If you were a teenager in the 80s/90s then I'd be less surprised than if you were 19 now, for example. I hope you don't mind me asking a couple of questions?įirstly, how old are you now? I know that's impolite and you can be general if you want or just ignore it completely, but I'm just wondering how long ago this was. That really sucks to hear, I'm sorry you had to go through that. If YT was 17 years old then I wouldn't have even thought about it, but every time Stephenson casually describes how adult men are lusting after her or writes out an explicit sex scene between this child and an adult I can't help but recoil a little, and it makes me uneasy just due to the fact it's not once presented as anything other than normal. The impression is just given that this 15 year old child is constantly sexualised and harassed by the vast majority of men she meets and is just a minor inconvenience rather than something immoral. However, the constant sexualisation of YT, even when it seems to serve no purpose and is entirely irrelevant to the plot just seems creepy to me, especially since not once is it condemned or presented as inappropriate. I know that Nabokov wasn't a pedophile despite writing from the perspective of one in 'Lolita'.

I know, of course, that this isn't an endorsement by Stephenson. And, later on, Raven, another adult man, has sex with YT which is lengthily described in detail Every other interaction she has includes an adult man staring at her ass or making suggestive comments. This may seem a little PC or whatever, but am I the only one creeped out by the constant sexualisation of a 15 year old character? Stephenson goes to great lengths to keep telling the reader that every character in the book is checking out YT throughout.

Snow crash