Book Review: Diary of an Oxygen Thief

Author; Anon.

The opening seven words "I liked hurting girls. Mentally not physically…" well sums up what follows in the next 140 pages. The operative word here is "liked" and thus the anonymous author sets the stage for a confessional laundry list of those of the fairer sex he had wronged throughout his turbulent drunken youth.

In short this is not a book to curl up with on a frosty wintery night.

The protagonist in Diary remains as anonymous as does the author. Don't get me wrong; this misogynist is nicely sketched. He's an Irishman who lives in Great Britain. He's a creative sort in the glamorous world of advertising and, perhaps most significantly, he is a Friend of Bill W. which, for the uninitiated, means he's a recovering drunk. He moves to the frigid wastelands of the American Midwest, meets the love of his life, an alluring Irish lass named Aisling, winds up to New York City and somewhere in the middle of all of this gets his comeuppance.

But our nameless hero never really comes to life as the anonymous author doesn't really seem to know his protagonist beyond a superficial level. "I didn't really care," our protagonist declares "if I got them into bed or not. I just wanted some company while I got pissed, while I waited for the courage to hurt to well up in me."  Indeed a candid admission, and rather typical of the seemingly endless admissions he makes throughout Diary.

But beyond its admirable candidness, we're never privileged to understand why this sadistic lush is compulsively driven to emotionally wound women beyond a listing of character defects. And that really is a pity. Diary's narrative is at times self-indulgent and also at times sophomorically PoMo in its conceits. But Diary's sense of drama can also be spellbinding. So even if we don't get to the heart of the protagonist's angst, the author at least provides an entertaining tale of revenge.

Allan Segall