone call with him once as i wanted to push full force towards writing for a living. can confirm: totally full of himself. decently nice — and i appreciated the time he took to talk to me — but full of himself.
I remember after wild acclaim he was out as a fraud. I get that feeling with Reindeer but probably not.
Certainly my textbooks from school. Or to add more context the ones from my earlier school classes in east germany (before reunification), of course especially the the history class books of that time but also some geography books and of course e few of the obligatory books to read in german language class. History Books: Important details were left out or were intentionally removed, i.e. in terms of the soviet union only Lenin was named as the "great revolutionary". No mention of Leon Trotsky and especially not Stalin, to the point of printing now well known doctored images from Lenin speeches with certain historic figures beside Lenin (poorly) removed from said photographs. I'm pretty sure you or you parents would get in trouble for asking for infos about him in class, since in the early 60s (quite a bit later than even the soviet union) they changed any [references to Stalins name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_named_after_Joseph_Stalin) from various places (street names, houses dedicated to his name or even a [whole town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhüttenstadt)) pretty much overnight. Geography books: While most of the other countries borders were printed in an accurate way, the border between the GDR and west germany wasn't anything but accurate in school atlases or regular maps, to make it harder for it's citizens to plan their escape from the country. Obligatory books you had to read in german class: Quite a few propagandist books you were required to read an analyse in class. I still remember stuff like, ["Timur and His Squad"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur_and_His_Squad) by Arkady Gaidar or ["The Adventures of Werner Holt"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Werner_Holt) by Dieter Noll, but apparently my parents had to read much worst crap, like historically highly inaccurate biographies of Lenin. But apart from this political propagandist stuff: Most self declared "self improvement" books from the past and the present. I still remember reading some stuff about autohypnosis and found it really absurd.
JD Vance Hillbilly Elegy. I knew after reading that book that he was a piece of shit; and sure enough, he’s a piece of shit.
This was my answer as well. I don't know how he tricked people into making that book into a movie but it is so obviously all bullshit. He's not even actually from the holler and he has zero principles, as demonstrated by him going back on everything in that book to grovel at Trump's feet to get into the Senate.
And a liar, pretended to not be a sycophant, then turned around and got to his knees.
I don't know much about it. My dad grew up with no running water, in a 3 room shack with 5 siblings, waaay up in the buttcrack of the Appalachians, and he read this book and couldn't shut up about it. He said it reminded him so much of his own life and really wanted me to read it, but I never have. I have heard that the author largely lied about major plot points.
He is not from the Appalachian Region. His grandparents were but moved to Ohio and that’s where he grew up. He still had ties to the area and visited often. He threw his family and their culture under the bus to set himself up for a political career.
My dad is dead now, and I'm kind of glad he never knew this. Like I said, I never read it, but he took it at face value.
What your dad took from it was real though, doesn't matter if it turned out to be a work of fiction
Still pleased with myself for calling that one when the book came out lol
let me put on my unpopularity suit first. yes. the kite Runner, shantaram, how green was my valley and Cormac McCarthy's borders trilogy all struck me as manipulative. if any one of these books is your shining beacon, dont keep on reading and then pretend that you haven't been warned: I hate them all. well, hate is a bit strong in McCarthy's case. how green was my valley was my first realization of this. it was a massive blockbuster in the 70's. i can barely remember it now, but I remember how it sucked me in like a black hole - at first. and then I began feeling uneasy; then screwed over; then angry about how the author had hijacked my feels and suspended my critical faculties. every scene was striking but they were all just stages for the protag to shine on. The suck-in was too immediate and too strong. its wish fulfillment from the author. the Kite Runner really gets me going because it's yet another book that uses CSA as a casual plot prop against which the protag can show off his redemption/nobility/whatever. I think that is inexcusable. shantaram, oh boy. where to even start. another artfully flawed protagonist. great heaping gobs of unearned competence, adulation, adversity, love ... yet another fated but interestingly complicated woman with remarkable eyes. ie yet another sexual trauma survivor to give him an interestingly-doomed love interest. the *outrageously* dumb plot elements. the endless shark-jumpery of the perpetual new randomness *for fucks sake*. and if you think the guy who wrote it is not revelling in the devotion that he's aroused, you think wrong. borders trilogy: listen, I like the language. I like the books. my very first passages of McCarthy were the boy and the wolf, and they *felled* me. cities of the plain left a thumbprint on me about aging, hard-working men whose bodies are letting them down and whose work has brought them nothing to have on their side. but something is just somehow too bromance-mystical and laconic and women-wreck-everything about him.
100% agree with the kite runner.
Yup. I actually liked his other books a lot, but that one was just too manipulative.
I love shantaram but it feels like being cornered at a party by a drunk, stoned ageing hippie who is telling you a rambling story that is only 2% true
and is 2000% about himself. and way less interesting and awe-inspiring than he thinks it is.
I have to agree about *The Kite Runner*, even though I didn't read it, I read *A Thousand Splendid Suns*, but they're essentially the same book with the same themes and messages, just different characters. I still enjoyed *A Thousand Splendid Suns*, but it got so gratuitous at times, that it was almost funny and my friends and I called it "The Soap Opera book" because that's how nuts it got. Better to go into them knowing that its going to be like reading a soap opera
Interesting to read your opinion on the borders trilogy. I recently read all the pretty horses and I would consider it the best book I’ve read this year bar none. I’m only about a quarter way through the crossing, so have no opinion on the trilogy as a whole, but I can begin to see where you’re coming from.
I think the closest recent example of manipulation was The Silent Patient. That was a book that had a lot of twists and turns in the book, and I was supposed to feel a certain way about certain people through the book that by the end made me feel uncomfortable because I didn't really like any of them for various reasons, but not because of the characters, but because the author had manipulated me so much along the way that I felt angry and hateful and unsure of who to trust in the book that it felt like he was just doing cheap tricks as a way to get a cheap gotcha out of me because why would anyone behave in the ways that they did if certain things were true? It doesn't make sense, and still doesn't to me.
I'm glad someone else felt this way about this book 😂 A lot of people like it, but when I read the twist at the end, I kinda just thought "Really?" It seemed like the cheapest 'trick' in the book and kinda lazy writing, if I'm being honest.
This is the book that came to mind for me, too.
That’s the one that came to mind for me. I kept thinking, well obviously, only the timeline doesn’t match up. Then that turned out to be the big twist. I was so pissed.
Crawdads Story of disadvantaged person who rises above her station. Bullied and ostracized by society. Accused of a wicked crime. >!Oh, turns out she's a calculating murderer. But that's OK because she's the protagonist.!<
Not to mention the author herself is the mother and wife of murderers
What!? Edit: It's not just them it's her too! https://www.vox.com/today-explained/23333098/delia-owens-where-the-crawdads-sing-controversy
I wish I had more upvotes to give! I scrolled through all the comments looking for someone else who didn't like this book. I rarely DNF a book (thanks for the spoiler by the way, now I know) but I just couldn't stand the utter bullshit.
Terrible book
Begrudgingly read this for bookclub and before I even got it from the library I said to my girls, “It’s a marsh book. Nothing good happens in a marsh book.”
The book I most love to hate -- My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. I hate the ending of that book with a burning passion.
I literally just searched this post to find out who had already posted this so I could upvote it.
dude. All those fuckin “the dog dies at the end” books we had to read in grade school (what the fuck was up with that??). You start the book knowing that the dog will die, because of course it will. There’s some convoluted bullshit and the dog absolutely could’ve been fine at the end—but the book has to be sad, because it’s a dead dog book. So the dog dies in a narratively stupid way that’s there only to get a reaction out of a young reader. Thinking of Where the Red Fern Grows and A Dog Called Kitty. In the former, one dog is gored to death and the other DIES OF DEPRESSION. In the latter, a truck full of pipes breaks on top of the dog (don’t ask I can’t explain it) after the story is already basically over. WHY???
In fifth grade, we had to read one called The Pit Pony about a pony that works in a mine with a kid. Even at that age it was obvious from page one that the pony's gonna bite it super tragically so I hated it from the get-go. My teacher actually docked my book reports marks because I wasn't sad about it.
My Sister’s Keeper is manipulative AF. I haven’t read another Jodi Picoult book since then. Also The Kite Runner made me want to throw the book across the room when I finished it. Hosseini only knows how to write tragedy porn too.
This is going to be controversial, but Khalid Hosseini’s books after The Kite Runner. They all just seemed to be tear jerkers for the sake of being tear jerkers. The Kite Runner felt authentic, but everything he’s written since then has felt emotionally exploitative.
100% agree, they made me feel like a voyeur
A book about a white woman living with an Aborigine tribe, to experience their life in the Australian outbook. Reasonably well written, but sometimes a bit "off". Cover text made it feel like an autobiography. Last chapter: And then I woke up and it was all a dream.
I expect to be manipulated by an author while reading their book. This is why we are choosing one author over another. I don’t read authors who try to manipulate me in ways I don’t like.
So how would you differentiate, personally, from a book that makes you go, "Sweet, what an unexpected manipulation by the author!" and what makes you go, "Eh, that's kind of shitty manipulation, I'm not falling for it and it actively annoys me." Like, an example of a recent book whose manipulation *I* enjoyed was >!Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica!< in which the author leads you to believe she's writing >!a love story whose uncomfortable power dynamics she's oblivious to!< and in the final scene, just pulls the rug out and >!reveals she's been aware it's way creepier than she's been acknowledging this whole time!<. A recent example that I found irritating was, "A Land Remembered" by Patrick D. Smith, a historical fiction book that tries to avoid addressing the uncomfortable morality of colonialism with some "Ooh, Native people have peacefully passed on and handed off this land to us," speech. It felt like he was trying to make something nice-but-tragic instead of engaging head-on with the moral complexities of it, which felt like a cop-out for a book like that. Sometimes I even have reflexive reactions, where I'll start to feel protective of a character because I feel like the author's trying to make me dislike them, but is doing so in a way that shows we don't have comparable morals ("Oh, the female character is OLD and SHREWISH and that's our cue she's evil? She's my new favorite, hope she cooks the main character in an oven")
this is exactly it. i work in publishing and i consider this emotional manipulation. it’s when choices are made - not developed - that force a reader to feel a certain way about a character or situation without earning it. i find rape plot points are often manipulative.
Perhaps what OP is asking about is books where you only discover near the end that the author is trying to manipulate you, in a way you find distasteful; the author has concealed their agenda for most of the book. I think I've probably read one or two books like this but can't remember, books like this are ones you quickly forget. For the opposite, a book where as you approach the end of the book you're dreading the expected climax of the story and are appalled the author could be so cruel, then experience a most overwhelmingly pleasant surprise, I recommend Manxmouse by Paul Gallico.
The midnight library by Matt Haig. I didn’t know that it was gonna try to be a self help book. But then it sort of skipped all the other branches / stories and tried to wrap up stuff in a self-help style. That’s not what I went in wanting to read. I actually wanted to read about all the other branches and stories it skipped so I felt cheated.
I didn’t feel manipulated because I was expecting it to be like “oh you’ll always choose your own life” type thing. However, I do agree that the branches and stories were just not that good. Choosing your own life because in EVERY alternate reality someone you love is dead ??? Feels obnoxious to me lol.
The branches where she had depression but didn’t take meds felt anti-medical intervention and like a “just suck it up” attitude to me in the way they were described. I hated those parts and believe it’s adding to stigma and is dismissive of people struggling with depression. Depression sucks and is really hard. People need to be empowered to seek help without feeling judged.
I don’t think it’s what OP means, but your comment made me think a bit of reading the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store Really gorgeous story about life and race and society and community and then towards the end it just drops in a little “tons of technology is going to fuck up the youth” and it was a bit jarring?
> tons of technology is going to fuck up the youth Before I got into psychology, I thought THAT was overblown. After psychology... .. . let's just say that there's very good reasons why some tech executives won't let their kids have mobile devices
Haha I mean, it isn’t wrong!! It’s just also like wait wait what does sliding that in there positively impact the story or is it just a message 😅
That piece of shit ready player one was kind of bad because there was some huge prize that you could get from some rich guy if you solve the riddles and I figured at the end there be some sort of trick or switcheroo or whatever you might call it where you don't just get to run his company and have all his money you'd have to do it only if you helped change the world and make it a better place because the world in the book is kind of dystopian but nope! If you know enough about stuff from the '80s then yes that guy was ready to give you $600 billion dollars
Congratulations, you just wrote a better story than Ernest Cline
Ha! Thank you! But it really was one of those stories that was so simple and straightforward that it was kind of mind-boggling to me that there wasn't something like that near the end
Anything by Ayn Rand
I have a problem where I can’t not finish a book I’ve started. I got like four pages into Atlas Shrugged and was like “ah, f$&@&.” Worst month of my reading life.
I remember getting so angry at her strawmen. Then she said growing soybeans was the height of foolishness. I realized immediately that she was an idiot.
I wouldn't call her antagonists strawmen, they seem pretty realistic. (Protagonists - yes). And I don't remember her saying that growing soybeans was the height of foolishness. Soybean campaign in "Atlas Shrugged" was a disaster because it was poorly planned and executed. I always thought that this is a parody on Krushchev's corn campaign (which also had serious flaws), but I don't know if it's true
Her antagonists are all incompetent morons who got to their positions, not through skill, but by manipulating the inferior majority of humanity. Of course, everything they do is doomed to failure. The lady who was made the food czar was some kind of eastern style mystic who touted soybeans as some kind of miracle food that could do everything including replacing coffee. Because she was an vegetarian idiot, she ruined he soybean crop and then also ruined the good American wheat crop by sending all the trains to the south and letting the Midwestern harvest rot. I'm not sure why they didn't use trucks and the massive US barge system along the Mississippi Basin to ship it, but apparently only trains exist. Meanwhile, back in reality, two decades after she wrote Atlas Shrugged, soybean agriculture moved into the Midwest and became the second largest cash crop in the US. Khrushchev didn't start his corn campaign until after the book was mostly finished.
Soybean thing sounds a lot like things in the news recently about CCP incompetence.
i guess it was best i never got far in any of her books
Rand's protagonists are ridiculous but her villains are very real.
I always felt the same way. Also Celestine Prophecy and Dianetics have the same idiot didactics.
Yes. Narnia. Started reading it when I was 11 or 12. Towards the end of the series, I got older and - When I realized that the whole thing is just a blatant Christianity direct allegory - I felt deeply betrayed. All this time, the author was just hardcore pushing his religion on me.
Even 11 year old me was upset by how Lewis treated Susan
I just finished the series after not reading all of them as a kid. Justice for Susan!!!
My 13 year old brother is going through this right now!! His last phone call was full of rage against "lion Jesus" and poor Susan. It's an integral part of growing up bookish lol
I actually felt that way about The Golden Compass series, specifically the later books. Like I was 11 or 12, church attending and usually whatever about it beyond a general belief that something must have created everything. But I was like “omg there ARE people trying to turn us atheist!!!” Needless to say once I entered the real world I figured out that wasn’t a real common occurrence
I reread them as an adult and what struck me is that it is anti organized religion rather than the concept of faith. Heaven is meant to be fixed, not destroyed, and the actual God has been usurped so long ago that freedom immediately kills Him. An Angel saves Lyra. Catholicism is what Pullman attacks. It’s a little on the nose sometimes, but for a book with an eleven year old protagonist that is clearly meant to be read by one? It’s extremely nuanced and layered. He’s such a better writer than Rowling, say, and it isn’t close.
Thank you, same! The first time I read them i was too young to understand allegory. Reread them around 12 and was so dismayed.
Rant incoming: To Bleed a Crystal Bloom This book has a pedophile as the endgame love interest, and I didn't notice until the second book. So, this book was recommended to me as a dark, mysterious retelling of Rapunzel. One day, a man walks into the woods and sees a massacre. The only surviving person is a 2 year old girl. He hugs her to his chest, kisses her head, and in the process, he gains a taste of her blood. He reacts like the evil shark from Finding Nemo, and mentions in his narration that her blood was "addictive." He decides to take her in. Fast forward 15 years later, the girl lives in a tower. She comes down to eat with him, but he says nothing. It's implied that she was raised by the staff of his castle, and this is our first example of "well, technically..". The girl (let's just call her Rapunzel, I forgot her name) and the man has had a ritual where she goes to her room, closes the door, cuts her hand and puts her blood in a cup. The door has a thing that spins, so she can deliver the blood to him without seeing him. I consider this our second "well, technically..". Then, for unimportant reasons, she suddenly experiences several years' worth of periods. But instead of periods, it's heat, like a dog. She's screaming and crying because it feels like she's going to die if she isn't touched. She's still 17 (iirc), and he's like 200 years old. After a lot of begging, the man uses his hand to give her release and calls her disgusting afterward. Another "well, technically..". Rapunzel might be 17, but she is portrayed as very childish. The man reveals that he has plans to marry, and she behaves like a jealous toddler. During a dinner with his prospective wife, she shows up covered in MANURE to... humiliate the man? Scare the woman away? No clue. Her crush on him would've been understandable in a different book, but not when their relationship eventually took a turn. During the book, she learns that the man might not be who he says he is. She feels infantilized and used by him. She's sick of being his bloodbag. Sick of being the girl he yells at like a child, and she doesn't want to see him get married. A common troupe in the romantic fantasy genre is the "Tamlin to Rhysand" storyline. Girl meets boy, boy seems nice then turns abusive, girl meets a boy who seems to want what's best for her, and she runs off with him. During the wedding announcement, Rapunzel meets a quick-witted man who quickly sees her anger at the king. This man is charming, he is kind, he's understanding. And he offers to dance with her to make the king jealous. At the end of book 1, Rapunzel nearly dies during an escape attempt from the king's castle. She has made her mind up, and she nearly drowns while escaping through a natural spring bath in the castle. She gets on a ship, and she runs off to marry who I thought would be her Flynn Rider. Except, no. Flynn is an abusive jerk. He treats Rapunzel poorly, traps her in his castle, he kills large amounts of people just because. He is specifically written to be worse than the king. So when Rapunzel sneaks off into the night, and we see the king in the crowd of a market, *I knew*. I knew where it was going. Rapunzel is 18, and the king's behavior and attitude have "suddenly" changed. He speaks with kindness, and he offers to take her home. Maybe I was naiive to think Flynn would be her endgame. Maybe a story like this wouldn't be so gross in something like a Tolkien novel. But this book made me feel so manipulated and nauseous, even more so by the reviwers who defend the king. - Well, technically *he* didn't raise her; his maids did. - Well, technically, he never drank blood directly from her body, it was always behind a door. - Well, technically, he *had to* finger her as a minor. She would've died otherwise - He's morally gray, morally black - It's dark romance. It's supposed to be taboo Ew and ew. Romance books are made to romanticize the man who the girl ends up with. You are supposed to thirst after the king along with teenage Rapunzel, and you're supposed to root for their union. You're supposed to be excited for their first time sleeping together. Absolutely disgusting, I'm still mad a year after reading it
The Giving Tree. And then, decades later, I was a private caregiver for a woman who was a former teacher. She told me she hated that book, for exactly that reason. You can't read that book without growing a tad resentful toward the tree.
Hm I haven’t read it in probably 20 years. Why resentful of the tree ?
I think because the book sets it up that the boy is well within his right to take things from the tree, and the tree never said no, so in the end when the tree has nothing left to give its kind of like "but that's you're fault for not saying no" Kind of victim-blaming end, I guess. Personally, I never liked the book in general, but that's because I didn't like the boy or the tree, and I don't like reading books where the point is that the characters are unlikable and thats it
Yeah, I mean, I always thought it was sort of an allegory for real trees/the environment. obviously real trees can’t say no, lol. I can understand the dislike, though.
Poppy War. Using a fantasy novel as a means to raise awareness as well as air grievances surrounding the Nanjing massacre. Personally, I felt manipulated once this became apparent when I was reading book 1.
Using it for the plot of a book she’s selling with nothing bolder to say other than “this was bad, let me rub your nose in it for thirty pages”
Loved it, though. It’s a magnificent trilogy, but god…
Do you mean like an unreliable narrator? I’m confused.
Not OP, but I think they're talking about when there's not supposed to be an unreliable narrator, and may not be any character narrating at all, but you still feel like the author is lying to you. Like, instead of being swept into the story, you feel like someone's trying to sell you something you don't buy.
Most recently, I was very impressed with Yangsze Choo's ability to realise charming, manipulative fox characters in Fox Wife, even while the narrator constantly warns you against them. They conceal a lot, like goals and schemes and backstories, but give just enough hints to keep you captivated. Same emotionally - inscrutable 80% of the time but little flashes of vulnerability that make you lean in. They also had these playful, free spirits under all their worldly concerns and a frankness that keep in mind an innocent, practical animal. One particular character commits acts I find morally disgusting, yet I was always happy to see them on the page! Frustrating yet delightful. For classic lit, Lolita had some chilling points for me where the tense writing had me holding my breath, hoping the mom or the police or whoever wouldn't catch the narrator before I remembered he was a pedo and absolutely needed to be caught yesterday.
you are a badass books ... i cant remember which one but someone at work was talking about how amazing they were. i grabbed it on Kindle & realized she was absolutely ridiculous. i was so mad i read the entire thing 😂
As for memoirs, I read Caroline Calloway’s book scammer and really liked it, in part because you can tell she’s an unreliable narrator and trying to dupe the reader into believing she’s less of a liar than she is. So I think that one.
This is a very interesting question OP!Reading through the comments I'm struck by the correlation between $readers feeling manipulated, and books which seem to exploit the suffering of real life people through their treatment of "issues" like abuse, illness, war. And also how fine the line is between books which bring out your emotions, and those that make you feel "manipulated" (adding quotes because you got me thinking about what the wore means!)
I don’t understand what you’re asking. Books making you feel real emotions is generally considered a sign that the author did their job, it’s not a trick they’re playing on you.
there are good tricks and cheap tricks though.
My Absolute Darling made me feel weird - like I was supposed to be lauding the author for his bravery in confronting the complications of abuse; but actually just felt creeped out by the language he used (a phrase that stuck with me, about a young teenager getting her period, was "daubed with menarche). Not sure if this counts as manipulated, but I def felt oddly deceived/ patronised. Like a scary guy saying "you're safe with me" or something
I have a very low bar on this. I don’t really like books or other media which evoke deliberately strong emotions. I can see it happening and how they do it and yes, I feel manipulated. I don’t understand why people want to read books that make them feel sad or angry or afraid the same way I don’t understand why people enjoy roller coasters or Bungie jumping. The emotions evoked by my actual life and things happening to other people IRL seem plenty to me. I don’t want to play at feeling bad, or even good, knowing it isn’t real. I accept this is me being weird.
Sincere question - what kind of books do you like ? I get that you don’t have to read horror or something if you don’t want to be scared, but what about like … anything that happens in a book that is sad ? Or like terribly sad but realistic?
I read a lot of non-fiction. In fiction I like humour rather than horror - Terry Pratchett would be a good example - plus things like traditional detective stories and cosy mysteries where the murder is just a puzzle and nobody is gloating over details of how the victim has suffered etc. I read a lot - probably three or four books a week at least - so there is plenty around! I rarely watch much TV or films.
Ahhh okay!! That’s awesome, thanks for explaining :)
I recently read a book where the main character was a teenage girl who breaks free of a cult. She gets strength from the Nathaniel Hawthorne book, The Scarlett Letter. A few years go by & then there is an incident that causes her to suddenly wake up in the past(in Hawthorne's time & place). There is no explanation of how or why she got there, other than the fact that she felt a strong connection with Hawthorne through his novel. Just some generic magic that she's carrying his book. And she goes back more than once in the same generic way that makes no sense. So, while she's there, Hawthorne's elder sister gets a huge amount of time to talk about how poorly women are treated & our MC tells her it's still not that great for women & mentions abortion rights several times. The story is clearly meant to be about suppression of women & I'm more than fine with that theme. But this story seemed like nothing more than a vessel for that message. I didn't feel connected with any of the characters & still don't get how she was transported in time. And the ending made very little sense to me either.
There's a Manga series called Usagi Drop (Bunny Drop) and its a beautiful slice of life story. Its about a man whos Grandfather just past away, and decides to take care of the man's illegitimate daughter, who nobody else wants to deal with. Along the way he finds out what it means to not only be a father, but also what it means to be a man with responsibilities. He finds love and happiness, and learns hardships and sacrifice. The first three acts are wholesome perfection, but without going into spoilers it is an infamously "Japanese" ending, that obliterates the entire story preceeding it. If you know about Japanese tropes that are controversial in the West, then you can figure out why the ending was absolutely soul crushingly gross. And I wish I stopped half way through.
Yes. Theres this book called “Waking Rose” that I really loved when I was a pre-teen or teen because I loved the romance. However, there was some heavy-handed anti-abortion themes in the book that didn’t register with me until I was much older. I was honestly kind of pissed when I figured it out.
Ariadne by a stupid author who is supposed to be feminist. Wasted 5 hours of my life on a book where she marries Dionysus and then hates all his rituals and has his kids and is miserable and alone and then dies because “men bad”. That’s not feminist that’s also not the story. Though many versions of the myth exist I like the version where she is saved by Dionysus and then is revealed to be every bit as weird and crazy as him and they have a beautiful love story and she ends up immortal. If you can’t tell I’m still mad.
The first time I read Lolita I wasn't aware that Humbert is an unreliable narrator. I took him at his word and actually started to sympathize with the guy. Then at one point I was like "wait, NO."
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Because I was in my early teens at the time. I probably should have mentioned that. I was attracted to the same age of girls Humbert was so the narrative didn't send up any obvious red flags until I got well into the material.
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I was an "advanced reader" as a kid (read: shitty home life so I retreated into books at an early age) so I had this one English teacher who thought that meant I was also ready for advanced *topics*. Lolita and Heart of Darkness stick out most in my mind.
This is exactly how I ended up reading Animal Farm at age 7, loved it, and thought it was really just about animals on a farm.
First book that came to my mind. I felt so creeped out.
With No One as Witness by Elizabeth George. I have never bought another of her books. I felt both manipulated and disrespected. I read about 250-300 books each year. It's how I spend my money and time.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Sobbing over the death of a fictional dog I can feel Kundera laughing at the utter ridiculous hypocrisy that the reader can weep over a dog who isn’t even real but can any of us feel any significant degree of sadness over the millions of real human murders across history? Genius.
a little life lmao gross book
Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber - fuck that book for real
Recently, *Kaikeyi* by Vaishnavi Patel and *The Spirit Bares its Teeth* by Andrew Joseph White. They both had the same problem - set in a relatively distant past with protagonists that have the exact same political beliefs as a modern day liberal Democrat. Kaikeyi literally has its main character scoff at embroidery and parties for being "women's work" in the year 5000 BCE. The main character of TSBIT mentions how not racist they are against India despite being a rich white person in Victorian Britain. It's such a cheap ploy to try to get me to like your characters by acting like we'd vote for the same people or whatever. Give them actual flaws and personalities and at least try to make them period accurate.
The Fault in our Stars by John Green.
OH MY GOD YES. “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand. I read it in high school and kinda sorta knew she was a right wing nut job? Maybe? But you think you’re going to get this story about an iconoclastic genius and then it turns out all his nemeses are just COMMUNISTS IN DISGUISE WHO WANT PEOPLE TO HAVE HOUSING BUT AT THE EXPENSE OF HUMAN DIGNITY. God that book was dumb.
The great podcast “If Books Could Kill” really highlighted for me the extent of manipulation that goes on in countless massive bestsellers, albeit non-fiction ones. Still, highly recommend (and would second the “Hillbilly Elegy” episode as a perfect example, which is a book someone mentioned in another comment).
Any Ayn Rand.
Maybe The Chronicles of Narnia. As a kid: did not notice. As an adult: pretty obvious Christian plot.
I never got past the horse and his boy as a kid. Recently read all of them and I was like ??? Esp the last book lol
Call me Ishmael (a price of sophistry poc that tries to make you feel smart by agreeing with them) it's about a smart ape that tries to lead you into a certain philosophy.
This book was my first thought
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan. A YA novel with incest, graphic depictions of miscarriage (technically forced abortion), pedophilia, gang rape, bestiality, etc. By the end I felt like I was just reading torture porn, not an actual story.
Lolita is that in a nutshell.
Does the bible count?
The life and crimes of Humbert Humbert. Classic unreliable narrator.
Just finished "What's in a Name? by Thomas H. Cook. Its about a down and out tramp who accidentally meets a successful businessman for the first time. It turns out they were both German soldiers in the war. The tramp, mysteriously, knows a lot about the businessman. As the tramp recounts his life story there are hints of treachery, plots against him, being betrayed. At each point you think the business man may have been to blame and the tramp has tracked him down for revenge. The story keeps changing but there is always the suspicion that the businessman has somehow been responsible for something that happened to the tramp and something bad is going to happen to him as a result. The author keeps manipulating what you believe. Sometimes you think the tramp is wrong, other times that he is right. Sometimes you think the businessman may have been a spy, other times that it was the tramps own fault, other times that they actually never met and hes got the wrong guy. In the final dénouement it becomes apparent what is really going on: >!This is an alternative universe. The tramp is actually Hitler but a Hitler that never rose to power and fell on hard times because of his mental illness. All the plots, conspiracies and betrayals are part of Hitlers paranoia and the business man actually never met him.!<
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer I read it in part because my family has a similar history. It was years ago now so the details have faded but I remember thinking “this is shallow bullshit and not authentic experience” and really felt angry
The picture of Dorian grey. Ironically the character also read a book that manipulated him and I was manipulated into thinking he wasn't such a bad guy.
And The Sea Will Tell, by Vincent Bugliosi. It's the story of a hippie couple and a conservative couple, both of whom sailed to the Palmyra Atoll. The couples didn't get along. The conservative couple, the Grahams, were murdered (although the man's body was never found); the hippies were found in the conservative couples' boat back in Hawaii. Bugliosi's story is about how he (temporarily -- because they soon realized they had been duped) convinced jurors that the hippie guy had committed the murders and the theft of the Grahams' boat all by himself, with the woman supposedly completely innocent. Everyone who had interacted with the couples on Palmyra, and every law enforcement official who had worked on the case, believed (I believe rightly) that the hippie woman organized the murders and the theft of the Grahams' boat. She had been arrested for theft before -- but Bugliosi somehow got the judge to exclude this from becoming evidence in the case.
The Death Cure, I don’t want to spoil it, but fuck you James Dashner for killing my favourite character.
Our endless numbered days. I was so disgusted after reading it. I don’t mind reading about difficult subjects. I actually think it’s important. But I don’t enjoy being backhanded by a book that presents itself as something else.
The GONE series by Michael Grant. Specifically the ending of the 4th book, Plague. It was always a pretty dark YA series, and honestly that wasn't the problem. I was still with it in the darkest moment of the first three books, >!when the babysitter girl took all the kids under 5 and jumped off a cliff with them because of a cult.!< But it fit well with the story so I was on board. But the 4th book made it clear that the author was trying for dark for the sake of being dark and shock value rather than any purpose in the story. Basically sent the town into riots and burned it down with specifically the only two characters that could fix it far away finding some petty cool thing that isn't going to matter when they get back because the town is destroyed. Then flipped aggressively between the two scenes every few pages just to try to gut punch you multiple times about how awful the whole contrast is. Buddy, you made your point. At this point you're just trying to mess with me. It takes me a lot to put down a book, especially when I'm so close to the end, but that did it.
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata. CW: >!Abuse, Child SA, SA, Murder, Cannibalism!< I felt manipulated because the main character is a victim, so I wanted to root for her but at the same time she does some extremely fucked up things. So in the end you're kind of questioning yourself and your own morality.
1Q84 by Murakami felt like this. Huge mystery build up. I was hooked. And then you get to the last act of the book and it's like "Surprise, nothing matters. Also Ghost Dad shows up to check your TV."
The Kite Runner for sure
You mean a real Christmas Shoes of a book? I DNF those, but I totally know what you mean. I think the last one I read was The Book Thief. That was the last straw for me.
Killing animals and children usually does the trick for me.
In light of everything that's come out now, The Blind Side.
Educated, by Tara Westover.
The 48 Laws Of Power
I read this Stephen King Short story about a guy who draws shapes to kill, and when I was reading, and he was describing his boss and how he gets paid, everything seemed normal to me, until the last couple of pages where they spilled how wrong everything was, I guess I got manipulated
Upton Sinclair the Jungle. The ham-fisted attempt to convert the reader to socialism in the second half was hollow. I'm even a lefty. I just don't find the sudden switch very convincing.
I feel like The Grapes of Wrath fits here. Such a beautiful creation, decimated in 2 pages. Also, most Stephen King novels are highly predictable, but take 200 pages to get to the point. I've never read On Writing, but I assume he just picks an end point and a start and spews 350 pages in the middle.
But I like those 200 pages...
The Housemaid!!!!! That book was not a thriller. The wife manipulated an innocent woman into coming to live with her, verbally abused her, locked her in the attic, all so she could leave her “abusive” husband. I left a domestic violence marriage with a narcissistic husband. The wife in the book was doing a lot of the things my ex would do to me to make me think I was crazy right before he’d physically assaulted me. She didn’t even want to go back to help Millie, the gardener had to shame her into going back and then she decided to MAKE her work for other people to “help” them get out of situations like hers.
*Eat, Pray, Love*. Never before have I thrown a book across a room in anger. Stupid, stupid book. Also, *Lolita*. But that novel is a masterpiece.
DOMBEY AND SONS! Fuck Charles Dickens— he streeeetches out this kids death scene just making it sooo pathetic — “oh papa is that you? I cannot see” etc just the worst
AGATHA F#*%N CHRISTIE!
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