Past the Dark Field”- A Thought-Provoking Collection of Stories

Spoiler-filled review:

There are certain aspects of the book I would like to touch up upon that would give away important plot elements for some of the short stories. In terms of what stories stood out to me of the eleven short stories, “Karl” was the most relatable. I enjoy the fact that he’s just a teenager coming to term with his attraction to children and living a regular teen life. The story is written from his perspective in a diary entry – an entry that will be destroyed by the end. It’s a bit of a lonesome story especially this part in which he says,

“The fuck? Seven billion people in the world, and God chooses me to be the goddamned pedo.”

I find myself deeply resonating with that quote. At times I have pondered similar thoughts about my life circumstance. I really enjoyed the “Rayanna” story. It has a bit of a comedic element to it. It’s another story with a teenage pedophile but this story has a more positive ending. Rayanna finds a MAP community on twitter that she feels at home with but she has the challenge of coming up with a username. “Andrea” is the next story I enjoyed. It’s about a married couple – a man and a woman – having a conversation about the wife’s attraction to children. The wife is still unaccepting of her attractions, going on to say things,

“You can’t support me, Miguel. You have no idea what this is like. There’s no support for this shit. I’m a sick fucking monster and you should get the kids away from me!”

Fortunately, her husband doesn’t follow her advice. Another favorite of mine is “Aaron”, which is about a nepiophile that is telling his story about the time he babysat a little toddler boy and how he grew a deep fondness for the child. Very touching especially the part about him mentioning that he later went into early childhood education. I love seeing representation for nepiophiles. It rarely gets talked about. All in all, it is a bittersweet story. The last story I’ll be touching on is “Xaviar.” It’s definitely the most depressing of all stories. It follows a man that is having therapy sections. He is very self-loathing, even going as far as to say he deserves to suffer because he’s attracted to children. He finds out someone at his job is engaging in illegal sexual activity with a 14 year old girl. Even though he reports it, he still feels like he could have done more which causes him guilt. The story ends with the therapist receiving a letter from him, informing the therapist that he probably has successfully committed suicide. He blames himself for being a “pedo” and for not doing more. Heartbreaking story for all the characters involved.