I knew going into it that I would enjoy Catch and Kill, because it’s a genre I enjoy, it’s a writer I like, and a topic I was interested in. I just wasn’t sure how much I really needed to read it, considering I’d just finished She Said a month or two earlier and they’re about the same thing. My takeaway is that these are two great books, on the same topic, that read in completely different ways. I’m glad I read both of them.
Catch and Kill is Ronan Farrow’s recounting of his investigation into Harvey Weinstein, and how his network, NBC, stalled and delayed him at literally every turn. The complicity of these rich men protecting each other from the consequences of their actions will make you sick. Weinstein sent actual spies after Farrow once he got wind of the investigation, and still the execs at NBC continued to hem and haw and try to gaslight Farrow into giving up the story. Because of the fallout of his reporting (the spies, getting fired from NBC, dealing with NBC’s spinning of the whole tale), Catch and Kill is a much more personal story than She Said, with Farrow as the narrator taking a bigger role in his story than Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey did in theirs.
Catch and Kill contains some truly jaw-dropping moments (the Matt Lauer revelations, Lisa Bloom’s memo to Weinstein, the stuff about the ex-Mossad spies hired to follow Farrow, the terrifying way that NBC reacted to all this), but Farrow, like Kantor and Twohey, is careful to make sure that the women who bravely came forward to say what had happened to them are still at the center of the story. Like She Said, Catch and Kill makes clear what these women risked and how much courage they showed. I admire them so much, and am thankful for writers like Farrow, Twohey and Kantor who risked plenty themselves in order to make sure their stories were told.