Rape:a Love Story-- short review

I read Rape: A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates for the Women Unbound Challenge.

Title: Rape: a Love Story
Author: Joyce Carol Oates
ISBN: 978-0786714827
Pages: 154
Publisher: Da Capo Press (December 20, 2004)
Category: women’s fiction
Review source: library
Rating: 3.5/5


A woman like that, thirty-five years old and dressed like a teenager. Tank top, denim cutoffs, shaggy bleached-blonde hair frizzed around her face. Bare legs, high-heeled sandals? Tight sexy clothes showing her breasts, her ass, what’s she expect? Midnight of Fourth of July, fireworks at the falls ended at eleven. Still there’s partying all over the city. How much beer has been consumed in Niagara Falls tonight by residents and visitors? Better believe it’s a lot. Like the volume of water rushing over horseshoes falls in a minute! And there’s Teena Maguire, drunk on her feet, witnesses would report.

Rape: a Love Story is about a gang rape of a mother and its aftermath in the small town in which it occurred in front of her pre-teen daughter. Joyce Carol Oates deftly addresses issues such as the difficulties in defining and proving rape, accusing the victim, what I will call collateral damage (Teena’s daughter) and vigilante justice. The trial is nearly a joke as everything comes out predictably about what Teena was wearing and how she had been at a party beforehand and even had her 12-year-old daughter Bethie along with her. The investigating officer on the case becomes very concerned with Teena and her depression after the case, in which all the teenage boys are acquitted. Rape a Love Story is short but packs a lot to consider about the misconceptions, assumptions, and blame that often gets thrown around with rape. And also the scores of people that get hurt by this violent act.

--review by Amy Steele