Published by No Frills Buffalo Publishing, Please Let Me Destroy You by Rupert Taylor[1] opens with a litmus test for the reader.
Our narrator, Apollo Jones, is sitting on the toilet when he is interrupted mid-way through proceedings. While not outright scatological, the writing sets the general tone for the rest of the book. “I felt the breeze on my exposed buttocks. If I moved, I risked slipping off the seat and falling into one of the fetid puddles on the floor.”
Set in a not-quite-real version of Shanghai (and later Sydney and LA), Taylor’s comic tone is found not only in its writing but in the characters, too. The person who interrupts Apollo on the john for example, is a woman named Nhu, a weed-addicted gallery owner whose hobbies include both pretending to be rich and playing Euro Truck Simulator. There’s Uncle Frank, the suit-obsessed casino boss who acts as pseudo-mentor to Apollo, and his nephew Anhtheman, who can’t go a single description without applying antibacterial sanitizer to every exposed part of his body. There’s Jerry, the CEO complete with sunglasses and cigar, and Blow-arse, who claims to have been born in an elephant cage and lost his virginity to a one-legged candy floss maker. How much you enjoy these types of characters will probably dictate how much you will enjoy the plot of the novel itself, which unfolds after Apollo loses his job as a freelance filmmaker for an insurance company’s media campaign. In a desperate bid to find footage for his dream project, “The Untitled Original Series Set On Multiple Continents”, Apollo agrees to assist Uncle Frank with a casino scam that involves Apollo having to play it cool as he trades ten dollar chips for thousand dollar chips without the casino owners finding out.
At times a little bit of David Foster Wallace and others a little bit of John Kennedy Toole, sometimes the humor of Please Let Me Destroy You really works and sometimes it doesn’t. (There is a scene not long after the heist where Uncle Frank grabs Apollo’s testicles to the point that they turn “the color of an overripe grape” which crosses the line from uncanny and ironic, to just a tiny bit juvenile.) But I think on the whole, Taylor is able to balance the tone extremely well, particularly as the novel moves into more meaty territory. Caught in the grips of a panic attic which sprouts from his screwed perception of himself, Apollo is forced to abandon the casino heist and soon after meets another one of Uncle Frank’s relations. This time it’s Frank’s daughter, Thao, who is able to commune with the dead. It is through her that we get the first glimpse of what the filmmaker is dealing with.
Rather than repressed memories, Apollo has repressed any idea of an idyllic childhood, and is struggling with the trauma induced by his abusive father. Lost in the undertow of Shanghai’s underbelly, the freelance filmmaker begins chasing other people’s stories, sure that with just the right real-life tale, he can get his hands on that elusive contract with Netflix. “It’s a show I’ve been working on for… doesn’t matter how long. It’ll run on TV and in cinemas, on social media, everywhere.” Apollo tries to convince Hang, a Vietnamese sex worker who takes pictures of her clients, to sell him her life rights, but when this falls apart, he starts writing a story called “The Dream,” which follows a fictional Instagram influencer. But what really brings the novel to life as the story goes on is Apollo’s relationship to power and his own sense of self-respect.
There’s a concept in S&M play called “topping from the bottom” which refers to how the submissive partner in a sadomasochistic relationship is actually the one in control, and there’s something of this idea to Apollo’s life, and indeed to the title of the book, Please Let Me Destroy You. The dichotomy of someone giving you the permission to carry out something potentially destructive upon them. Repeatedly, the filmmaker is put in positions where he has “power” over other people, but only because he has been ordered to. With Nhu, he is told to masturbate over her, but only because she demands it. Hang is portrayed as reversing the power dynamic by using her clients’ image for her art, which Apollo is also drawn into, but I think what really works—and what really makes the book something interesting to tangle with—is that we see this same dynamic with Apollo as he pitches his projects to the various producers, marketing managers and distributors: The desperation of pitching an idea as a form of sadomasochism.
The filmmaker wants to have power over the stories he has taken from the people around him but needs to beg and plead to make it happen. As Apollo says himself, “To make the Untitled Original Series Set On Multiple Continents, I had to sacrifice everything, including myself.” The jovial nature of the easy story gives way to something deeper and at times, incredibly relatable, especially in a media landscape that is both about promoting yourself and also begging for opportunity. You have to pretend to be confident whilst at the same time being desperately alone.
Please Let Me Destroy You won’t be for everyone, but the way it explores stories, who’s telling them and why (and even who should be telling them and why), worked for me. The writing is most of the time funny and insightful, and even if all the jokes don’t land, there’s enough genuine emotion in there to get you through and then some.
Publisher: No Frills Buffalo
Publication Date: July 16, 2024
Reviewed by Mark Daniel Taylor
Mark Daniel Taylor is a writer from London. He is a former member of the Collier Street Fiction Group and is an alumnus of the New Orleans Writers’ Residency. You can find his other published works at www.markdanieltaylor.co.uk
[1] Despite the name, I am not related in any way to Rupert Taylor