Survival Isn’t Redemption—It’s Just Survival

There are books you read, and then there are books that grab you by the throat and don’t let go. Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State is the latter. It’s devastating. Unrelenting. And yet, somehow, beautiful.

This is the story of Mireille Duval Jameson, a Haitian American woman kidnapped outside her family’s estate in Port-au-Prince. Her wealthy father refuses to pay the ransom. What follows is thirteen days of brutality, followed by a lifetime of reckoning.

Let’s be clear: this is not a story that flirts with darkness—it plunges straight into it. The trauma is not background noise. It is the story. And yet, the prose is so poetic and concise, so sharp with clarity, that you can’t help but follow Mireille into the depths. It’s raw and deeply emotional without being overwrought. The sensory details are masterful—so vivid you’ll smell what Mireille smells. When she flinches, so do you. When she dissociates, you feel yourself slipping.

Themes of privilege, patriarchy, family loyalty, and resilience pulse throughout. Mireille’s relationship with her husband, Michael, and her parents—especially her emotionally detached father—is examined with the same fearless scrutiny Gay gives to the trauma itself. The result is a novel that is not only about what happens to someone, but about how we rebuild after the unthinkable.

What’s most remarkable is that Gay never offers the false comfort of resolution. There is no tidy arc, no triumphant redemption. She reminds us, insistently and intimately, that recovery after trauma is not a linear process. It is not a journey toward “better.” There is no cure. There is only time. And time, for Mireille, becomes both her prison and her path.

This novel holds multitudes: it’s about power, about the body as a battleground, about the quiet violence of being disbelieved. It’s about what happens after—how one learns, or doesn’t learn, to touch, to trust, to be.

Even in its darkest moments, An Untamed State finds glimmers of strength—not in triumph, but in the small, stubborn acts of survival. There are also poignant moments in Mireille and Michael’s past. Their love story, interwoven through the narrative, becomes Mireille’s emotional refuge—a memory to cling to when everything else is stripped away.

It’s not an easy read. It’s not meant to be. But if you can bear it, An Untamed State will leave its mark on you in the way only the most fearless fiction can.

Trigger warnings: sexual violence, torture, PTSD. Gay approaches these with unflinching honesty and empathy, but the content is heavy and not for the faint of heart.