Reviews of
After Silence

• Media Reviews
• Additional Praise
• Readers' Comments

Media Reviews

". . . fascinating, beautifully rendered."
San Francsico Examiner

"After Silence is riveting. . . it reads like a best selling novel."
The Women's Review
of Books

. . . Raine is so honest a psychological explorer that she recognizes that rape is different from other kinds of assault-mugging, say--precisely because it evokes feelings of perversity and self-loathing, which silence the voice of pain. . . .

Her analysis of the experience of self-blame is deep. She writes: "The sense that I was responsible for the rape supported a more important belief, one that I could control what happened to me, that my actions had a bearing on the outcome of my life."

. . . Whatever one thinks of the discourse of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) as a way of talking about rape, its psychiatric proponents have never before had so authentic and qualified a front-line correspondent.

According to Veena Das, an anthropologist who has written about the suffering of raped and abducted South Asian women, "Denial of others' pain is not about the failings of the intellect but the failings of the spirit." There are few published first-person accounts of the experience of being sexually pillaged and its aftermath. "After Silence" is one of the first and, I would wager, it is always going to be one of the best.
-The New York Times, September 20, 1998

. . . what makes this book so memorable is her story and the powerful literary way she tells (about her experience of
rape). . . . Her healing begins when Raine recalls a quote by painter Georges Braque, who said, "Art is a wound turned to light." Many readers will feel the same way about this brave book.
-Newsweek, October 5, 1998

After Silence is the story of a woman who survives a horrendous ordeal, it's also the story of someone slowly and painfully acquiring a genuine identify. That achieving this sometimes results from suffering, or even a harrowing encounter with evil like Raine's, is one of life's strangest ironies."
-Salon Magazine, August 21, 1998

(Starred review) In the years since long-kept silences were broken by the women's movement of the '70s, numerous accounts of rape survival have illuminated the profound impact of rape on all members of society. Poet and essayist Raine's fearless and probing work may be the most eloquent as well as one of the most intelligent accounts to date, informed both by her own experience as a woman who was brutally raped and by current research on the effects of trauma (including studies pointing to a biological basis of post-traumatic stress
syndrome). . . . Raine reiterates the idea that rape is about power and control, not sex, and explores the emotional fallout experienced by rape victims, such as loss of identity, self-blame, anger, and isolation. Regardless of whether the reader or a loved one is a rape survivor (and statistics suggest this would be a huge audience), there is much to be learned from this excellent work about the nature of rape and survival.
-Booklist, May 1, 1998

Nancy Venable Raine's After Silence: Rape & My Journey Back (Crown) is the story of her seven-year struggle to put her life back together after a devastating attack. Raine is a poet, and this memoir has a fluidity and honesty that makes even the most painful passages readable. Of course, a lot of it is painful: the rape itself, the grueling legal process that followed, her attempts to rebuild connections in a suddenly threatening world. But there's hope as well, as Raine finds hidden resources of strength in her community, her friends and most of all herself.

-Harper's Bazaar, August, 1998

Additional Praise for After Silence

" an enormously important book for both men and women."
Reading Group Choices

". . . may be the most eloquent as well as one of the most intelligent accounts to date."
Booklist

"After Silence is a personal road map of the journey back to wellness after one's body has been violated. How sad it is we need such a book, but since we do, how wonderful it is we have it."
--The Honorable Pat Schroeder, former U.S. Congresswoman
and President and CEO of the Association of American
Publishers

"Deeply thought-provoking and emotionally powerful, After Silence made me rethink many of my ideas and feelings about rape. Nancy Raine addresses issues that many others have addressed before--but she does it on a much more profound and visceral level than I have yet seen."
--Mary Gaitskill, author of Bad Behavior and
Because They Wanted To

"This is the most important book ever written about rape. It breaks new ground in personalizing and contextualizing the aftershock of trauma. I am deeply grateful that Nancy Venable Raine has chosen to break her silence about this still fraught and dangerous topic."
--Louise DeSalvo, author of Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work

"What Nancy Venable Raine gives us in After Silence is a brilliant and complex vision of evil and redemption. Taking us with her on her journey, she moves us back by inches from the brink of Hell. Like all seminal works, this book will change the way we think. It will change the way we consider the 'we and they' of rape."
--Lynn Freed, author of The Mirror

"Who could imagine such a calm, wise, beautifully written book on the subject of rape? After Silence is a gift to others who, like Nancy Raine, have triumphed over terror. It's also a gift to the friends, family, spouses, and partners of rape victims. To read this book is to understand."
--Cyra McFadden, author of The Serial and Rain or Shine

Readers' Comments

Average Reader Comment on Amazon.com -- Five Stars

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