Noughts and Crosses — Book Review

Spoilers throughout, and content warning for sexual abuse.

LONG READ.

Gaaaah… This book.

I had really wanted to enjoy it—in fact, I had been enjoying it, which is what makes this so difficult. For the first four hundred pages, I found this novel to be relevant, interesting, and entertaining.

And then we hit the question of whether Callum McGregor really raped Sephy Hadley, and my appreciation of this book hit rock bottom.

Outdated Conversations on Consent

OK, so this book was first published in 2001. I would like to hope that public belief on what classifies as consent has improved in the last twenty years, but judging by the internet content I’ve found so far about the end of Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses… perhaps not? It’s particularly the BBC pages that distress me on this front, being the huge platform that it is and doubtless used by plenty of young minds simply trying to revise. I’ll return to this later in the review.

If this were a book aimed for adults, perhaps I could ignore the skewy morales on sex towards the end of the book… but unfortunately it could be one of the few books that young people will read and be influenced by—so I think we need to do better on this conversation.

Is There Rape in Noughts and Crosses?

OK, so first let’s consider the setting. Sephy, a privileged girl, is kidnapped by her old love interest, Callum, an underprivileged lad turned terrorist. Neither have seen each other for two years, although neither seems to have moved on at the point of kidnapping.

Callum takes Sephy to an underground bunker in the woods and locks her in a room with no natural light, forces her to undress and repeat words on tape, and cuts her hair and her skin to blackmail Sephy’s father.

So, before they even touch, consensual or not, Sephy did not consent to abduction, harm, or to undress in front of him. In fact, she says multiple times that she does not want this, begs Callum to set her free, and tries to find means to escape on her own. She is not a willing participant in this scheme.

It is from within this shocking disregard for Sephy’s agency and desires, that Callum initiates sexy times with his former beau. It’s not a good start, to say the least.

Things begin in chapter 101 as Callum sits on Sephy’s bed. Sephy is turned away from Callum, rubbing her stomach where Jude (Callum’s brother) had viciously punched her. Callum removes Sephy’s hand and rubs her injury for her. She doesn’t want it, and she asks him to stop:

“Without warning, my hand was moved away from my body and Callum’s replaced it. […] I tried to push his hand away, […] My heart slammed against my ribs as I stared at my captor.” P.381

Distressingly, many readers and bloggers seem to have interpreted this scene like it’s from some horny, tatty, salty holiday romance paperback that doesn’t matter. The significance of Sephy’s refusal has been ignored by many readers, and instead perceived as merely strangely hot.

Her heart beats fast—the reader isn’t told whether she’s horny or terrified. Honestly, it could be both, but I don’t care, because I’m more focused on the fact that she tried to push him away and he didn’t bloody leave her alone.

Before we continue, I feel like now is a good time to state my belief that ‘consent’ should not simply be reduced to ‘both parties were horny’. Sephy may indeed have been horny—she’s an eighteen year old girl for crying out loud, of course she’s horny!—but most importantly, she refused Callum over and over again and he continued.

“‘Then let me go. Please.’ [Sephy]

‘I can’t.’ [Callum]

[…]

‘I love you’ Callum said softly.

‘Then let me go. Please…’

Callum’s finger on my lips stilled the words.” p.382

It baffles me how someone can read that scene and it not make their skin crawl. He won’t even let her speak. Then Sephy thinks to herself, ‘Callum loved me…’, which notably could have been written in the present tense but isn’t. Sephy believes that Callum did love her when they were younger, but not necessarily in the present, now, when he removes her agency and abuses her.

“[Sephy] ‘Just go away, please.’” P.383

Spoilers; Callum does not go away and leave her alone, despite her request. Sephy Hadley’s wishes are completely ignored in this scene.

“I was finding it hard to think straight. […] His hand was still stroking my abdomen but it was no longer soothing.” P.383

So, she’s getting horny and confused. But she has asked him to leave, since he won’t set her free. Which he has also ignored.

“And he bent his head to kiss me. He moved so quickly, I had no time to even be surprised. […] His lips coaxed open my mouth, but there was very little coaxing to be done. I closed my eyes.

This wasn’t real.” P. 383-384

It sounds to me like she’s in shock. Perhaps she is horny, and her body does want sex, but Sephy Hadley has refused and pushed Callum McGregor away multiple times in this godforsaken chapter. If that isn’t enough to make you consider that this could be rape, then read on as she pushes him away yet again:

“Callum’s hand moved from my abdomen to my waist and higher. I pushed at his hand but it didn’t move. His kiss became gentler.” P. 384

I don’t know how much louder this book could scream ‘she doesn’t want it, not like this’, and yet somehow, people aren’t hearing it. Even the BBC can’t see it. So what do we get next?

“‘Callum…’”

‘Shush! I won’t hurt you. […]’” p.384

Can you still tell me that you don’t have the ick from that? Silenced yet again, physically and vocally, Sephy Hadley is trapped. She doesn’t have a chance to refuse Callum. She has nowhere to run to. She can’t push him away, and she can’t talk to him.

“Uncertain, confused, I tried to pull away” p.384

Can you still argue that this isn’t rape? Do you even want to, really?

Following this moment, Sephy gives in to Callum’s forceful advances, “his kiss grew more urgent and all at once I didn’t want to move away any more”. I assume this is the moment where other readers breath a sigh of relief and decide it can’t be rape anymore. I think those readers are wrong. I think that at this moment, Sephy is trying to reclaim a modicum of agency and choice. Let’s face it, her only choices here look to be either to fight Callum the whole way, or to give in and claim she wanted it.

I feel sorry for Sephy, because there was no choice where she didn’t have touches, kisses, and sex put upon her. If Callum had let her speak, had backed off from touching her when she had asked, then perhaps it wouldn’t have been rape. This happened in a locked room where she had no power, and no words.

I hate that this is romanticised. I understand why Sephy chooses not to believe that she was raped—what a horrible thing to believe has happened to yourself—but for the rest of the book, only the extremists claim that it was rape. I believe that this tells the reader that only a bad guy, a villain, would call this kind of love ‘rape’, which is a dangerous sentiment for impressionable young minds—the target audience of this book.

Basically, I think the book is telling young readers, ‘it’s not rape if you get your partner horny and ashamed enough that they can’t say no’, which is not a belief that I will ever subscribe to.

If you needed any further help seeing it, the scene following the sex immediately starts with Sephy sobbing. You cannot tell me that she wanted any of it beyond confused horniness. You can’t.

“I couldn’t stop sobbing. […] Did I look like him? So miserably unhappy after what had just happened to us” p.385

Same, Sephy. Same.

“Callum tried to put his arms around me, I pushed him away. He pulled me towards him again, which just made me cry harder and push against him more frantically.” P.386

For the love of God, BBC, please update your Noughts and Crosses content. This IS rape, horrifying and ugly, and our youth deserve to be taught that.

The BBC Bitesize pages claim that ‘Sephy consented to having sex with him’. Screenshot from that page below.

The Point that Noughts and Crosses Is Trying to Make (I think)

I confess, I lost faith in this book very quickly after chapter 101 and the subsequent fallout. The teen pregnancy followed by Sephy refusing an abortion for no discernible reason (other than vague, moral superiority and sequel potential) thoroughly turned me away from this novel.

As such, I didn’t read the end of Noughts and Crosses too closely as I was quite keen to finish the damn thing and start something new.

From my flash through the end of the book, however, I believe that Blackman wanted to touch on the sexual politics of mixed-race romance at its most intense. Whether Sephy was raped or not becomes irrelevant for the conversation within the narrative that follows, as Sephy is forbidden from testifying in favour of the terrorists and Callum. In this way, narratives that support minorities are shut down—and this is the bigger picture that I believe Blackman wanted to encourage discussion on.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s acceptable that people overlook how the writing tells us that Sephy was raped. Societal issues with representation of the repressed and minorities ARE important, but so is teaching young people about sexual etiquette and how not to rape your friends.

Summary

I’m charity shopping this book ASAP, so I won’t be able to come back with new quotes or arguments. I loved the book for talking about systemic racism, but schools should either rip out the pages post chapter one hundred, or teach this section with extreme care.

(Which, to be honest, we know that British schools don’t have the funding for that level of care. So perhaps we simply need a new book on the market to fill this gap. Leave your suggestions in the comments!)