Rape: A Love Story

È un romanzo coinvolgente e disturbante, scritto con uno stile giornalistico, chirurgico, senza fronzoli, vittimismi e sentimentalismi e forse proprio per questo, visti i temi che tratta (lo stupro, ma anche il racconto mediatico dei crimini) così incisivo. Mi è piaciuto molto perché sì, in fondo è davvero una storia d'amore, e perché neanche una virgola è fuori posto.

I have read enough work by Joyce Carol Oates to understand her view of a world in which women and young girls often suffer physical violence at the hands of men when they least expect it to happen to them. I know that she is not afraid to use brutal words and images to tell the stories of these women and to describe the criminals who go after them. All of that is included in Rape: A Love Story. But it is the second half of the book’s title that hints at the most intriguing part of Teena Maguire’s story.

Teena, a thirty-something widow with a 12-year-old daughter, made a fatal mistake one dark night by deciding to cut through a deserted Niagara Falls park with her daughter on the walk home from a Fourth of July party. What should have show more been a relaxing ten-minute walk led instead to an experience that almost killed her and changed more than a few lives forever. Her daughter’s childhood would end in an instant, a Niagara Falls policeman would define “justice” in new terms, families would be pushed to the brink of bankruptcy in order to pay for unscrupulous defense attorneys, and a few thugs would realize that things were different now even for them.

Teena and Bethie were followed into the park by a gang of young men from the neighborhood, men high on booze and drugs and with one thing on their minds. They forced the two into an old boatshed where they punched and kicked them and gang-raped Teena. Luckily for Bethie, she was able to wedge herself into a spot so hard to reach that the rapists lost interest in her. But she had to listen to everything that happened and, when it was finally over, it was up to her to find help before her mother bled to death in the shed.

The complicated love story begins when young Niagara Falls policeman John Dromoor, first on the scene, finds himself intensely drawn to Teena and her daughter. He simply cannot forget what he saw that night and promises Teena and Bethie that he will do everything in his power to make things right for them. Bethie, who is terrified to live in the same neighborhood as the men awaiting trial for her assault, looks to Dromoor as her protector and feels a special kind of love for him. The mysterious, but unspoken, love that the three share seems to offer the only chance that Teena and Bethie have to put their shattered lives at least partially back together.

Oates has packed a lot into this book of barely 150 pages. She reminds the reader that violent crime impacts more lives than just those of the victim and the attacker. Families of the victim suffer a special kind of hell, but families of the attacker are forced to confront the dirty underbelly of family loyalty in a way that few really pass when it comes down to a question of whether or not to hire lawyers to distort the truth in an attempt to save their sons from prison. Will they excuse them for a terrible crime because they share the same blood? Will they really try to destroy the reputations of the victims in order to save their criminal sons? Sadly, we all know the answer to those questions.

Rated at: 4.5 show less

I'll admit to enjoying JCO's work; I read it as eagerly as she churns it out (which keeps both of us busy), and Rape: A Love Story wasn't a disappointment. While not a perfect story, if such a thing exists, it was memorable, disturbing, and thought provoking in an uncomfortable and realistic manner.

Similar to "The Tattooed Girl," the characters in Rape are deeply flawed but very real, and their ignorance contains both innocence and hatred. JCO is known for exploring all the icky facets of human nature (violence, addiction, superiority) and her writing serves as a mirror for our assumptions, prejudices, and fears. Rape is a story designed to elicit a unique response from each reader but it's up to the individual to do the psychological show more heavy lifting and figure out why.

The only crinkle I had with this story was the ending. For a piece of writing so very visceral and authentic, the concluding trajectory came off as unrealistic and improbable (to the extent it was played out). Violent crime rarely comes to an end in a neat-n-tidy manner and for a story that was anything but tidy, the shift in tone and execution (pun intended, maybe?) was noticeable. show less

this is what I expected, and what I expected is what it is: except the beginning, the horror, the jarring present-presence and recognition of pain: more awake than I'd been prepared for. that passed quickly/not quickly enough. what was leftover was someone else's wishful thinking. a heroic man solving all the lady-problems: someone to fall in love with. and marriage, which means wanting sex again, means healing, everything better.
listen to me: nothing makes it better. this book? is a lie. there aren't any freelancing vigilante cops, and even if there were they would not transmit justice. there is no justice. there isn't anything that makes everything all better again. not even sex, not even love, not even god or death; or time.

(1/13)

While this shouldn't be on the fiction shelf, it is. Oates has written a very real work, where a raped person is subjected not only to the after effects of the rape itself, but those of the public, the offenders and the court system.

The protagonist is a person, a human being, and a victim. Her child, witness to the rape, also plays a strong part.

To me, Oates has put the finger on a lot of what's rotten in most legal systems on this planet when it comes to how the victim is treated. And of how time passes, and what is thought of and done regarding a rape.

All in all: angry, angry and real. Should be compulsory reading for most people.

The first part of the title refers to a brutal assault on a working class woman in a park late one night. The second part refers to the woman's daughter (with her at the time of the attack) and her feelings of first love, specifically for the beat cop who ends up taking justice into his own hands.

I sometimes find Oates' extremes in length don't work - some of her novels are bloated and some of her shorter works feel like they could be a lot longer. Such is the case with this one. It's barely 150 pages, and I wanted more - more background, more fully fleshed out characters, and more story. What there was was intriguing, but for instance the mother's abrupt departure seemed out of character. And who was the guy she left with?

3.75 show more stars

NB: Content/trigger warnings abound, as you can probably imagine. show less

I got some odd looks on the train reading this due to it's title and I wanted to shout at people No you don't understand read the book!! Haunting, disturbing and in places completely terrifying but there is love in it. Love between a mother and daughter, love between a victim and protector. There are bucket loads of hate and darkness as well but I still felt at the end that love had won.