Eva's Man

Eva Medina Canada sits in a jail cell, reflecting on the ruin that is her whole life. From the time she was a little girl, Eva has been the target of random and senseless sexual assaults: Freddy with his popsicle stick, her neighbor Mr. Logan who attacked her in a stairwell when she was still a child; her mother's paramour; her cousin Alfonso; her husband twenty years her senior who treated her like a virtual prisoner. Eva has never known what it is to be loved and cared for by a decent, caring man. But she's hit rock bottom when she meets Davis, who uses her like a rented prostitute and won't let her out of his hotel room until he's finished with her; he won't even give her a comb for her hair. She's been debased to a piece of property to be used and thrown away. But Eva's had more than enough, and she takes a devastating revenge. She's not just paying back Davis alone for what she's been through; he's just the instrument: Eva wants revenge at every man who ever looked at her, touched her, treated her as something less than human. Like Eva's cellmate, Elvira, we are at once fascinated and repelled by Eva's crime and her tortured life that drove her to commit it. Gayl Jones makes us feel all Eva's pain and her disgust and horror at the men who used her and treated her with such contempt. Eva was a walking time bomb; we can only wonder that she didn't explode earlier. But murder doesn't ease Eva's pain, and there's no escape for her. Lonely and devastated, Eva needs love like any other human being, but love is something she'll never find; instead, she's stuck in a cell with Elvira, who is as predatory as the men on the outside who ruined her life. Eva has survived, but at a devastating cost; she's become one of the walking dead. In 177 spare pages, Jones paints a convincing portrait of a soul so damaged that even the gift of a comb would be an unhoped-for kindness. "Eva's Man" is a short book but it's not easy to get through; Jones slices back and forth between time and place, mirroring Eva's fractured, fissured life. It's a tough, gritty, no-holds-barred book by a uniquely gifted novelist.

EVA'S MAN is a confusing, profound, and horrifying tale about abuse and silence. Gayl Jones masterfully tells the story of how one Black woman's life was manipulated and changed forever because of the sexual abuse she encountered at every stage of her development and how this brutality eventually led to a bizaare murder. This was a hard read both emotionally and physically. Jones takes liberties with time and detail jumping back and forth in the story and slowly giving the reader the complete picture of Eva's life. I had to read and re-read chapters for fear of missing crucial detail. What the reader is left with is a glimpse into the mind of a fractured woman unable to love for fear of being victimized. What Eva chooses to do instead is assume the role of the victimizer and take extreme control of her own sexuality by killing her lover.Within the pages of this horror story, Jones mananges to give Eva a language and image that is brutal, honest, sadistic and frail. If ever there was a complicated anti-hero in modern fiction, here she is. I didn't come away from the novel with praise or pity for Eva, but her story is one that has stayed in my mind months after finishing the book.

From the mouth of a madwoman come horrible poetic truths in a riveting oral history style.

A gritty look at one woman's journey from childhood to adult, and how her contact with various men throughout her life has shaped her in a most disturbing way. A wonderfully nightmarish novella.

In her second novel, EvaÕs Man, Gayl Jones uses the lens of focused memory to weave a disturbing chronology of emotional and sexual abuse of a young girl. Immersed in a world of parental deceit and infidelity, of adult themes and repeated instances of unsolicited sexual experimentation and abuse, Eva Medina succeeds in detaching herself from the world around her. This self- protective isolation eventually erupts and we are exposed to a woman in primal mode with shocking consequences. As she did in Corregidora, using graphic and lurid details of abuse, lust and gluttony, Ms. Jones evokes sympathy for this damaged woman. Alliance with Eva is unavoidable, as Jones seduces us with a voyeuristic narrative. Through EvaÕs memories, some real, some borrowed, we are exposed to the events that precipitate her horrific crime. Continually pursued by the men in her world for the sole purpose of sexual conquest and domination, the defection of EvaÕs emotional self from the physical reality of her experiences is brutally apparent. The adults that love Eva, cannot protect her, distracted as they are by the rhythms of their own lives. Frustrated by the passivity with which she responds to the violations she has endured, we are witness to a woman in decline, a lonely emotional and spiritual deterioration of the soul. And the crime? While surely committed by someone insane, insinuates itself as a form of redemption, of taking charge, a final necessary cathartic retribution. As her cell mate, Elvira suggests, ÒI guess what you done excites peopleÓ. And while EvaÕs story may excite some, may titillate others, many will be disturbed and frustrated by the characters and events crafted by Gayl Jones.