R.D Jahn; Acts of Violence review
Ryan David Jahn's
Acts of Violence is the retelling of the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese - an extremely unfortunate incident wherein 38 people witnessed her struggle, and yet none did a thing to help her.
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In this novel, the girl is called Katrina, and is attacked when on the verge of walking into her bottom-floor apartment. The crime itself was one of calculation, though the victim was not chosen in advance, and took the form of two separate attacks. In the first one, the girl is stabbed repeatedly (within plain sight of the windows of many watching neighbours), until the assailant eventually runs. The second attack takes place later, when the attacker again feels the disturbing urge to kill, and involves a violent rape. It is at the point where a police officer is giving a resident a lift home (and fighting with the man) where the girl is finally found, and help is called.
The storyline jumps from one neighbour to the next, changing at points in which their lives intersect (for example, when Katrina is driving home, she drives past a neighbour leaving, and the story picks up with him once she parks her car). The manner in which this is done is reminiscent of Paul Haggis' 2004 release,
Crash. During the text we discover great secrets about each of the neighbours - including how one has faked a family for years - while another is driven to the point of assisting his mother in suicide, in order to leave to serve his country. In each case, a reason is given as to why they do not call for help; the most prominent reason being
we don't want to tie up the lines, someone else will have called by now.
In my opinion, it is a great book, which is definitely worth a read. It is excellently constructed, with many different paths. It also demonstrates well the ripple effect caused by such events, and the Bystander theory developed after the 1964 murder of Genovese.
/ [
Duke Devlin]
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