I am so tired of people shouting past each other. Are you? Our American society, especially the online version of it, is exhausting. The other side of the aisle is incomprehensible, so we keep on shouting our platitudes, as is our First Amendment right. Today, let’s delve into one specific issue we keep yelling about: cancel culture pros and cons, aka the gender wars and whether they are productive or destructive to our society.

I was delighted to discover a modern novel that addresses cancel culture pros and cons from a U.K. perspective. Oooo, it was fascinating to learn what the Brits think about the gender wars! Best of all, the novel is fast paced, full of delicious twists and turns, and artistically satisfying. Let’s go!

An Interlude: A Fundraising Report

But first, let me share how things are going in my campaign to gain 20 new Patreon subscribers by October 31. After I published last’s week’s blog post, I got more unsubscribes than usual. Well, what can you do? Some people don’t want to hear about financial considerations or be asked for money. Fair enough.

So therefore, a big THANK YOU for sticking around, for still wishing to receive information about the best modern books, and all the other hilarity that ensues on this website!

And now, DRUMROLL . . . since publishing my last blog post, I acquired 1 new Patron and 1 new donation from an already existing Patron! To these two wonderful! amazing! incredible! people, I say, a trillion thank yous!! You are truly the best!!

Folks, 2 new financial contributions may not seem like a lot to you. But it’s HUGE to me, especially since this blog’s financial growth has been zippo for the previous 6 months. I really, really, really want to make this blog sustainable so I can keep doing it into 2026 and beyond, and 2 new financial contributions is a WONDERFUL step toward that.

What I Need from You to Sustain This Blog

To meet the goal I set in last week’s post, I need 18 more new Patrons by October 31. Can you help by chipping in $4-$8 a month? Only you, my readers, can ensure that this blog is sustainable over the long term. Plus, get bonus articles that will give you an inside scoop on the literary world!

I CORIDALLY INVITE YOU BECOME A PATRON HERE: https://www.patreon.com/lizaachilles

Or, make a one-time donation of any amount here: https://www.gofundme.com/support-lizas-book-blog

New Patrons, as well as Patrons who jump to a higher tier, will receive a free inspirational sticker! It looks like this:

All my best to you, whether you are a Patron, a loyal reader who can’t afford to contribute financially at this time (I get it, believe me), or a supporter in another way. Art takes time. And time, unfortunately for artists, is money. Thank you for supporting the arts!

Back to the Main Feature: a Novel About Gender Wars & Cancel Culture Pros and Cons

The book I’m excited to rave about today is the 2025 novel Bring the House Down, by Charlotte Runcie.

This book is extremely readable. It flows seamlessly, and the pages turn themselves. It’s about two art and theater critics who write for a London paper. They travel to Scotland for a few weeks to cover and write reviews for an art and theater festival.

The protagonist is a woman whom I loved for being so nonjudgmental, accepting, and understanding of others. (However, she is human and has her moments of judgment.)

Her work colleague is a man whom I loved for being so confident in himself and his personal beliefs. (However, he is human and has his moments of self-doubt.)

The male character behaves badly and gets canceled. His responses to these events are fascinating. The female character is also fascinating, because she is positioned to see both sides of what becomes a major public story with consequences for all involved.

The best thing about this novel, other than its captivating drawing of my eyeballs to its pages, is its nuance. Nothing is ever as simple as the media hype makes it out to be. Bring the House Down shows us what’s good about cancel culture and what’s bad about cancel culture. Cancel culture can indeed have good effects and bad effects at the same time.

When the Gender Wars Spin out of Control

This is a novel about art criticism. Things are now getting meta, because I’m reviewing, in this blog post, a work of art the subject of which is reviewing works of art.

Furthermore, I have something to say about one of the blurbs (aka positive reviews) for this novel. This blurb is featured at the top of the book’s Amazon and Bookshop pages. I don’t fully agree with it. This blurb reads:

“Excellent…brilliant…a fiery reminder that we still have so far to go when it comes to men behaving poorly and getting away with it.”—LitHub

Excellent? Yes. Brilliant? Yes. A fiery reminder that we still have so far to go? Yes. But this blurb implies that Bring the House Down is purely on the side of the outspoken, angry women in the novel.

The novel is on their side. A man does behave poorly in this novel, that’s very clear. And this man does get away with it for most of his life (sort of, if you don’t count the emotional damage he inflicts on himself, not just on women), until everything blows up in his face.

However: this novel is also on the side of men who are suddenly swept into a career-destroying whirlwind, without feeling like they did anything that bad. Runcie does a phenomenal job of helping us understand both sides, and why it’s so difficult for the genders to see eye to eye.

An Excerpt from This Fab Novel About Cancel Culture

Here’s a paragraph from the third page of the novel. This will give you an idea of the atmosphere of this book. The novel draws you in like an actress:

“It seemed as though everywhere on the Royal Mile, under the clear summer moon in the never-quite-darkness of the Scottish summer night, were actors and actresses coming out of their shows. This gave Alex a jolt of energy. He was always drawn to actresses. All theatre people, with their superficial vanity and deep insecurity, were easy to flatter. But actresses, in particular, offered him something deeper that he couldn’t always define. This unsettled him in a way that he liked. Actors and actresses had something about them that normal humans lacked. They had large, expressive eyes. They could sing, usually. They had a warmth that made Alex want to reach out his own cold hands towards them. They held, always, the energy of potential transformation. By knowing how to become other people, they knew the terrible truth of what it’s like to taste the life of someone else.”

This is beautiful writing. And as a former band geek who can’t resist a good jab at vocalists, I found the sentence “They could sing, usually” very funny.

Cancel Culture in a Novel and Across the Pond

Does cancel culture achieve the goals it purports to have? This novel helped me understand this issue in a way that, for example, Doppelganger by Naomi Klein did not, for all that book’s many strengths. Klein tries to get inside the head of her doppelganger, Naomi Wolf, but it feels like a massive struggle for her, and for me as a reader of her book. (Here’s my preview of Klein’s book.)

Runcie has an advantage over Klein in that her book is fiction. The novel (I don’t mean this particular novel, but the novel as an artform) is uniquely positioned to bring us into the interior of people’s heads and lives. Nonfiction is wonderful, but sometimes its dedication to true facts, which can’t always be known, holds an author back. Bring the House Down is an excellent example of a novel teaching something that could likely not be learned from straight nonfiction.

Also: Runcie portrays her character Alex in such a natural, intuitive way that I wonder if it helps that she (and her fictional characters) live in the U.K. Are we Americans too steeped in our cancel culture and gender wars, too propagandized into polarization, to experience anything like clarity? (Klein is from Canada, but anyway she’s from North America. Wolf is American.)

Bring the House Down refers to the United States in a few choice places. I can’t help but think, based on these references, that they think we’re a bit nutso over here. And so we are—and it feels good to get an outsider’s perspective on what one intuits about one’s own country. At the same time, the novel makes it clear that Brits are in no way immune from acting nutso themselves.

Cancel Culture Pros and Cons, Gender Wars, and Is There a Better Way?

Without spoiling the ending of the novel, and without getting too hippie-dippie on you, I want to put out there that the best, and in fact only, way to change someone’s mind is through love, not fear. Fear can temporarily change people’s behavior, but it tends to backfire, unless society is completely locked down into totalitarianism (which—unpopular opinion—is somewhat unideal).

Now I’m thinking about Aesop’s fable about the bitter wind failing to yank the man’s coat off, while the gentle sun succeeds.

My opinion is that if we want people (and I mean anyone, not men in particular) not to behave badly, scolding and yelling and railing and spewing rage might be significantly less effective than something else. Something with boundaries, for sure. But something that shows a sort of eternal sunshine. A sort of always-projected understanding that they are human, too, and as such, allowed the grace to make mistakes and have some sort of opportunity to start anew, even if not in the same way as before.

This is hard to do. I think Dr. MLK Jr. found a way to do it (in the area of race). You and I have it in our power to give people love and grace and sunshine, too (while setting boundaries).

What makes you feel as if you want to take off your bitter, spiky, protective coat, instead of clutch it more tightly to yourself?

Featured in this post: Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie Buy it now
Become a Patron and be one of the 18 people who will (hopefully!) subscribe by October 31 Learn more & subscribe
Or give a one-time donation at GoFundMe Learn more & donate