![roxane gay an untamed state roxane gay an untamed state](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QbYfrWboNsg/WosbnH4AeXI/AAAAAAAADcg/_j1M4eKLL3c_5L_-1i298y_aqgRWC7XAwCLcBGAs/s1600/An%2BUntamed%2BState.jpg)
![roxane gay an untamed state roxane gay an untamed state](https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/entertainment/books/2017/01/25/roxane-gay-parts-with-simon-schuster-over-book-deal-with-milo-yiannopoulos/itcowroxanegay-cr.jpg)
To what degree does even the most reproving representation of sexual abuse participate in the visceral thrill and habituate us to such treatment? One of the finalists, Bob Shacochis’s “The Woman Who Lost Her Soul” - which also takes place largely in Haiti - is a spectacular exploration of the spiritual and psychological damage of American foreign policy, but it inscribes that damage most vividly on the mind and body of a young woman. The issue came up in all its complexity last fall while I was serving on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. We just needed a chance to catch our breath, wipe down the floor and reflect on what it means to critique and even praise depictions of sexualized brutality. A few years ago, thrillers about women being tortured to death were showing up so frequently in Book World that we set down a quiet moratorium for a few months. Ever since the second President Bush squandered a century of moral progress by making torture stylish again, it seems impossible to watch television without seeing someone getting flayed, drilled or sawed. In this country, it seems to inspire a lot less consternation than the over-representation of sex, but that’s for another day on the couch. I have serious reservations about the over-representation of violence. Owing to the power of Gay’s prose, the immediacy of the narrator’s voice and the graphic nature of this ordeal, it’s some of the most emotionally exhausting material I’ve ever read. For more than 200 pages, she’s beaten, burned, sliced and gang-raped. Set in modern-day Haiti, “An Untamed State” is the story of an American lawyer who’s kidnapped while visiting her rich parents in Port-au-Prince. Roxane Gay doesn’t make it easy to recommend her riveting first novel.