Nathan John Cooper reviewed The Babysitter by Robert Coover
'She arrives at 7.40, ten minutes late...' She babysits for Mr and Mrs Tucker. She …
Completely Original
5 stars
Content warning Spoilers.
Honestly, I'm not even sure what to say about this book. First of all, I should note that my reading has slowed down a lot over the last few weeks as I've started a new university project. Reading this book was part of the research that I'm doing for the project and, wow. I am so glad I had the opportunity to read this piece. There's something so raw and fascinating to me about complete narrative vulgarity and this short story does not shy away from the vulgar at all. The book essentially tells multiple different possibilities of the story all at once. Through this there is some confusion but, weirdly, the confusion sort-of adds to the efficacy of the short. Additionally, it is through this fragmentation, that we are offered a wide array of gruesome outcomes. The girl gets stalked, raped, murdered; the baby dies, etc. I think this is something that I'll definitely have to read again sometime in the future but it's nice to know there are still media out there that can completely surprise you with vivid originality.
