Rape Girl -- Alina Klein
The morning after a Mom's-Out-of-Town Raging House Party, sixteen-year-old Valerie wakes up, groggy and hungover. She makes lunch for her little sister, vomits, gives her sister permission to go play in the snow, and then passes out on the couch.
When she wakes up, her clothes are half-off and a guy from school—Adam, who she's been crushing on for ages and who, incidentally, she threw up on the night before—is all over her. She tells him to stop, but her head is still muzzy and she's also worried about traumatizing little Ainsley, so although she says "No" again and again, she doesn't put up a physical fight.
After her mother reports the crime, word gets out. The response of Val's best friend Mimi is as close to supportive as most of her peers get:
"It's just, I mean, you're my best friend, and I want to be supportive, but you were way trashed, Val. Maybe you just said yes and just forgot? Adam says it was totally consensual and I know how much you liked him."
Which is to say, obviously, that they are not particularly supportive.
Alina Klein's Rape Girl is a throwback to the problem novels of the '80s in that it's more focused on the issue than on anything else, including character development: it deals with the legal process, the physical aftermath (rape kit, multiple tests for STDs and pregnancy), the extremely confusing emotions, and the social fallout during the aftermath of a huge violation. But labelling Rape Girl purely as a problem novel does it a disservice, as that term generally holds negative connotations.
The writing is perfectly serviceable: Valerie tells her story clearly and succinctly, and with a few minor exceptions, Klein refrains from infodumps, preaching, or those awful Afterschool Special-style soft-focus conversations between the protagonist and a wise adult who says all of the perfect things. The rapist is less of a moustache-twirler and more of a dumbass (which doesn't at all excuse his crime, but makes him more of a believable, real person). The book isn't without its problems—it seems likely that a school administrator who acted like Val's principal would get slapped in the face with three lawsuits a day, the Sweet Barista Dude thing has been done to death, and right towards the end, the rapist says something SO stupid that it felt more like a convenient way of allowing the heroine to emotionally turn a corner than a believable conversation—but again, for the most part, it all works.
So, yes. It's a book about a girl with a problem and how she deals with it, about working to get through and past it, but as in the case of Amy Efaw's After, I wouldn't describe it as a 'problem novel'. Rather than using such a loaded term, I'd call it, I dunno... a contemporary procedural?
Is it a book that has caused me to gush and swoon? Obviously not. But it's a book that will certainly be a cathartic read for some, while possibly encouraging a bit more empathy in the Mimis of the world.
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Author page.
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Book source: Review copy via NetGalley. This book was read for the 2012 Cybils season.