Author – Michael Crichton
A review of Disclosure
Sexual harassment, two words that lead most people to think
of a similar scenario. A man has
advanced on a woman in the workplace against her will. This man is of high ranking and is getting
what he wants through his position. The
woman is clearly innocent and is but another victim of a corrupt business world
where man rules. I believe that sums up
the general idea here. What Crichton has
done is put a role reversal on it which stirs the pot in ways I never thought
about. It’s not mind blowing but for a
book not revolving around science as he often does it will still make your
fingertips bleed.
As a
man I can understand how men behave in the workplace, they can get wild eyed
and close to women. They try to hold
reserve but I’ve seen it come close to boiling over into something too hot for
the woman to handle. My experiences don’t
come from men of power though, more along the lines of men of similar standing
position as the woman in question. ‘Disclosure’ pits an individual’s power
of position against either sex. That’s
what interested me when reading; I never put much thought into how sexual
harassment occurred. That being said,
seeing the woman in a position a man is usually in makes you think. Can a man be raped? Is he as ‘helpless’
as a woman? Does he have the same rights
as a woman in the exact same situation, simply reversed? Questions mount throughout as you get pulled
into whether or not this man can make a case for himself.
The
science side blends well into the story which involves CD-ROM drives and state
of the art VR! Those sound funny to hold
as top tier technology now so when reading you’re better off pretending it is
1993. Internet, what’s that some nerd
convention? The main character is in a conundrum
in dealing with sexual harassment and problems with the drives simultaneously. If you like reading about an individual or a
small group of them battling through extreme hardships then I’d say this is a
story for you. The situation goes from
bad to worse, then a bit better, then back down the toilet. It’s an easy read and you can learn something
if you’re open to it. The main character
isn’t pushed so far down that everybody wants to cheer him on but rather you
see flaws within him to question who really is being wronged.
No comments:
Post a Comment