First-generation Haitian American Mireille is the daughter of a successful businessman in Port-Au-Prince. This is Gay’s debut novel, evolved from the short story “Things I Know About Fairy Tales,” originally published here at Necessary Fiction in 2009. The result is a story of sharp focus that will have a lasting impact even on a desensitized population of readers accustomed to sex and violence in movies, music, and television. What makes the novel difficult is the content, and especially the way Gay approaches the content: with full-forced, head-on, unapologetically clear writing about the kidnapping and rape of a young mother.
This isn’t a plot or character issue, nor a problem of challenging vocabulary.
