Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State was surprising. I enjoyed the story and the writing. The brutality was endless, but written in a way that put just enough distance between the reader and the story, so that they could get through it without breaking. Or breaking completely. Miri and Michael came from different worlds, and I would have never put them together, but they worked. And even when they didn’t, they did. I appreciated they way the writing conveyed Miri’s mental state and the tug-o-war between the person she was before, the person she felt she had to become to survive, and the person she needed to be to live after surviving.
Had I truly understood what the book was about, I would not have read it. I usually steer clear of stories that tell of a person’s captivity, but I don’t regret going into this somewhat blind.