Raping of Ava DeSantis, The (Book)
MF Wahl
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Written by Mylo Carbia
Published by Rockefeller Publishing Group, Inc.
The Raping of Ava DeSantis by Mylo Carbia takes us on a journey from the brutal 1991 sexual assault of a quiet coed to her morbid present day revenge. After reading the three pages of blurbs at the front of the book praising the author on her writing, and twice inexplicably for her looks, I had high hopes. Sadly, this book was a disappointment.
The Raping of Ava DeSantis is riddled with problems. The first things I noticed, without having yet read a sentence, were the font and margins, both of which are overly large. What should be a book of around 200 pages has been ballooned to over 400. This problem alone, however, is not enough to cause a negative review. I only mention it because it’s indicative of the rest of the author’s decisions.
We all know rape is a sensitive subject. This is why I was surprised to find this book has hyper-sexualized every character and seems to fundamentally misunderstand the reasons rapes happen. It also contributes to negative stereotypes against women. In addition to that, rape in and of itself, many would argue, is not a reason to torture and murder the innocent and guilty alike. A successful rape-revenge story hinges on the fact that the victim has been victimized twice: once during the rape and again when the perpetrators are not brought to justice. This makes the victim relatable, the story more believable, and the horror that ensues palatable.
In The Raping of Ava DeSantis, although our perpetrators walk away scot-free, it’s because Ava chooses to take a million-dollar payout, not because of a lack of evidence or a terrible miscarriage of justice. The reasons behind our victim’s revenge killings are dubious and unbelievable at best—especially since it’s obvious that had she cooperated with the investigation, the rapists would have been prosecuted. One could argue that although she felt re-victimized by doing so, the circumstances and the brutality of the rape itself forced the victim to accept the million dollars—but you would be putting words into the author’s book that simply aren’t there.
This is my next grievance. Descriptions and subtext are lackluster to non-existent. Carbia relies on one-liners to tell us the thoughts and feelings of her characters or completely neglects to address them at all. When a scene is described, there is no nuance. The majority of the novel’s sparse descriptions are spent on sexualizing the characters or chastising them for not being beautiful enough. It’s an odd choice for a story and author touting female empowerment.
Everything in this book, much like its title, is flat and completely on the nose. Carbia neglects the reader. Instead of painting scenes word by word, she colors them as though they are an afterthought. More than a handful of times characters “reacted.” How did they react? Your guess is as good as mine because that’s as specific as the description gets. So-and-so “reacted.”
A pet peeve of mine while slugging my way through this novel was the author’s asides. The constant parenthesizing of ill-placed attempts at wit drove me nuts. However, what was truly mind-boggling was when Carbia broke the fourth wall to flat out write a character was so meek she didn’t “even deserve a character description.” This aside was so far removed from the rest of the narration style that it completely tore me out of the story.
At times I found the narrative choppy and difficult to digest. The author chronically switches POVs in an unnecessary and jarring manner. Narration would be flowing well with one character, only to gracelessly hop into the head of a side character for no apparent reason. I also found it odd when a short conversation between two characters was described to be a “dramatic Shakespearean soliloquy.” I had to go back, and not for the first time, just to make sure I didn’t miss something.
Another problem that pulled me out of the story was the book’s need for another proofread. Normally I’ll catch one, maybe two typos in a book—even from the big authors, but this was more than a few. The missing and incorrect words and punctuation all add to the downfall of the reader’s experience.
The real tragedy of this book isn’t the threadbare plot; the one-dimensional, stereotypical characters; or the uninspired dialogue—it’s the fact that it’s a story meant to be about a strong female protagonist, and it is anything but.
Ava, our rape victim-turned-vigilante, is only a ghost of a character, overshadowed by one of her rapists’ well-to-do life story. Near the end of the book the author dedicates one short scene to her life, her struggles, and to the reasons she was driven her to take revenge 15 years later. This small tidbit of something more hinted to me that the author is holding out on us. There is a much better, more interesting tale remaining untold. Had this information been the basis for the novel, instead of a tiny snippet, this may have been a much different review.
The true main character of this book is Wesley Scarborough, accidental rapist. That’s right. He and his two college buddies got drunk and smoked crack while partying with good girl Ava DeSantis. Poor ol’ Wesley got so messed up he thought was making love to his girlfriend, instead of horrifically gang-raping a fellow student in an attack that left her purposely disfigured, unable to bear children, and on death’s doorstep. Oops.
The book then spends the majority of its time coloring Wesley as woefully guilt-ridden and browbeaten by an overbearing mother. At times you wonder if the author is aware that this character comes across as sympathetic… until you remember that he and his two buddies mercilessly raped, tortured, and nearly killed a coed.
The icing on this novel’s cake of bad decisions is that little about it can be considered horror, aside from a few scenes that smack of shock value. I don’t have a problem with violence or gore in my reads, but I never want to feel like it’s been thrown in as a cry for attention. With the exception of the rape itself, the brutality and violence in this book do little to advance the plot. Although there is a vibrant market for “torture porn” with a purely sadistic narrative, this book can’t attempt to dance that jig, having only three scenes of “horror” with dead space in-between.
The Raping of Ava DeSantis reads like a fascination with the extravagantly rich and good-looking, rather than a horror tale of revenge. Page upon page languishes in the desert of who is wearing what designer label. There is no feeling of dark tension, no boogeyman hiding in the wings—there is not so much as a cheap closet scare to be found. As a result, this book belongs squarely in the thriller genre.
I had hoped, up until three quarters of the way through the book, that the much-touted “double twist ending” would be its savior. Unfortunately the twists left me scratching my head. This was because not only were they plucked from thin air and then slapped onto the page with not even the slightest attempt to foreshadow, but they barely made any sense.
I always try to look for the good in a work of fiction, and despite my dislike for this novel, I did find one saving grace—the rape scene itself. For all of the book’s flaws, this scene was handled with surprising delicacy. It is graphic for sure but does not go over the top. In fact, we learn of some of the most brutal aspects of the rape only after it has occurred.
Overall, this novel reads like a first draft. Despite its large page count, it is rather short, and because of this it’s missing huge expanses of depth for both character and plot development. It feels like Carbia has a much grander tale locked away in her mind but was unable to translate it to paper. This, combined with the technical problems, makes it impossible for me to give it anything other than a rating of two stars.
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