Review Detail

There are very few things in the world that will get me on a soapbox as quickly or thoroughly as rape, especially in relation to modern perceptions of rape and rape victims. I went into Rape Girl not sure what angle Klein was going to take, but hoping very much that I wouldn’t walk away offended by her message. Thankfully, I wasn’t; in fact, I give Alina Klein full marks for her portrayal of rape and its aftermath, particularly in how the rape affected Valerie’s social standing and how her peers perceived her.

Rape Girl is a very short book. I breezed through it in a little more than thirty minutes, but what this book lacks in length and depth it more than makes up for in punch. I was hopping mad the entire time I was reading. Not mad at Klein or Valerie, but at her friends and the prinicipal of the school and anyone else who tried to say that Valerie “deserved” to be raped or was lying about her attack. Their unsympathetic and accustory behavior was sick and wrong and what the principal did was totally outside the legal rights of what an administrator can and should do. I was mad; I was horrified. Even more so because there is no doubt in my mind that the aggressive slut-shaming that went on in Rape Girl was realistic and completely true to life. And that hurt.

If you want to read a book that you’ll respond to on an emotional level, try Rape Girl. You would have to try not to get angry on Valerie’s behalf.

Klein’s prose and presentation of this story are very clinical and detached. I feel that this was a good choice. I was angry enough as it was without her getting emotional too; I think that in this case if both author and reader were as emotionally invested as I was, it would have been overkill. However, that detachedness did made characterization a little hard to accomplish well, and I woudn’t say that I ever got a good handle on who Valerie was as a person. But maybe that’s not important—it’s enough to look at what happened to her and understand that this situation happens every day. Maybe the “faceless victim” thing was intentional. Maybe if I’d gotten too invested in Valerie, what happened to her would be ten times worse for me as a reader, and I would now be a puddle of indignant and depressed woman instead of an on-soapbox book reviewer. I don’t know. I never got inside Valerie’s head, and while I was disappointed by that, I think this book is powerful enough as is.

Now the length and the pacing, I’m not as willing to let slide. I think this moved too fast, on the whole, and I would have liked it if this book was longer. If things were given more time to develop so that their full impact could be seen.

Uh, wow. This is a gut-clenching emotional ride of a book. I loved that. I’ve never been so put out on a character’s behalf before. Alina Klein has the skill to lay open a situation and, without making any authorial judgments of her own, leave you as the reader shocked and horrified. I do wish this had been a little more fleshed out, but if you’re okay with a book about controversial and uncomfortable subject that is unflinchingly portryed, read Rape Girl. It’s amazing and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.