Rod Downey

The Moralist

Geoffrey Froggatt

This book is not easy to talk about. This book is not for people who have PTSD and trauma regarding child sexual abuse. Content warning for adult-minor relationship, grooming and pedophilia. I must admit, as a reader I am attracted to dark and disturbing stories, and find myself drawn to controversial authors. This book was on a list of most controversial books of all time, and after reading the disturbing premise, I found myself curious about the execution of a story like this. Fifty-year-old "spin doctor" Red Rover volunteers for a creative writing mentoring program and falls in love with his twelve-year-old protege Jonathan. Over the next year and a half, as their relationship and the boy matures, Red becomes outraged by the witch-hunt hysteria gripping the nation. When his best friend's house is burned, he decides to act, even if it means threatening his love for Jonathan. I heard some reviews call this a book similar to Lolita, and while I haven’t read Lolita, I do think that this book doesn’t live up to the legendary writing style of a classic and revered book like Lolita. From what I’ve read about Lolita, I do think that this book explores similar themes, and the writing style of The Moralist is good enough to keep me engaged throughout. From Downey’s point of view, Red is not an abuser but a mentor. He notes that the relationship between the two primary characters remains non-sexual for the first year-and-a-half and only progresses once, as he puts it, the boy makes the conscious decision to go further. But how well informed can the decision by a 13-year-old be? This is where this book makes me self-reflect on my messy childhood. Unfortunately, I was a very hyper-sexual 13-year-old and found ways to explore my sexuality with older men and women. While I don’t consider myself traumatized or that I was molested or groomed, I do recognize the ways that those experiences have shaped me and harmed me. As a child, I thought those experiences highlighted my maturity and spoke to my desire to be seen as grown, but looking back on it now, it’s clear that I was in over my head and taken advantage of. I’m thankful that I don’t have PTSD or residual trauma from looking back on those experiences (unlike some people I know), but I do recognize that my hyper-sexuality that is linked to my bipolar/schizophrenia diagnosis may have been shaped by those early experiences. I may have never been such an overly sexual teenager had those experiences never happened. 

Reading The Moralist, it's hard to shake the thought that the novel is potentially autobiographical, presumably not in any incriminating details, down to the main character's similar name, demographic stats, career in public relations, and the fact he's at work writing a book called The Moralist. There are certain moments in the book that feel like the author is winking at the audience and hinting that this story is autobiographical and true. This idea is further legitimized when you read the review on Goodreads left by an anonymous reviewer who says that this book is not fiction and implies that the book’s events reflect real life events depicting the author’s inappropriate relationship with the anonymous reviewer. It should be noted that the anonymous Goodreads account that left this review has no other activity on their account besides the review left on The Moralist claiming that it actually happened. Whether this anonymous review is to be believed or not, this real world context should be taken into major consideration. I believe the anonymous reviewer to be the “Johnathan” from the novel. For this reason, I admit that I did not financially purchase this book in order to read it, and instead pirated the book in order to further explore the disturbing truth behind this story. While I have no proof that the allegations against this author are true, I still do not want to monetarily compensante them in case the anonymous reviewer’s story is to be believed. Because I am analyzing this book for real world context (without knowing the truth) and to see how it stands as a piece of writing, I feel comfortable enough to read, rate and review it. I almost gave up and DNF’d this book several times because I was so uncomfortable with the content. 

This book feels like a child predator’s manifesto disguised as fiction. The author side steps the “pedophile” label and instead references and cites the historical instances of pederasty to justify the protagonist’s relationship with Johnathan. Pederasty is a sexual relationship between an adult man and a pubescent or adolescent boy. The term pederasty is primarily used to refer to historical practices of certain cultures, particularly in Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome and during the Edo period in Japan. Part of me wanted the protagonist to be written in a more sinister way, but I reminded myself that nobody truly believes they are the villain of their own story. Seeing how normal and humanized the author makes the protagonist was disturbing and intriguing in of itself. Had I been a naive kid as young as Johnathan, I would had fallen under his spell too. One obvious danger involved with defending such relationships is the stigma gay men continue to fight whereby the general public equates homosexuality with pedophilia. The book does explore this idea and the ramifications of destigmatizing pedophilia and conflating homosexuality with pedophilia, but the author doesn’t choose to explore this idea deeply and instead focuses on humanizing the child grooming protagonist. This didn’t sit right with me. I was surprised to see that the author explores the many arguments against pedophilia but uses these arguments to imply pedophiles and homosexuals are (and should be) on the same side against those who are vehemently against child sexual abuse. I feel like this story could have been more complex and given much more depth had it been written by someone like Bret Easton Ellis (or any author who wasn’t looking to justify pedophilia and pederasty or paint this story in solely a positive light) and it would have helped to see things from Johnathan’s perspective throughout the story and not just at the end. Despite being disturbed by this story, I do feel like it delivered on my hunger for disturbing fiction and darkly unique perspectives. I do think this story was an interesting and humanizing look into a mind that most people would consider depraved, but I don’t think I can recommend this book to anyone besides those who are heavily interested in disturbing fiction and controversial authors and stories.

The Moralist

Reviews