The Last Days of August
Written and Narrated By: Jon Ronson
Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
Not Jon Ronson’s best, but still: Jon Ronson!!!
Okay, I have to admit it: I’m, like, a huuuuge Jon Ronson fan! Ever since cringing and chuckling my way through his The Psychopath Test, I’ve been hooked. How he managed to be an anxious wreck all whilst asking the tough questions tickled me to the core.
Sooo, that’s why I can’t give The Last Days of August a perfect rating: Ronson's usual kinda-sorta-insecurities are nowhere to be found, leaving this audiobook so much less than funny. Don’t get me wrong: There’s NOTHING funny about suicide, buuuut Ronson's style of reporting, his way of interjecting his personality into a story, does indeed usually add much needed levity. But here he goes to great lengths to show the listener that he was conducting his investigation into the suicide of porn star August Ames with the utmost care to be unbiased, to be super-sensitive, to give all a fair share of time to tell their stories.
And what a story it is. It starts with Ronson and his producer going into the investigation believing that August’s suicide was due to a recent social media pile on after she made some Twitter remarks that the porn community deemed homophobic. Ronson has muuuch experience with shaming and social media bullying after his tremendous So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (Truly an awesome book that I’ll looove getting around to listening to again; will review soon!), and he went in thinking this was yet another case of cyber bullying that was so bad it led to a young woman’s suicide.
But as the audiobook progresses (And it’s a series of recorded interviews), Ronson is led time and time again back to August’s relationship with her husband Kevin, a man sooo angry about the social media comments that he’s on a crusade to tear all involved down.
Turns out, however, the comments were fairly innocuous, and the worst one, the one that said August should take cyanide, was posted hours after she’d already died. Turns out, also, that Kevin has a history with young women dying early, or with young women being unstable and institutionalized after being with him.
The audiobook is mostly of dissecting Kevin’s personality and his past, and all that’s very interesting as what Kevin remembers of situations is NOT how everyone else remembers them. There’s a bit of mystery that develops around August’s death because of this, tho’ Ronson immediately states that it’s NOT a murder mystery.
When all is said and done, you come out of this audiobook just plainly, simply, feeling pretty sad. The coroner’s report leaves no questions unanswered, and those answers point to a pathetic and tragic demise.
So, worth it for a convoluted and rather sordid story, but this is not Jon Ronson at his best. He gets all his facts straight, but I would’ve greatly appreciated at least a little bit of his spastic personality rather than just a depressing tale of childhood traumas and questionable adult choices.
Still, I’ll take his style of journalism any day of the week: Jon Ronson! Doncha know?!!
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