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Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨ Campbell's Reviews > An Untamed State
An Untamed State
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Wow, if this isn't made into a Netflix miniseries soon, somebody's sleeping at their desk. This had everything I love in fiction-- a strong and flawed female protagonist, a dark storyline, breakneck pacing, and even a little romance. I'm keeping AN UNTAMED STATE on my Kindle forever as a reminder of what good writing looks like, because whoa. My feelings have been put into a blender and thoroughly shaken.
AN UNTAMED STATE is about the daughter of one of Haiti's wealthiest businessmen. She is a lawyer and a success in her own right, married to a white man who is the son of farmers. Once, she helped take care of his mother while she was recovering from cancer. His mother was an ignorant and proud woman, but her brush with death and her love of her son made her love Mireille too. Now, she and her new baby and her husband are in Haiti, and she is slowly getting her husband to love the country she has been taught to love.
And then she gets kidnapped.
And her father refuses to pay the price the men who have taken her are asking.
The story is told in two parts: during and after. One is a traditional thriller story of survival and bravery. The other is a story of healing and recovery. Mireille and her husband, Michael, are the narrators. I don't want to say too much more because of spoilers, but the things that Mireille endures at the hands of her captors is brutal. It reminded me a lot of the dark erotica, BREAK HER. Through torture, Mireille learns a lot about her own ability to survive and endure. She is reduced to an untamed state, which could also refer to Haiti itself: a place of beauty that, in her privilege, she has always glimpsed through rose-tinted glasses, unable to see the poverty and the desperation that can make mortal men so cruelly desperate.
This book has triggers for virtually everything but it is so deftly handled and such a starkly brilliant portrayal of humanity at its best and worst that nothing felt sensational. I love Gay's nonfiction and felt only lukewarm about her fictional short story collection that I read, but this book was absolutely masterful. I seriously can't even find the words to explain how much I loved this and why, but I know it's probably going to end up being one of my favorite books of the year. It's that good.
5 stars
by
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨ Campbell's review
bookshelves: thriller, dark-and-twisted, rape, nenia-recommends, poc-interracial, the-lost-girls, black-author
Feb 05, 2023
bookshelves: thriller, dark-and-twisted, rape, nenia-recommends, poc-interracial, the-lost-girls, black-author
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Wow, if this isn't made into a Netflix miniseries soon, somebody's sleeping at their desk. This had everything I love in fiction-- a strong and flawed female protagonist, a dark storyline, breakneck pacing, and even a little romance. I'm keeping AN UNTAMED STATE on my Kindle forever as a reminder of what good writing looks like, because whoa. My feelings have been put into a blender and thoroughly shaken.
AN UNTAMED STATE is about the daughter of one of Haiti's wealthiest businessmen. She is a lawyer and a success in her own right, married to a white man who is the son of farmers. Once, she helped take care of his mother while she was recovering from cancer. His mother was an ignorant and proud woman, but her brush with death and her love of her son made her love Mireille too. Now, she and her new baby and her husband are in Haiti, and she is slowly getting her husband to love the country she has been taught to love.
And then she gets kidnapped.
And her father refuses to pay the price the men who have taken her are asking.
The story is told in two parts: during and after. One is a traditional thriller story of survival and bravery. The other is a story of healing and recovery. Mireille and her husband, Michael, are the narrators. I don't want to say too much more because of spoilers, but the things that Mireille endures at the hands of her captors is brutal. It reminded me a lot of the dark erotica, BREAK HER. Through torture, Mireille learns a lot about her own ability to survive and endure. She is reduced to an untamed state, which could also refer to Haiti itself: a place of beauty that, in her privilege, she has always glimpsed through rose-tinted glasses, unable to see the poverty and the desperation that can make mortal men so cruelly desperate.
This book has triggers for virtually everything but it is so deftly handled and such a starkly brilliant portrayal of humanity at its best and worst that nothing felt sensational. I love Gay's nonfiction and felt only lukewarm about her fictional short story collection that I read, but this book was absolutely masterful. I seriously can't even find the words to explain how much I loved this and why, but I know it's probably going to end up being one of my favorite books of the year. It's that good.
5 stars
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Reading Progress
February 5, 2023
–
Started Reading
February 5, 2023
– Shelved
February 5, 2023
– Shelved as:
wishlist
February 5, 2023
– Shelved as:
thriller
February 5, 2023
–
0.0%
"I've really enjoyed Roxane Gay's nonfiction so I'm excited to see her take on fiction"
page
0
February 5, 2023
–
3.0%
"There are three Haitis—the country Americans know and the country Haitians know and the country I thought I knew."
February 5, 2023
–
9.0%
"Oh my god this is so dark and so good. It kind of reminds me of the book BREAK HER, except not erotic. It has that same feeling of desolation and hopelessness. I've never read anything like it."
February 5, 2023
–
29.0%
"Oh my God I can't put this down this is the most intense thing I've read in a while"
February 6, 2023
–
31.0%
"On a stress level of 1 to 9, I'm at a solid 11. If it weren't a work day, I'd probably stay up all night trying to finish lol."
February 6, 2023
–
39.0%
"So I'm definitely going to be finishing this today because I NEED to know what happens"
February 6, 2023
–
53.0%
"I ate so fast, like something starving, feral. That is what I was, from the Latin fera for wild animal, something menacing, existing in an untamed state."
February 6, 2023
– Shelved as:
dark-and-twisted
February 6, 2023
– Shelved as:
rape
February 6, 2023
– Shelved as:
nenia-recommends
February 6, 2023
– Shelved as:
poc-interracial
February 6, 2023
–
60.0%
"“It is an amazing thing,” my father once told me after Christophe was born, “how much a child loves a parent. That kind of love terrifies me.” That may be the only true thing my father has ever told me."
February 6, 2023
–
61.0%
"Pain could not break me. My body knew that now. My body knew there were no limits to what it could endure. I wanted to tell everyone I met, you have no idea what I can take. I wanted to tell the doctor, you have no earthly idea what I can take."
February 6, 2023
–
94.0%
"Girl children are not safe in a world where there are men. They need to learn to be strong."
February 6, 2023
–
Finished Reading
February 7, 2023
– Shelved as:
the-lost-girls
July 31, 2024
– Shelved as:
black-author
