Rape In Life and in the World of YA Fiction

I've written about Young Adult (YA) fiction previously, in large part because it is reportedly about the only literary genre experiencing significant growth in sales. As such, it has attracted a lot of attention and various established authors who previously ignored this segment of the market have started to write for it.

These are not children's stories. No topics are off limits and perhaps partially as a result of that, lots of adults are said to be readers of these books, too.

A Powerful Story of Quiet Desperation

“The Apartment," in the Aug. 31, 2015 issue of The New Yorker, is a powerful story of quiet desperation, set in Sweden, a country more “buttoned up” than America, author Jensen Beach says in one of the magazine’s regular author interviews.

Louise, married with a grown child and seemingly leading a comfortable middle-class life, is actually a hollowed-out alcoholic who hates her husband, her son and presumably just about everyone else. In the background, is the road not taken – an affair with an Iranian graduate student when she was at university. Instead of pursuing that, she opted for a conventional marriage with another Swede.