Title: An Untamed State Author: Roxane Gay
Published: May 6, 2014
Genre(s): Literary Fiction
Page Count: 368
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Mireille Duval Jameson is living a fairy tale. The strong-willed youngest daughter of one of Haiti’s richest sons, she has an adoring husband, a precocious infant son, by all appearances a perfect life. The fairy tale ends one day when Mireille is kidnapped in broad daylight by a gang of heavily armed men, in front of her father’s Port au Prince estate. Held captive by a man who calls himself The Commander, Mireille waits for her father to pay her ransom. As it becomes clear her father intends to resist the kidnappers, Mireille must endure the torments of a man who resents everything she represents.
An Untamed State is a novel of privilege in the face of crushing poverty, and of the lawless anger that corrupt governments produce. It is the story of a wilful woman attempting to find her way back to the person she once was, and of how redemption is found in the most unexpected of places. An Untamed State establishes Roxane Gay as a writer of prodigious, arresting talent.
This book is unflinchingly, almost unbearably brutal. It’s savage and hurtful and also beautiful in the strength of its main character. An Untamed State is a book that absolutely had to be written, because what it does is so necessary and important. Yes, this is about a woman who’s kidnapped and held for ransom in Haiti—something the average reader will never experience. But I think there’s a universality in what Mireille experiences that speaks to how many women relate to men and those who are more privileged than they are. There are pieces of this novel about the destruction of fairytales that go beyond plot and character circumstance, and that’s what impresses me most about Roxane Gay’s debut. It’s a horrific, unthinkable story, but it’s so important.
An Untamed State about more than just a woman’s captivity. It’s about a woman’s endurance, her strength, her sacrifice, her refusal to submit. It’s about a woman who loves fiercely and imperfectly, who erases herself because of that love. It’s about a woman who dies but is brave enough to bring herself back to life. The ways in which the reader comes to know Mireille are tough and uncomfortable and merciless and deeply intimate. An Untamed State is not the sort of book you enjoy, strictly speaking. The author does not hesitate to be explicit when the occasion calls for it, and I think it pays off.
The picture of Mireille the book provides is complete. Gay shows readers her courtship with her husband, Michael, but starkly contrasts it in alternation with her 13 days of absolutely horrific captivity. Whatever you’re thinking Mireille goes through—double it, triple it. And then the aftermath: the most painful, emotional, unbearable part. There was something in that last quarter of the book that touched me in a visceral, painful way. No part of An Untamed State is truly comfortable, but the last section was even more—more of everything that Gay had written before, and worse, because now, at last, Mireille was supposed to be safe, to feel safe.
But really, how do you recover from trauma such as this? How can you?
As Mireille finds you, you don’t. There is no point where you are ever “okay” again. Not in the same way, not ever. And that is one of the most the most gut-wrenching, simple truths I have ever read. There is hope and peace and acceptance, but there is no being okay, in the aftermath.
