The phrase "confronting the reader" is correct and can be used in written English.
It is typically used when discussing a piece of writing that challenges or provokes the reader in some way. Example: In her novel, the author uses vivid descriptions to paint a disturbing and realistic picture, effectively confronting the reader with the harsh realities of war.
Both use the convention with an intentional jolt, confronting the reader immediately with a passage of inexplicable violence.
Mr. Sorokin, one of Russia's most celebrated writers, has spent decades puncturing those expectations, typically by confronting the reader with shocking (but, I am sorry to report, unforgettable) visions of violence, cannibalism and scatology.
But that is what the best historical writing does; it confronts the reader with staggering possibilities.
In Kill All Enemies (Puffin) Melvin Burgess confronts the reader with uncomfortable truths.
This post-Benjaminic reading confronts the "reader's" notions of conclusory interpretations and challenges reactions based on normative comprehension.
The First World War Memoirs of C P Blacker, edited by John Blacker (Pen and Sword Books ), an original, plain-spoken record of the First World War which confronts the reader fairly with the Siegfried Sassoon verdict on the whole affair.
An assortment of disparate, subjective and sometimes inaccurate points of view confront the reader, and the reader may not safely presume that a favorite character will prevail, or even survive.
Michael Sr .confronted the referee.
Joyous fantasy and sorrow co-exist in John Burningham's books, never more so than in Granpa (now a film by the makers of The Snowman), which sets up a beautiful relationship between a little girl and her grandfather, only to confront the young reader with the unambiguous emptiness of Granpa's chair on the last page.
In addition, I expected--actually, hoped--that readers confronting the reality of human trafficking for the first time (or in a new way) would ask a follow-up question: What can we as a society do to stop it?
In less skilled hands this kind of moral and ethical instruction could feel condescending, but Greitens never gives in to the temptation to treat his young readers as incapable of confronting the realities of the dangerous and distressing places he's been or the challenges people face there.
