50
Used, New, and Out of Print Books - We Buy and Sell - Powell's Books
Cart |
|  my account  |  wish list  |  help   |  800-878-7323
Hello, | Login
MENU
  • Browse
    • New Arrivals
    • Bestsellers
    • Featured Preorders
    • Award Winners
    • Audio Books
    • See All Subjects
  • Used
  • Staff Picks
    • Staff Picks
    • Picks of the Month
    • 50 Books for 50 Years
    • 25 PNW Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books From the 21st Century
    • 25 Memoirs to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Global Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Women to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books to Read Before You Die
  • Gifts
    • Gift Cards & eGift Cards
    • Powell's Souvenirs
    • Journals and Notebooks
    • socks
    • Games
  • Sell Books
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Find A Store

Don't Miss

  • Powell's Essential List: 25 Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books
  • Summer Sale: 20% Off Select Books
  • United Stories of America: 20% Off Select Nonfiction Titles
  • Powell's Author Events
  • Oregon Battle of the Books
  • Audio Books

Visit Our Stores


Kelsey Ford: Powell's Picks Spotlight: Emma Seckel's 'The Wild Hunt' (0 comment)
Every summer, my extended family and I rent houses in a small town along the Oregon coast. For a week, we take long walks along the beach, spend afternoons cooking elaborate meals, play Fascination in the arcade one town over...
Read More»
  • Rodrigo Fresán: “The Book You Wrote Is Equal to the Songs You Heard”: Rodrigo Fresán's Playlist for 'The Remembered Part' (0 comment)
  • Jenifer Hixson: Finding the Essential Truth in Your Story (0 comment)
  • Jenifer Hixson: Finding the Essential Truth in Your Story (0 comment)

{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##

An Untamed State

by Roxane Gay
An Untamed State

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9780802122513
ISBN10: 0802122515
Condition: Standard


All Product Details

View Larger ImageView Larger Images
Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$10.95
List Price:$16.00
Used Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
QtyStore
3Burnside
2Cedar Hills

Staff Pick

An Untamed State is the kind of book that just slices into you — forcing you to feel all its emotions. Gay digs deep and tells a story so searing, so awful, and so beautiful, it's hard to even describe. Set in modern-day Haiti and America, this harrowing tale of a woman held captive for 13 days feels like Gay is holding your feet to the fire; the pain in these pages is palpable. However, there is redemption here; there is hope. If your reading life needs to be shaken up, if it needs an injection of real emotion, this is your book: it's both excruciating and exquisite. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

Roxane Gay is a powerful new literary voice whose short stories and essays have already earned her an enthusiastic audience. In An Untamed State, she delivers an assured debut about a woman kidnapped for ransom, her captivity as her father refuses to pay and her husband fights for her release over thirteen days, and her struggle to come to terms with the ordeal in its aftermath.

Mireille Duval Jameson is living a fairy tale. The strong-willed youngest daughter of one of Haiti's richest sons, she has an adoring husband, a precocious infant son, by all appearances a perfect life. The fairy tale ends one day when Mireille is kidnapped in broad daylight by a gang of heavily armed men, in front of her fathers Port au Prince estate. Held captive by a man who calls himself The Commander, Mireille waits for her father to pay her ransom. As it becomes clear her father intends to resist the kidnappers, Mireille must endure the torments of a man who resents everything she represents.

An Untamed State is a novel of privilege in the face of crushing poverty, and of the lawless anger that corrupt governments produce. It is the story of a willful woman attempting to find her way back to the person she once was, and of how redemption is found in the most unexpected of places. An Untamed State establishes Roxane Gay as a writer of prodigious, arresting talent.

Review

"A fairy tale...its complex and fragile moral arrived at through great pain and high cost....Perhaps Haiti, too, is a beautiful princess, well-versed in the vagaries of men, still searching for a happily ever after.” The New York Times Book Review

Review

"Set in Haiti, Roxane Gay's first novel, An Untamed State, is a roundhouse kick to notions of privilege.” Vanity Fair

Review

"Once you start this book, you will not be able to put it down. An Untamed State is a novel of hope intermingled with fear....written at a pace that will match your racing heart.” Edwidge Danticat, author of Claire of the Sea Light

Review

"[Gay] has written one of the most unsettling books of the year. And shes just getting started....Dark, gripping....a compelling and at times painful read that addresses the issues of economic privilege, immigration, and sexual assault.” Chicago Magazine

Review

"An Untamed State is breathless, artful, disturbing and original. I wont ever forget it.” Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings

Review

"Gay is a daring and transfixing storyteller, depicting with valor and deep intent hellishly intrusive violence, shocking betrayal, and psychological devastation, the poison fruits of prejudice, injustice, greed, and desperation. Ferocious, gripping, and unforgettable.” Booklist (Starred Review)

Review

"Gay has written a truly unforgettable first novel. An Untamed State is sure to stick with you for a very long time after you've closed it.” Flavorwire (10 Must-Read Books for May)

Review

"Gay brilliantly writes of the story's external events while skillfully capturing Mireille's internal anguish. Not since Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper has an author so effectively captured the descent into mental instability.” Library Journal (Starred Review)

Review

"Roxane Gay is a literary force of nature. An Untamed State arrives like a hurricane.” Mat Johnson, author of Pym

Review

"A harrowing and emotionally cleareyed vision of one woman's ordeal during and after her kidnapping in Haiti...remarkable....A cutting and resonant debut.” Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

Review

"An Untamed State is a harrowing, suspenseful novel about the connections between sexual violence and political rage, narrated in a voice at once traumatized and eerily controlled.” Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children and Nine Inches

Review

"From the astonishing first line to the final scene, An Untamed State is magical and dangerous. I could not put it down. Pay attention to Roxane Gay; she's here to stay.” Tayari Jones, author of Silver Sparrow and Leaving Atlanta

About the Author

Roxane Gay's writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, NOON, The New York Times Book Review, The Rumpus, Salon, The Wall Street Journals Speakeasy culture blog, and many others including her Tumblr, roxanegay.tumblr.com. She is the co-editor of PANK and essays editor for The Rumpus. She teaches writing at Eastern Illinois University. She tweets at @rgay.

4.8 4

What Our Readers Are Saying

Share your thoughts on this title!
Average customer rating 4.8 (4 comments)

`
mccaly28 , July 07, 2015 (view all comments by mccaly28)
Roxane Gay captures the trauma, tragedy, and intimacy of close relationships in this story. While people may say this is a difficult book to read it's really a fantastic story about love, loss, and empowerment. The book is certainly dark, and the story captures the darkness and lostness that Miri is feeling. There are passive chapters between the flashbacks and narration but it tells a story that shows how complicated relationships are, and how finicky people can be, and what it can take to be a family. The relationship between Miri and Michael is fascinating and fragile and the story articulates so many things about recovery and friends that aren't often talked about. Also the parallels, between Miri and Michael, between Florida and Haiti, between Miri and her mother, and so many other comparisons really carried through the narrative. We see how much these people change in just a few pages and how different life is for them all by the end. The parallels that Miri draws as well to a 'before' and 'after' mimic the 'before' and 'after' setup of the book that somehow manages to condense so many thoughts on sexual assault, identity, and safety. By not wrapping up everything nicely at the end it's a harrowing, enlightening story that everyone should read.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment

`
Karen Rush , February 07, 2015 (view all comments by Karen Rush)
What an extraordinary and unforgettable novel. A Haitian-born woman who is visiting her well-to-do family in Haiti is kidnapped and held for ransom. Thus begins Mireille's 13 day brutal cycle of rape and torture. The treatment by her captors and the breaking down of her spirit and body took my breath away.This is not for the faint hearted.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

(3 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment

`
Elis , October 24, 2014 (view all comments by Elis)
This is one of those books that I haven't been able to put down even though I read it months ago. It's a wrenching story that stays with you long after you've finished; it's the best story about the human spirit and human condition that I've ever read. The beauty of Gay's language is at odds with the ugliness inherent in so much of the story she tells -- I can't say that you will be happy after you've read it, but everyone should read it. There are books that will stay with you the rest of your life, and "An Untamed State" is at the top of that list.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

(2 of 4 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment

`
sduff222 , May 26, 2014 (view all comments by sduff222)
All the reviews mention how powerful this book is, but I didn't really believe them until this book ripped my heart out. It's not just that it's sad; it is so incredibly real. Roxane Gay has always had a way of speaking deep truths in her essays, and now she's spun those same truths into the most compelling narrative I've read in a long time. I could barely breathe reading this. Mireille is so fully realized a character, I didn't realize how invested I was in her well being until I was sobbing. Brutal but not gratuitous, this is an amazing story.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

(4 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment

View all 4 comments


Product Details

ISBN:
9780802122513
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
05/06/2014
Publisher:
Grove Press
Pages:
370
Height:
1.10IN
Width:
5.40IN
Thickness:
1.50
Author:
Roxane Gay
Author:
Roxane Gay
Subject:
Literature-A to Z

Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$10.95
List Price:$16.00
Used Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
QtyStore
3Burnside
2Cedar Hills

More copies of this ISBN

  • New, Trade Paperback, $16.00
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram

  • Help
  • Guarantee
  • My Account
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Security
  • Wish List
  • Partners
  • Contact Us
  • Shipping
  • Sitemap
  • © 2022 POWELLS.COM Terms

{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##