A sharply humorous and fast-paced first novel about the effects - some predictable, some wildly unexpected - that an encounter at gunpoint have on a previously assured young woman. The gun is pointed at 21-year old Ellis as she walks through a New York park. Although she escapes unharmed, and without being robbed, she is left psychologically reeling. Over the next weeks Ellis keeps everyone at bay; the police, suitors who want to save her, and the university therapist who hints that her sweaters are too tight. But when ...
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A sharply humorous and fast-paced first novel about the effects - some predictable, some wildly unexpected - that an encounter at gunpoint have on a previously assured young woman. The gun is pointed at 21-year old Ellis as she walks through a New York park. Although she escapes unharmed, and without being robbed, she is left psychologically reeling. Over the next weeks Ellis keeps everyone at bay; the police, suitors who want to save her, and the university therapist who hints that her sweaters are too tight. But when Ellis accompanies her mother, a nurse, on a mission in the Philippines, she finds that life - even if held up - cannot be held back, and neither, finally, can she.
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Ellis, the protagonist in Vendela Vida's book, has a profoundly disturbing experience: a man grabs her in a park, telling her he is going to kill himself, and he does not want to go alone; he is taking her with him. Ellis, trying to convince him there is much to live for, recites poetry to him, since it is art and poetry that transform lives. After persuading the would-be killer and suicide to accompany her to a bookstore, he lets her go. Ellis, understandably shaken by the experience, stops functioning as she did before. She sees her attacker in all men. She gets episodes of excruciating psychic pain; her senses, especially smell, work on overload. Her relationships, with her mother, sister, friends, but especially her father, are all reexamined. But eventually, from her frozen state, come the glimmerings of understanding. After a mission trip accompanying her mother to the Philippines, she sees "mother's laughing ? her mouth falling far open -- and Freddie's bouncing in her red sneakers... it's too much love to handle at once" (137).
The community is mobilized to find her attacker. By the time he is found by vigilantes, Ellis has moved on; she has "all forgiven him". Through her attack she is brought to an epiphany, to forgiveness. She can look at the men who have hurt her, by extension at all men, who have all hurt someone, and ? forgive each man as he entered the door to his home? (189). Vendela Vida has written a beautiful, wise book.