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"All Night Long" by Unknown Author (violent rape) 10, 10, -
"All Night Long" by Unknown Author. Guest review by Sandman (sandman@bitsmart.com). This story takes a female convenience store clerk and has her pull the night shift. She's "young, vivacious, and perky" and is ignoring her parents' concerns about her working the graveyard shift. The second night on the job her store is held up by two armed robbers who submit her to a few paragraphs of terror before deciding that if all they're going to get from the heist is $40.00 then they'd better tie up the woman and cop a feel and get the hell out. After this a steady stream of people filter into the store, each and every one sexually assaulting the clerk. Thus the title; she is terrorized, victimized, and raped "All Night Long". The story is told from the store clerk's point of view which intensifies the terror and anguish. This story was written in a style that normally allows me to "fall into" the story. That is the grammar, punctuation, and the flow of the words is smooth and easy to read. The story however was so alien to my value systems that I found it impossible to read more than one or two sentences before finding myself back in the real world and thankful for it. This is not necessarily the fault of the story; perhaps it's the fault of the reviewer. In Venus I guess I'm going to wing it (I normally do that in Athena at least where punctuation is concerned, but I like to think I'm pretty good in Venus). The problem is the story IS the rape and the violence. In this manner it's not a story so much as a series of scenes. Therefore it should be rated on the quality of the sex (and I guess violence). So here there's two numbers. If you don't like rape and violence then Venus is a 4 (most of the assailants are stereotypical cardboard characters but Jennifer plays her part well). If this sort of thing turns you on Venus is a 10. Now we come to appeal. I initially declined to rate this in appeal to reviewer. Since I'm not in the target audience of this story I feel declining to put a number here would be better than giving it a zero (which to some people implies it is a bad story regardless of the other two numbers). It's my way of asking you, the reader, to decide for yourself if the subject interests you. Celeste really pushed for a number though, even if qualified. She pointed out that there must be other good stories I don't like -- the story of the crucifixion, "The Telltale Heart", by Poe, "Clockwork Orange" and here I believe she was referring to Stanley Kubrick's movie rather than the incredibly shallow book. As usual she makes a very good point. These examples, however, make a statement beyond the violence about life, society, or the human condition. "All Night Long" would be like "Clockwork Orange" showing only Alex's orgy of violence without the following commentary on society's tampering with the human mind and spirit. It would be like describing the crucifixion in exquisite detail, but only the crucifixion and none of the religious dogma before or after to explain why this travesty needed to happen. What we have with "All Night Long" is a story written to appeal to someone who glories in another person's suffering. In most violent stories or films there's a deliberate dehumanization of the victim, either by making the victim seem unworthy of caring for or simply not describing the victim well enough for the reader to make any judgments. Here though the victim is vividly described, her reactions are consistent with what we would expect those reactions to be, the story is even told from her perspective. The story is written in such a manner that the audience is expected to identify with the victim but the abuse which follows makes that extraordinarily hard. Once the reader identifies with the victim the abuse which follows also mentally happens to the reader. Therefore the appeal would only be to women who fantasize about being repeatedly and violently raped and to people who wallow in other people's suffering. I keep getting a disturbing image of a serial killer as he tortures his victim cursing the gods because he can only see his victim's reactions -- he doesn't REALLY know the victim is actually suffering. This story addresses that lack of knowledge. Here we KNOW the victim is suffering. I think the serial killer would be really happy with this story. There remains no appeal to me in this story. There is no redeeming message. It speaks to a target audience that I, thankfully, am not a part. I didn't like this story. It disturbs me that someone wrote it to begin with. It disturbs me further to realize there are people out there who will like it. Ratings for "All Night Long" Athena (technical quality): 10 Venus (plot & character): 4/10 Sandman (appeal to reviewer): -- |