A profound, unsettling novel, The List delves into the complexities of cancel culture, social media, and contemporary attitudes towards violence and sexual abuse. It casts its net unflinchingly wide, confronting the reader with alternate arguments to many uncomfortable themes, and by doing so, challenges us to challenge our worldview and confront our own internal biases.

Ola Olajide, a successful journalist and prominent Black influencer, has utilized the Internet to launch her own personal brand dedicated to female empowerment. When The List is published, it’s exactly what Ola has dedicated her career to writing about – a list of high-profile abusers in the media and entertainment industry. And yet, she is shocked to find that her fiancée Michael has been named. The story documents Ola and Michael’s struggles coping with the fallout of The List – the impact it has on their careers and friendships, and the steady cracking of their relationship beneath the weight of allegations that, try as she might, Ola can’t quite bring herself to completely dismiss.

“…there’s no smoke without fire. You didn’t simply end up on a list like that, if you hadn’t done something in the first place.”

Right from the offset, there are inklings the virtual powers-that-be which have given Ola her platform can be wielded in different, darker ways. Michael and his friends run a podcast, Caught Slippin, which more often than not, becomes a soapbox upon which they preach their casual misogyny. The company that hires him, CuRated, does so off the back of an online PR crisis in which they are torn apart by the media for failing to fulfil a workplace diversity criteria. And even Frankie, creator of Womxxxn, a magazine that supposedly has women at its core, sinks her claws into every smear campaign and blackface scandal she can to churn out content for views. And yet, perhaps like our protagonists, it is not until The List goes live that we fully realise the extent of the Internet’s dark underbelly.

“…once you fed something to the internet, it was never truly yours again.”

Although The List is originally created as a safe space for women to share their stories and name their abusers without fear of retaliation, it spirals out of control once circulated to the wider internet, and as readers, we begin to squirm at how easily the ethical waters are quickly muddied. Initially designed as a safeguard, the anonymity of The List turns into a smokescreen from behind which anyone can make claims without fear of accountability, making it impossible to distinguish the truth from the lies. And yet still, the “court of Twitter” rumbles on, systematically targeting and cancelling each name listed.

Here, Adegoke begins to somewhat disappoint, the initial promise of the story starting to fall flat. Her narrative voice takes on a slightly apologist tone, imploring the reader to think of the impact on the men who have been named on The List more so than the women who have contributed to it. Strangely, she chooses to use the example of a man accused of “innocently” trying to kiss colleagues at work parties after “misreading the mood” being unfairly tarred with the same brush as men accused of date rape and sexual battery. Whilst his transgression falls short of the far darker accusations on The List, the fact remains that any kind of unwanted and unconsented behaviour is unacceptable.

“When did it go from chatting up to catcalling?”

On the flip side, the notion of wrongful accusations is not entirely unfounded. We know that, despite Michael falling short in many areas, the allegations against him are untrue, and he has been named as a means of revenge for a past wrong. Yet Adegoki’s point is not well-made, if at times appearing slightly moot, as if there are other innocent men named on The List, the effect the false accusations have on their lives are next to nothing. In fact, Michael is one of the very few that actually suffer any consequences at all – even some of the worst offenders (we see you, Papi Danks) see their power and influence grow rather than decline after the allegations are made.

“That was the irony; men feared false accusations, but survivors were the ones being wrongly smeared.”

In my opinion, one of the merits of this book was the slow-burn reveal behind who is responsible for putting Michael on The List. We seemingly find out quite early on that Jackie is to blame, yet it is revealed at the very end that she is actually innocent. Her boyfriend Aaron, jealous of Jackie and Michael’s affair, does it to get revenge on Michael for cuckolding him, and his justification of his actions (“Because I can, Mikey x”) shows just how gratified he is by his actions. Adegoke’s choice to put this right at the novel’s end only serves to drive the point home harder – the notion that yet another safe space for women has been infiltrated by a power-hungry man seeking validation. It also doesn’t escape our notice that the blame for this violation is placed at Jackie’s feet – another example of a woman taking the fall for the damaging behaviour of a man. Looking back to Ola’s conversation with Rhian, we understand how Aaron’s actions invalidate the good intentions behind The List’s creation and runs the risk of discrediting all the womens’ stories if his lie is found out:

“If one woman is proven to be lying, we all become liars. If some bloke decides to off himself or shoot up a cinema because of this, it becomes about how feminism is killing innocent men, despite the countless innocent women who’ve lost their lives at the hands of abuse.”

Adegoke also explores the theme of accountability from both internal and external perspectives. The character of Ola is especially frustrating in this respect. Her career is dedicated to empowering women and sharing their stories, and yet she is tempted to bury The List until she can prove her fiancée’s innocence. To our relief, the women in her life (Rhian, Kiran, and our beloved Celie) are quick to call out her problematic behaviour – how can a self-proclaimed feminist try and silence the voices of abused women to protect an abuser?

And yet, despite our frustrations, we must acknowledge that Ola is faced with making a quick, difficult decision without being in possession of any of the facts. How would we react in her situation? Like her, would we swear blind that we would abandon our men at the merest hint of abuse, right up until it actually happens? Ultimately, how far does our feminism extend when the men at fault are the ones we love? Despite what we know to be right, how easy is it to hold abusers accountable when those abusers are our husbands, fathers, brothers and sons?

“What was the line between a user and an emotional abuser? Between an emotional abuser and an immature teenage boy or man in his early twenties? Perhaps there wasn’t one and that was the problem.”

Michael may not be guilty of Jackie/Aaron’s accusations. But when he is forced to confront his past actions, we see that he remains far from innocent. He views Jackie as existing “purely for his use, like a kettle or toaster”, something he seems to enjoy about her. Despite proclaiming to love Ola and celebrating her successes, he uses infidelity to stroke his hurt ego whenever he feels inferior to her. At university, he turns to drinking and womanizing because he “[misses] his mother’s cooking” and blames his subsequent low period for his inability to get a job without Ola’s help.

Despite initially viewing the women who have contributed to The List as “a faceless, endless mass who wanted [him] to pay for the crimes of other men”, it is only with the luxury of hindsight that Michael recognises his behaviour towards women has been damaging. There is a vague, frustrating sense that Adegoke wants her readers to believe this redeems him somewhat. But of course, Michael’s sudden stroke of clarity means nothing to the women he has already hurt.

“No one wanted something everyone could have; you wanted what you had to work for. The girls who pushed back a little, crossed their arms and kissed their teeth before giving up kisses and opening their legs. Though now that he thought about it like that, outside of the group chat, it sounded a lot like…harassment.”

Adegoke uses the relationship between Michael and “his boys” to explore the dynamic between misogyny and accountability within male social circles. As Ola points out, men are blind to problematic behaviour within their own cliques. The misogyny is casual at first – they joke about the accusations made against Michael and automatically assume they are untrue. And yet, throughout the novel’s progression Adegoke uses Amani and The List Eleven group to show how quickly the slippery slope of misogyny can radicalise young men into abusers with violent mindsets. Michael deems himself “better behaved” than his friends because he doesn’t actively participate in their jokes. And yet, he is still guilty of passive discrimination; he enables their behaviour by neglecting to challenge it even when they repeatedly objectify his fiancée in front of him. At what point, we ask, will he and other men accept that to be silent in the face of misogyny is still misogyny?

“They weren’t bad boys, his boys. But wasn’t that the issue? Why was ‘not bad’ so often good enough?”

Through Amani and the other men on The List Eleven, Adegoke vividly portrays how exposure to online communities provides a breeding ground for sexist and discriminatory individuals to share their views and fan the flames of each other’s prejudices into an uncontrollable wildfire of hatred. Having known Amani for years, Michael is horrified by how quickly his friend morphs from someone he never thought dangerous into a hateful, sexist misogynist who blames women for all of the world’s flaws. Here, Adegoke allows Michael, and by extension the reader, a stark insight into the very real fear that resides in every woman: that even the men you think you know can be capable of violence.

“The men were repulsed by what they perceived as female traits but abhorred women who ‘acted like men’. They bemoaned gold diggers, but simultaneously argued that a man’s role was as breadwinner. It made no sense.”

Overall, The List is an enjoyable, at times uncomfortable, thought-provoking read. It delves into the complexities of social media, cleverly exploring the duality of the internet as a tool for empowerment and a highly destructive weapon. As readers, it challenges us to confront our own biases head-on, considering the implications of online trolling and cancel culture.

But The List also reminds us of the silent ways in which women suffer, reminding us of the shame they endure and the retaliation they face for speaking out. It highlights the importance of accountability, compelling us to take responsibility for our actions and to think long and hard about the way in which we choose to navigate our own moral landscape, especially in the digital age.

Back to reviews