Joyce Carol Oates - Rape: A Love Story

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

baby shoes 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.

Reviews

Booklist, November 1, 2003, p. 459
Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2003, pp. 1292-1293
Publishers Weekly, November 24, 2003, p. 41
Washington Post Book World, December 15, 2003, p. C2
Chicago Sun-Times, January 4, 2004, Sec: Show, p. 14
Los Angeles Times, January 5, 2004, p. E13
Boston Herald, January 11, 2004, Sec: The Edge, p. 45
Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), February 1, 2004, p. J11
The Providence Journal (Rhode Island), February 1, 2004, p. K7
The Globe and Mail (Canada), February 7, 2004, p. D17
Seattle Times, July 11, 2004, p. L11
Library Journal, January 15, 2004, p. 159
New York Times Book Review, January 25, 2004, p. 20
Time Out, June 29, 2005, p. 63
The Observer, July 17, 2005, Review, p. 15
Financial Times (London, England), July 23, 2005, Books, p. 32
The Nelson Mail (New Zealand), July 26, 2006, p. 25
New Statesman, July 27, 2005

Rape

A Love Story

by Joyce Carol Oates

New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003

154 pages

Dust Jacket Blurb

Excerpt

Reviews