I’m at the point of being beyond sick of pop culture yearning to “understand” truly awful people in order to humanize them. I don’t care about President Snow’s life experiences prior to his rule over Panem. He’s a piece of crap. Basically, I’m saying that I found Ivy Meeropol’s approach to telling the story of Roy Cohn, the backstabbing, frontstabbing, and sidestabbing monster responsible for taking her grandparents away from her, refreshing; she does indeed see him as human, but only to facilitate her portrait of him as, yes, complicated, but also terrible. Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn will not send you away with warm and fuzzies for Cohn. It will send you away with a better understanding of how and why he chose to live his life as human toxic sludge, while emphasizing that he was human toxic sludge.
My full review can be found over at The Playlist.
