The kindness of strangers

Although the back of the book attempts to summarize without hinting at content, my friend Cecily actually recommended this to me specifically because it was about childhood sexual abuse. If that is something you prefer not to spend free time thinking about, then don't read this. After working at a sexual assault crisis hotline for 3+ years, however, I'm sort of inclined to think that because silence surrounding child victims is almost as significant a form of oppression as the abuse itself, that we'd all do well to make ourselves feel nauseated by this reality sometimes (and truly–you will feel ill). In that respect, this is a great book. Kittle has obviously done boatloads of research, and the perps in this book are not old men driving big white vans; they are, like real pedophiles, the people you would least expect, and when the horror is revealed, everyone is ready to be angry, but no one is ready to acknowledge that for every child whose story is told, countless others are silent. Her treatment of how one small community is affected by the abuse is spot-on, and she is tremendously sensitive to all the nuanced types of havoc this can wreak, especially on children not directly involved, but still having to comprehend the abuse. As a novel, it's not the best, simply good. So, expect a quick read–there is a happy ending, and I found myself racing towards it desperately (the whole read took probably 6 hours). And I do applaud Kittle for creating a work of fiction that does some consciousness-raising to boot.