Kindness of Strangers

The Kindness of Strangers by Katrina Kittle

You’ve gotta admire Katrina for taking a risk. Not every author is willing to fictionalize such difficult subject matter as child sexual abuse. She seems to have invested a good amount of time researching her subject matter and indeed there is a long list of knowledgeable folks in the acknowledgement section at the end of the book. The story is told in chapters rotating in point of view from each of the main characters, a mother, her two sons, and a family friend of her youngest son. A child abuse scandal is exposed in a community where such things are unimaginable and the characters are forced to deal with the ramifications. Emotions run the gambit from disbelief to acknowledging the possibility of such horrific things of their friends and finally to accepting the reality of the situation all the while living their daily lives. They thought they had it bad before by having to deal with the recent death of their husband and father but that was only a precursor to the horribleness of the boy who was forced into sex with his father and other random strangers at sex parties.

We experience the deep pain and trauma of this boy and come to better understand the tricks of the mind needed to cope with such atrocities. But it is a bitter pill to swallow and throughout the course of reading this book I had to lay it aside three different times and pick up something lighter to wash away the layer of scum that lay upon my heart from reading the words. This is not a feel good book although by the end I did come to love and root for the characters.

Katrina chose to include the love stories of the characters at the same time this crazy stuff was going on. The shift from reading about the child sexual abuse to reading about the perfectly normal longings and feelings of consenting adults was too jarring and frankly creepy. It’s difficult to switch from disgust and indignation to lust and longing. Yet I understand why she wrote it this way. It is a way to show that we do not live in a vacuum and we are diverse, flexible creatures dealing with the horror while at the same time feeling an attraction for someone new in our life. These things can happen at the same time or at least with in a short amount of time with each other. For example, Katrina shows how difficult it is to come to grips with both as the disgusting abuse photos invade the mind of the teenage son as he struggles to make love for the first time with his girlfriend. Overall, well written but highly disturbing. -Flourish