Some Unknown Person

This is the bleakest book I have read in a long time but I persevered because of a general interest in the writing of this author.This book recounts the story of a woman who has been sexually exploited since her childhood and does so with gritty and uncompromising reality. For this reason, it is a difficult book to read yet I found it oddly compelling. Be prepared to find none of the characters in this book at all appealling, including the main protagonist.

Darkly brilliant, this curious fictionalization of a real and still-unsolved murder sets a standard for feminist noire unmatched nearly a quarter-century after its original publication. Fans of Scoppettone's popular crime novels will recognize in SOME UNKNOWN PERSON a voice at once incisive and cynical, but here unbuffered by her characteristic urbane drollery. This one isn't funny, it's stunning.Based on the actual death in 1931 of alcoholic, drug-addicted and sexually-exploited 25-year-old New York socialite, Starr Faithfull, the novel unsparingly goes where only later others would follow. And never with Scoppettone's brutal honesty. She doesn't whine, toes no party line, and thus draws images of child-molestation, drunkenness, drug-dependency and a particularly female death-of-self that both shock and set the stage for a new understanding of tragedy. There are no easy answers in this superbly crafted tale, no heroes. And no redemption. For in this telling a woman's psyche may be so distorted by early betrayal and violation that she becomes the author of her own hell. And through either a moment's peevishness or a classic flaw in character literally anyone may commit the crime for which there will be no forgiveness.Scholars of Women's Studies have been squeamish about the absence of a truly dark voice in the pages of women's literature. And one popular novel does not constitute a voice. But the impact of SOME UNKNOWN PERSON's final pages may be compared to that of Conrad in THE HEART OF DARKNESS, and for its carefully-wrought difference Scoppettone's book deserves a place on that shelf. This breathtaking bleakness does not covertly celebrate the arrogance of men. This exquisitely blighted landscape reveals a woman's heart of darkness. Terrifying and unforgettable, this book is a classic.