There’s so much about this book that should make me hate it – transphobia, homophobia, graphic descriptions of wanton violence being the main ones – but this got under my skin and was a surprising hit.
Razorblade Tears is unflinching in its honesty. Sometimes the things said are very hard to read, but from start to finish this was a book that I found myself fully engaged with.
Ike and Buddy Lee are fathers who feel they have let down their kids. Ike, a black ex-convict, has tried to keep on the straight and narrow but is judged whenever he sets foot outside his home. Buddy Lee is a drunk white redneck (his own description) who is hiding from the fact he has cancer. In spite of their sons being married, the two men don’t know each other. When their boys are murdered, the police don’t seem to be looking too hard for answers, so Ike and Buddy Lee take it upon themselves to try to make up for the way they treated their sons while alive to avenge their deaths.
From the outset it’s clear there is something big at stake here. The gang links and casual attitude to violence were a challenge to read – how anyone can be so casual about disposing of a body in a wood chipper I don’t know – but they help to explain a little where these two very flawed men are coming from.
Neither is without fault, and I can’t imagine taking the law into your own hands, but Cosby paints a sympathetic picture of two men struggling to accept their shortcomings.
This will not be for everything, but it really was an unexpected hit for me.