Synopses & Reviews
Teena Maguire should not have tried to shortcut her way home that Fourth of July. Not after midnight, not through Rocky Point Park. Not the way she was dressed: tank top, denim cut-offs, high-heeled sandals. Not with her twelve-year-old daughter, Bethie. Not with packs of local guys running loose on hormones, rage, and alcohol. A victim of gang rape, left for dead in the park boathouse, the once vital and sexy Teena Maguire can now only regret that she has survived. And Bethie can barely remember a childhood uncolored by fear. For they're not even a neighborhood away, the men that she identified for the Niagara Falls Police Department: the wide-browed, sandy-haired Pick brothers; the sneering Jimmy DeLucca; Fritz Haaber with his moustache and stubbled jaw. They've killed her grandmother's longhaired orange cat. At a relentless, compelling pace punctuated by lonely cries in the night and the whisper of terror in the afternoon, National Book Award-winner Joyce Carol Oates unfolds the story of Teena and Bethie, their assailants, and their unexpected, silent champion, a man who knows the meaning of justice. And love.
Review
"Rape: A Love Story gives us Oates at her darkly enthralling best." Andrew Ervin, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"[A] taut, harrowing novella....The effects linger, despite the book's brevity." Publishers Weekly
Review
"[A] tense novella somewhat akin to [Oates's] Beasts....We've been here before, and this is flawed work....But Oates has achieved memorable successes in the short-novel form and, on balance, this is one of them." Kirkus Reviews
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"[M]asterfully crafted and diabolically insightful....Oates' unflinching dramatization of the insidious aftereffects of a horrific crime...reminds readers that the real power resides in the survivor, not the attacker." Donna Seaman, Booklist
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"Like Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold, this short work builds in suspense until the final page. Recommended." Library Journal
Synopsis
Violence erupts on the Fourth of July, and vengeance takes strange, unpredictable turns in a gripping new novella from National Book Award-winner Joyce Carol Oates.
Synopsis
A victim of gang rape, left for dead in the park boathouse, the once vital and sexy Teena Maguire can now only regret that she has survived. At a relentless, compelling pace, National Book Award-winner Oates unfolds the story of Teena and Bethie, their assailants, and their unexpected, silent champion, a man who knows the meaning of justice and love.