Rape: A Love Story

She's done it again in this little gem of a book -- a masterpiece at your feet. In concise, visceral strokes, Joyce Carol Oates delivers a brutalizing and transportative hook, but if you're up for a good crime fiction ride, by the end of the tale you'll see that there can certainly be another side to dark happenings, as in the grain of sand that is accepted and morphed into a pearl. I think this is my favorite of Ms. Oates's wonderful works, but then who could possibly read them all? So many of her novels, short stories, poems and lyrics are wonderfully remarkable. RAPE A LOVE STORY is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Full of truth, pain and the ultimate glory of love. Easy on the eyes, too...I recommend the little hardcover book in its deliciously printed dust jacket for the perfect handheld experience. The jacket painting is extraordinarily heartbreaking and so gorgeous you could hang it on the wall and savor it like a Rembrandt or set it on the table and admire like a Michelangelo sculpture. This little book is a magnificent experience to behold!

Set in working-class Niagara Falls, New York, a young widow and her 12-year old daughter decide to take a shortcut home through a wooded area after a 4th of July party. But there's a gang of drunken young men hanging out, high on meth and looking for trouble. What follows is awful. The woman is left unconscious and bleeding but her young daughter manages to escape and get help. It seems like an open and shut case. But even though most of men are arrested, the town turns on the woman. "She had it coming," is the way they look at it. Much of the book is written from the point of view of the 12-year old girl. Our heart goes out to her as she realizes that her childhood ended on that awful night. What follows is a nightmare as her schoolmates taunt her and threaten her mother. There's a policeman, however, who was the first to discover the victims. As he watches the court system humiliate the woman and her daughter, he is enraged enough to take justice into his own hands. This book is a mere 154 small pages and is more a novella than a novel. It packs a terrific punch though. From the very first sentence, I was captivated, and read it at a breathless pace and cringed to hear about the horrors of the justice system for rape victims. This is especially true in a small town where everybody knows everybody else and the families of the rapists turn against the victim. Joyce Carol Oates is a prolific writer and, through the years, I have enjoyed many of her novels. I look forward to reading many more.

I admit that the title of this novella caught my attention. I have read and loved Joyce Carol Oates's short-story collections and I couldn't wait to read more of her stuff. Rape: A Love Story is one of the most thought-provoking novellas I've ever read. The darkness and poignancy of this story enthralled me from beginning to end. Teena McGuire is an attractive thirty-year-old widow and mother of a pre-teen girl. Her life is normal until the day she is gang-raped and left for dead. Now her life isn't the same as she disintegrates from the life as she'd known it. What's worse is that her twelve-year-old daughter is left to pick up the pieces. But the truly disturbing things arise when Teena is in the witness stand and in front of her attackers. There are various disarming twists throughout the story. I have noticed that Oates likes to delve into rape and sexual abuse issues, but she has gone all out with this novella. The story is truly chilling and you don't know whether to cry or wish the characters the best. I wanted the attackers to pay for what they did more than anything -- that's an excellent indication that the story and its characters have touched you in a deep level. Oates has always made me care about the stories and characters, even in her short stories. This is one of the best books I've read this year and I cannot recommend this one enough. Rape: A Love Story is definitely going on my must-reread pile.

I picked up this book two days ago, after dinner, and was not able to put it down until I finished it many hours later. At first, I was turned off by the title--how could a story about rape be a love story? But it is not a love story in the usual sense, and it is not about the woman who was raped falling in love with her attackers. It is about a woman who is gang-raped, her daughter witnesses it, and justice is not served until a police officer takes matters into his own hands. What makes this book worth five stars is Joyce Carol Oates' clear, precise prose. She is a joy to read.

Joyce Carol Oates, the master of tales about hapless women victimized by men, has written a brilliant novella that brings this theme to a terrifying pinnacle in a story about rape, revenge, and love. Teena Maguire and her 12-year-old daughter Bethie are assaulted while walking home through a deserted park at night. Teena is brutally gang-raped and severely beaten while Bethie hides within hearing range of the violence. Bethie is able to identify several of the assailants. At the preliminary hearing, the defense attorney makes a fool of the deputy prosecutor and humiliates Teena on the witness stand. John Dromoor, the policeman who first arrived at the scene of the violence, takes a liking to Teena and Bethie and vows to help in any way he can to right the wrongs against them. Yes, this book is also a love story, but certainly not in the more conventional sense.The story paints a powerful picture of the lingering after-effects of a horrible and violent crime. The friends and relatives of the rapists cast Teena as the instigator rather than the victim, and Teena becomes an outcast in her own town. She is so devastated that she wishes she had died instead of surviving the attack. Bethie finds that her identity has been irrevocably altered to that of the daughter of the woman who was gang-raped. She is now her mother's caretaker. The perpetrators are out on bail, and they continue to menace the victims. Bethie fears for her life since she was the person to identify the rapists. This book is well written and the characters convincingly portrayed. The narration switches between the point of view of several of the main characters. The voice of Bethie is implemented in an unusual second person narrative. What makes this story most frightening is that rape victims can be, and often are, tormented by these same scenarios. In Oates' skillful hands, the psychological impacts are brought home in a frightening way. I recommend this story whether or not you are an Oates fan. It will haunt you long after you turn the final page.Eileen Rieback