Review of Rape: Sex, Violence, History by Joanna Bourke

I read this impressive and intensively researched book from the point of view of an educated general reader, a woman and a feminist, but not an expert on rape or sex crimes in general. It is highly controlled, well argued and scholarly, but with little jargon, and she does occasionally interject her own feelings. In fact, she states in the preface that her reason for writing the book was fear, followed by anger at a statistic: 'I read a Home Office report that revealed that only 5 per cent of rapes reported to the police in the UK ever end in a conviction' (vii). This anger does not drive the text, but it indicates the passion that ignited the task, and the book is better because of it. And each section has an epigraph, verses from Cecil Day Lewis' poem 'Sex-Crime', which balances the facts with poetic representation of the injustice of rape and its aftermath.

Continued at Metapsychology Online Reviews.