|
|
|
 Rape
A Love Story
by Joyce Carol Oates
New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003
154 pages
Dust Jacket Blurb
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.
Excerpt
 The hearing proceeded. There were numerous interruptions. A lawyer is basically a mouth, like a shark is a mouth attached to a long gut. The business of lawyers is to talk, to interrupt one another, and to devour one another if possible.
Awards
- Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, 2006 Longlist
|
Reviews
- Eileen Battersby, Irish Times, July 9, 2005, p. 11
"So much anger, so much feeling, so many truths, Rape - a Love Story in
which a traumatized child seeks a hero at a time of terror, demonstrates not only the passion, pathos and
psychological intensity of this most explosive of major, if unsung, US writers, but also again showcases her fullblooded,
soaring prose."
- Kate Kellaway, The Observer, July 17, 2005, Review, p. 15
- Donna Seaman, Booklist, November 1, 2003, p. 459
- Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2003, pp. 1292-1293
- Publishers Weekly, November 24, 2003, p. 41
- Merle Rubin, Los Angeles Times, January 5, 2004, p. E13
"Oates has always been a writer who writes out of her gut, her obsessions and even her
confusions. In this book, she has connected with something very primal—simple, in a way, yet profound—a need that
D.H. Lawrence declared in one of his poems to be deeper than sex: the need for justice, and she has shown us how
that need is rooted in the urge to protect the innocent."
- Gillian Flynn, Entertainment Weekly, January 9, 2004, p. 83
- Judith Wynn, Boston Herald, January 11, 2004, Sec: The Edge, p. 45
- Andrea Simakis, Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), February 1, 2004, p. J11
- Kristin Latina, The Providence Journal (Rhode Island), February 1, 2004, p. K7
- Martin Levin, The Globe and Mail (Canada), February 7, 2004, p. D17
- Ginny Merdes, Seattle Times, July 11, 2004, p. L11
- Josh Cohen, Library Journal, January 15, 2004, p. 159
- Andrew Ervin, New York Times Book Review, January 25, 2004, p. 20
- Lavinia Greenlaw, Daily Telegraph (London), July 9, 2005, p. 9
- Caroline Foulkes, Birmingham Post, July 16, 2005, p. 53
- David Manning, The Nelson Mail (New Zealand), July 26, 2006, p. 25
- Natasha Tripney, New Statesman, July 27, 2005
- Patrick Anderson, Washington Post Book World, December 15, 2003, p. C2
- Jonathan Derbyshire, Financial Times (London), July 23, 2005, Books, p. 32
- Maggie Gee, Sunday Times (London) July 24, 2005, p. 45
- Ruth Eglash, Jerusalem Post, April 23, 2004, p. 30
|
Page address:
http://jco.usfca.edu/works/novels/rapealovestory.html
|
|
Previous