Match BookSex Object: A Memoir
Jessica Valenti
2016 · 172 pages · Memoir
How it reads
Sex Object: A Memoir is memoir (feminist memoir, specifically), and its dominant mood is tense. The suspense is the kind you feel in your shoulders. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.
It's set in a big city setting, in the present day, told in the first person by a single narrator. Its central concerns are identity, class and society and justice. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.
It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is bittersweet: it resolves, but at a price. At 172 pages it's a single-sitting book. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.
Pick it up if…
- you're in the mood for something tense
- you want something to chew on
- you want a complete story in one book
Maybe not if…
- you need something cosy or heartwarming
All 15 dimensions
- Genre
- memoir
- Author gender
- female
- Author experience
- established
- Setting: place
- big city
- Setting: time
- contemporary
- Mood / feeling
- tense
- Pace
- moderate
- Tone / weight
- heavy and literary
- Length
- short
- Narrative style
- first person, one narrator
- Publication era
- recent
- Popularity
- well known
- Series vs standalone
- standalone
- Themes
- identity, class and society, justice
- Ending style
- bittersweet
What these mean: the 15 dimensions of a book.
Books with a similar reading
The closest books in Match Book's catalogue across the same dimensions, and what they share.
- Victim F: From Crime Victims to Suspects to SurvivorsDenise HuskinsShares: memoir, tense mood, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace
- Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily LifeNassim Nicholas TalebShares: tense mood, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace, contemporary setting
- What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in EssaysDamon YoungShares: memoir, moderate pace, bittersweet ending, set in big city
- Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too MovementTarana BurkeShares: memoir, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace, identity as a theme
- Drawing BloodMolly CrabappleShares: memoir, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace, bittersweet ending
- Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and CareerAndrew S. GroveShares: tense mood, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace, set in big city
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