Rape: A Love Story (Otto Penzler Books) - Hardcover

Oates, Joyce Carol

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786712945 ISBN 13: 9780786712946

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2003

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of more than 70 books, including novels, short story collections, plays, poetry volumes, and criticisms. She has been awarded both the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award and has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

From Publishers Weekly:

Prolific Oates (We Were the Mulvaneys; Beast; etc.) explores sexual violence and its aftermath in this taut, harrowing novella. Teena Maguire, a pretty, 30-something widow, is on her way home from a party when she is beaten, gang-raped and left for dead. She survives the attack, which her 12-year-old daughter Bethie witnesses, but as only a husk of her former self ("That pathetic woman," she thinks of herself, "they should have finished the job"). It is to Bethie, then, that the task of caring for her falls: "If Momma could sleep, that was good. It was your duty to let her sleep." Oates draws on shifting, often fragmentary points of view to tell the story of the days before and after the rape, including that of Teena's lover, Ray Casey, whose feelings have changed since the attack; Walt Pick, the father of two of the rapists; Harriet Diebenkorn, the deputy prosecutor who fails Teena in the preliminary hearing; and Bethie, whose affecting chapters are written in the second person. Redemption of a sort is offered in the form of John Dromoor, a young police officer whose concern for Teena is matched by his desire for justice. When a slick Buffalo defense lawyer devastates Teena on the witness stand, Dromoor takes matters into his own hands. This is where the story truly chills, as the attackers fret about their future and Dromoor slowly exacts a cool vengeance. The love story is Bethie's-a haunting affection born of a terrible crime. The effects linger, despite the book's brevity.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0786712945
• ISBN 13: 9780786712946
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128