Review by Choice Review
Also author of the well-received Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade (2008), Snyder (literature, American Univ.) has written an invaluable study of domestic violence. Even those who are familiar with the topic will learn a great deal from this book. What makes Snyder's book unique is her approach: she begins with a domestic violence homicide-suicide and works her way backward, through engaging interviews with family members and friends on both sides, to uncover the red flags and missed opportunities for intervention. Rich with both up-to-date statistics and the words of the survivors themselves, including the parents of the victim, this is both a critical resource and a page turner. This book could save lives. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Angela J. Hattery, George Mason University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
CITY OF GIRLS, by Elizabeth Gilbert. (Riverhead, $28.) Set amid the showgirls, playboys and gossip columnists of Manhattan's 1940s bohemian demimonde, Gilbert's new novel - her first since "The Signature of All Things" (2013) - is a pitch-perfect evocation of the era's tawdry glamour and a coming-of-age story whose fizzy surface conceals unexpected gradations of feeling. BAKHITA: A Novel of the Saint of Sudan, by Véronique Olmi. Translated by Adriana Hunter. (Other Press, $27.99.) A reimagining of the real-life story of St. Josephine Bakhita, captured as a child in Darfur and liberated in Venice. THE QUEEN: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth, by Josh Levin. (Little, Brown, $29.) During the Reagan era, the press immortalized Linda Taylor as "the welfare queen," a fur-wearing, Cadillac-driving woman who bilked the system for years. Levin reveals her as a scammer so protean that she had gone by at least eight different names by the time she was 22. SPRING, by AN Smith. (Pantheon, $25.95.) The third novel in Smith's seasonal quartet - consumed with Brexit, refugee detention, social media - suggests we're hurtling toward the horrific. NO VISIBLE BRUISES: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, by Rachel Louise Snyder. (Bloomsbury, $28.) Snyder highlights an epidemic of unacknowledged violence. Fifty women a month are shot and killed by their partners, and she explores the problem from multiple perspectives: the victims, the aggressors and a society that turns a blind eye. THE PIONEERS: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West, by David McCullough. (Simon & Schuster, $30.) McCullough's account of the early history of the Ohio Territory is a tale of uplift, with the antislavery settlers embodying a vision of all that was best about American values and American ideals. THE PANDEMIC CENTURY: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris, by Mark Honigsbaum. (Norton, $29.95.) Despite science's best efforts, pathogens keep crashing our species barrier: In the past century, they include Spanish flu, H.I.V. and Ebola. Honigsbaum analyzes each to explain pandemics. RANGE: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein. (Riverhead, $28.) Challenging conventional wisdom, this provocative book cites data to argue that in a complicated world, generalists are more successful than specialists. LOUDERMILK: Or, The Real Poet; Or, The Origin of the World, by Lucy Ives. (Soft Skull, paper, $16.95.) This clever satire of writing programs exhibits, with persuasive bitterness, the damage wreaked by the idea that literature is competition. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Although domestic violence is a difficult subject, this sympathetic look at victims, perpetrators, and intervention efforts by law enforcement and social agencies makes for compelling reading. Journalist Snyder takes readers beyond headlines and mind-numbing statistics, sharing specific cases brought to life through her thorough research, perceptive observations, and in-depth interviews. Snyder profiles victims, surviving families and friends, perpetrators caught up in cycles of abuse, detectives, prosecutors, and others who see the evidence of domestic abuse all too often. This is not a series of individual commentaries but rather honest, ongoing conversations, with multiple instances of horror, fear, guilt, bravado, remorse, forgiveness, and frustration. Along the way, readers learn about experimental programs and policies designed to diminish the stigma associated with being abused, disrupt inbred violent behaviors spawned by generations of abuse, and provide protection and justice for victims, along with their varying levels of effectiveness. Snyder's chilling body of evidence shows that domestic abuse is a pervasive epidemic that can and does happen everywhere and that there are no easy solutions in sight.--Kathleen McBroom Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this powerful investigation into intimate partner abuse, journalist and professor Snyder (Fugitive Denim) makes the case that "domestic violence, rather than being a private problem, is a most urgent matter of public health." She humanizes the price tag-victims in the U.S. collectively miss more than eight million days of work per year, and health-care costs borne by taxpayers exceed $8 billion annually-with closely observed, compassionate portraits of victims, advocates, abusers, and police. She also examines the interplay of culture, circumstance, and shame that keeps women with abusive partners, displaying a thorough understanding of systemic problems, including the lethal combination of common contributing factors, among them poverty, addiction, narcissism, and easy access to guns (in the U.S., 50 women a month are shot and killed by their partners). Balancing the gut-wrenching stories are hopeful explorations of resources that could prevent domestic homicides, including the Danger Assessment instrument used by medical professionals to assess an abuse partner's risk; programs that try to rehabilitate offenders; and comprehensive approaches to victim protection, such as that of DASH in Washington, D.C., which offers shelter to victims without disrupting their access to their homes, jobs, or communities. Penetrating and wise, and written in sometimes novelistic prose, Synder's sobering analysis will reward readers' attention. Agent: Susan Ramer, Don Congdon and Associates. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
It pains to read this latest work from American University professor and novelist Snyder (Fugitive Denim). Descriptions of violence against victims can trigger unease and sadness, especially in those who have experienced relational trauma firsthand. And while graphic, this book is not gratuitous; rather, it illuminates the realities of domestic violence, working off the premise that instead of only targeting survivor recovery, our concern must be eradicating the behaviors of those who commit abuse. Alongside heartbreaking victim accounts, Synder uncommonly interviews abusers, finding a pattern of boxed-in masculinity (while abusers can be either sex, most are men), in which individuals are locked into expressing their emotions and experiencing their masculinity as dominance over another (or rarely, from failing to uphold masculine stereotypes). While new initiatives such as domestic violence forensic analysis, which provides an NTSB-like critique of domestic violence murders, help close loopholes that have cost lives, Synder reaches into optimism by profiling programs designed to help men healthily display emotions and shatter traditional gender roles of power. VERDICT A compelling treatise on how domestic violence correlates with larger societal problems detracting from the quality of life for all genders.-Jennifer M. Schlau, Elgin Community Coll., IL © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A powerful exploration of the sinister, insidious nature of domestic violence in America.As an international reporter for more than two decades, Snyder (Literature/American Univ.; What We've Lost Is Nothing, 2014, etc.) encountered regular acts of violence against women adjacent to the issues she covered. The grim statistics about and the prevalence of unreported incidents both startled and motivated her to begin chronicling the universality of an issue that "is too often hidden." Through a graphically portrayed series of in-depth profiles, the author discusses how domestic violence has reached epidemic levels while efforts to curb the trend have been historically underfunded and ineffective. She elucidates this point in stories spotlighting both victims and assailants alongside the investigators and family members who've become all-consumed with sleuthing the crimes that have torn their relationships apart. She also tackles the complex conundrum facing victims of familial violence who choose to remain in abusive households. Intriguingly, Snyder probes the chilling territory of the perpetrators, sketching them from the inside out. Especially memorable is the author's incisive coverage of the communities responsible for creating change through victim advocacy, rehabilitative jail programs, batterer intervention groups, and transitional housing. In one scene, Snyder describes a state prison's group therapy session in which former abusers discuss "their own incidents of violence, times theydenied any wrongdoing, moments they manipulated or verbally threatened partners [and] instances of trivializing their own violent events. They begin to see, some of them for the first time ever, the effect their violence may have had on their victims." As these stories and perspectives evolve and deepen, the author contributes her own profound introspection on the nature of empathy and relatability, weaving in themes of enduring emotional trauma, the resilience of "deep stereotypes," and the many manifestations of physical and emotional violence.Bracing and gut-wrenching, with slivers of hope throughout, this is exemplary, moving reportage on an important subject that often remains in the dark due to shame and/or fear. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
