Changes

|title=Opposed Positions

|author=Gwendoline Riley

|borrow=Maybe

|isbn=9780224094238

|pages=240

|publisher=Jonathan Cape

|date=May 2012

|summary=Very stylish prose with a laudable attack on misogyny, but it's an uncomfortable and often downbeat read. Riley is hugely talented but easier to admire than to enjoy.

}}

There is a reason why Gwendoline Riley has something of a cult following. She is technically innovative and very good at what she does, but the subject matter is invariably dark and downbeat which prevents mass market appeal. In that respect ''Opposed Positions'' is very much business as usual then. The subject matter most evident here is misogyny and the damaging impact it has both directly and indirectly on people. It's painful to read at times; it feels as if the narrator, an occasional novelist, Aislinn Kelly, is picking at the scab of her life and her family in a way that feels shocking and, for all the wry observations, remains uncomfortable to read.

For more darkly disturbing fiction [[Rocks in the Belly by Jon Bauer]] and [[A Division of the Light by Christopher Burns]] are equally troubling.

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