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Feel Safe
Feel Safe
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This is a simple but powerful novel about a young woman, Jennifer, who survives a violent rape, but finds herself pregnant from the rape. The reader agonizes with her as she struggles to decide if an abortion is the best solution for her. This book doesn't make judgments or pretend there are answers that are right for everyone. Instead, it looks honestly at some of the choices women face today, and how painful those choices can be. After she decides to keep and raise her baby, Jennifer struggles with the frightening legal reality that her rapist could come back and try to claim her baby. Throughout these suspenseful difficulties, the reader shares her joy and amazement as she discovers motherhood, and her deep love for her baby girl. But it's tough for everyone, especially a victim of violent crime, to raise a girl child with a balance of healthy caution and a sense of security in this world. It's also hard for her to reconcile her strict religous upbringing with her reality, which includes a beloved older brother who is gay. Jennifer is anxious to figure out what she believes, and what to teach her child. She also faces the challenge of learning to trust men again, and to be brave enough to fall in love.
This book is interesting and exciting, but it makes you stop and think. It has a pace that keeps you interested, and characters you care about. Best of all, it raises important questions. How safe are we, as American women, in our day to day lives? What are the things that threaten us: violence, illness, poverty? What are some of the ways the ways we deal with fear: religion, serial romances, the need for control? Can there be real consolation in some of these? The novel asks about the ways we judge one another, and how judgement helps people feel safe.
Most of us deal with these questions, to some extent, in our lives. Looking at them in the context of Jennifer's life makes them easier to ask. As the book ends with one more frightening situation, Jennisfer realizes that she must make peace with the reality that there will always be reasons to be afraid. Security will never come from creating a perfectly safe world, because that's impossible. It can only come from accepting our lack of control, and learning to live with it. Feeling safe has to be in spite of danger, because vulnerability is part of the human condition.
This novel is timely and contemporary. Current issues like problems with organized religion and gay rights are explored. Abortion, always a topic of interest in the news, is an important subject in this book. It is a mainstream literary novel, in the spirit of Anita Shreve's work. I would also compare it to Anna Quindlen or Jacquelyn Mitchard. It's the kind of book that makes a great discussion for a book club. Reading it is a deeply interesting and satisfying experience.
This book is interesting and exciting, but it makes you stop and think. It has a pace that keeps you interested, and characters you care about. Best of all, it raises important questions. How safe are we, as American women, in our day to day lives? What are the things that threaten us: violence, illness, poverty? What are some of the ways the ways we deal with fear: religion, serial romances, the need for control? Can there be real consolation in some of these? The novel asks about the ways we judge one another, and how judgement helps people feel safe.
Most of us deal with these questions, to some extent, in our lives. Looking at them in the context of Jennifer's life makes them easier to ask. As the book ends with one more frightening situation, Jennisfer realizes that she must make peace with the reality that there will always be reasons to be afraid. Security will never come from creating a perfectly safe world, because that's impossible. It can only come from accepting our lack of control, and learning to live with it. Feeling safe has to be in spite of danger, because vulnerability is part of the human condition.
This novel is timely and contemporary. Current issues like problems with organized religion and gay rights are explored. Abortion, always a topic of interest in the news, is an important subject in this book. It is a mainstream literary novel, in the spirit of Anita Shreve's work. I would also compare it to Anna Quindlen or Jacquelyn Mitchard. It's the kind of book that makes a great discussion for a book club. Reading it is a deeply interesting and satisfying experience.