TAINT

A Kansas high schooler becomes obsessed with retribution after her best friend, a teenage boy, is raped in this debut novel.

During the fall semester of 2001, Rebecca White is looking forward to graduating from Plains High and enjoying new adventures, hopefully in a green Jeep, with Luke Warren riding shotgun. They dated briefly in middle school and are now the closest of friends; he believes in Rebecca, who wants to be “authentic with a capital A. The real deal.” So, when Luke badly needs to talk one night, she’s ready to listen. He swears her to secrecy and describes how some classmates lured him to a lake house in the woods, supposedly to hang out and drink beers, but instead he was verbally abused, beaten up, and raped at knifepoint. Eventually, he reveals that the rapist was Weston Ames, a boy who walks with a swagger, “rules the school,” and is the principal’s son. Over the coming months, Rebecca struggles with the burden of “being burned alive by silence” and her rage over Luke’s ordeal, finally making a promise to herself: “Weston will pay for what he has done.” Her plan to make this happen could work, but at what cost? In her novel, Kelley draws attention to the plight of male rape victims, but it’s really Rebecca’s story. Her anguish is real, and she’s a compellingly complex and intelligent character. Yet it often seems as if Luke’s trauma is all about her—a terrible, crushing burden that she resents. Although Rebecca sacrifices much in wreaking revenge, she almost seems to appropriate Luke’s experience to do so. And while Luke’s refusal to speak up and report his rape adds to his trauma, his voice is nearly absent—the book paradoxically enacting the silencing it decries.

A searing, dark tale, but the vengeful protagonist overshadows the trauma victim.