If I am Missing or Dead
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- ¥1,600
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- ¥1,600
発行者による作品情報
In April 2002, Janine Latus's youngest sister Amy wrote a note and taped it to the inside of her desk drawer. 'If I am gone or dead', it read, 'question Ron'.
By the time the letter was found, Amy was already missing. Helicopters and 'missing' posters went up and search dogs were sent out. It took more than two weeks to find Amy's body, wrapped in a tarpaulin and buried at a building site. Ron had been Amy's boyfriend. He is now in prison for her murder.
Since childhood, Janine and Amy had been sexualised and belittled. As adults the sisters, trapped in a cycle of abuse, ended up in a series of violent relationships. Finally, Janine faced her demons and, with Amy's support, escaped in time. But Amy was keeping a terrible secret of her own ...
Amy never escaped. She died in silent fear and pain. Janine has resolved to break that silence so that her sister didn't die in vain.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At age 37, Janine Latus's younger sister, Amy, was strangled to death by her live-in boyfriend, bundled in a plastic tarp and buried beside a remote country road. It was a wretched end to a too-short life, one frequently marked by disappointment, sadness and struggle. In the hands of a less gifted writer, Amy's story might stand only as an encomium or a cautionary tale: a glimpse into the life of one abused woman, representative of thousands like it. But Latus weaves a double strand. Part memoir, part biography, the book (which grew out of an article in O Magazine) explores Latus's own relationships with abusive men and her eventual emancipation from a marriage riven by emotional and physical violence. Latus has a spare, economical style, softened by an undercurrent of humor and marked by a total absence of self-pity. When on a ski vacation, a boyfriend brutally beats her, breaking several of her ribs and her nose and then makes love to her, in a twisted form of penance Latus doesn't wince in the retelling. She lets ambiguities and contradictions abide: she loved her husband, even as he humiliated and hurt her. Had things been slightly different, she seems to say, she and not Amy might have perished at the hands of her partner. Unforgettable, unsentimental and profoundly affecting, Latus's book resonates long after the final page is turned.
