AN UNTAMED STATE by Roxane Gay (Black Cat), 367 pages, $19.95 paper. Rating: NNNN
Roxane Gay’s debut novel is not for the faint of heart, but this story of a wealthy woman kidnapped and sexually tortured in Haiti is bold and insightful. Stick with it.
On her way to the beach with her loving husband and infant child, Mireille, daughter of one of Haiti’s richest industrialists, is taken for ransom. But her father thinks negotiating with kidnappers is a sign of weakness and leaves her prey to the thugs who have taken her.
As she waits inside her one-room cage, starving and desperate, she recalls her privileged childhood, her professional life as a lawyer and her relationship with her husband, Michael. Her tedium is broken by a series of brutal rapes.
Like I said, tough stuff.
Gay’s expert at conveying the slow process of a bright, fierce woman losing her sense of self – typical of this soul-crushing experience – and plainly has a deep understanding of sexual trauma, post-traumatic distress and its impact on those around the survivor.
The characters are believable at every turn: the farm-bred Michael trying to make sense of Haiti’s deep class divide, his empathetic mother, Lorraine, and Mireille herself, who plays hard to get when she first meets Michael but is no position to play that game with her captors.
There are a few missteps. We learn in the first paragraph that Mireille held hostage for only 13 days – maybe so readers will muster the courage to keep reading, but it still gives away something huge very early on.
And the last 30 pages contain some coincidences that are hard to believe.
But Gay is a writer to watch for sure.
susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole
