The New York Times Book Review - Joyce Carol Oates
…[a] painful and candid…novel about the consequences, seemingly irremediable, of childhood sexual molestation—particularly the sort of protracted molestation that is never exposed or punished…From the perspective of three child victims, The Wisdom of Perversity bravely dramatizes and confronts these issues in the plainest language possible. Here is the antithesis of Nabokov's Lolita, in which pedophilia is (essentially) a pretext for some very fancy postmodern prose…Yglesias has known the real thing, and has chosen not to refashion it into anything other than itself.
Publishers Weekly
01/05/2015
In past books, author and screenwriter Yglesias dealt with media success (Hot Properties), parenting (Only Children), survival (Fearless), and love and loss (A Happy Marriage). But this latest work of fiction is probably his most nakedly autobiographical, mirroring his Slate article about being sexually molested at age eight. In 1966, Brian Moran and Jeff Mark are nine-year-old best friends living in Rego Park, Queens, who are both molested by Jeff’s middle-aged cousin, Richard Klein, an NBC vice president, who also molests Julie Rosen, another cousin of Jeff’s. All three children keep silent, and Brian and Jeff stop speaking to one another. Forty years later, when Klein is publicly accused of molestation, Brian, now a successful screenwriter, Jeff, a producer and director of Hollywood blockbusters, and Julie, an archivist for the New York Public Library, are forced to confront one another about what really happened when they were children and whether or not to break their decades-long silence. As the story moves toward its emotionally devastating climax, the author refuses to allow his characters anything approaching an easy resolution. Instead, he shows how a combination of guilt, fear, silence, and hidden agendas conspire to allow sexual predators to go unpunished. In the end, this novel dramatizes some dark truths about the continuing fallout of being a victim of abuse. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
‘Childhood was the ideal soft metal for the permanent engravings of evil.’ This beautifully, bleakly precise statement occurs early in Rafael Yglesias’s painful and candid new novel about the consequences, seemingly irremediable, of childhood sexual molestation…From the perspective of three child victims, The Wisdom of Perversity bravely dramatizes and confronts these issues in the plainest language possible. Here is the antithesis of Nabokov’s Lolita…set beside the grim literalness of The Wisdom of Perversity, as beside any case history of sexual abuse, Lolita is a lark, an extravagance, a phantasm of romance, a tour de force, a jubilant metaphor. Yglesias has known the real thing, and has chosen not to refashion it into anything other than itself.” —Joyce Carol Oates for The New York Times Book Review “The sly courage, the deft intelligence, and the fierceness of vision that we, his fans, have come to expect from a Rafael Yglesias novel all blaze brightly forth—and cast very dark shadows—in The Wisdom of Perversity.” —Michael Chabon, author of Telegraph Avenue “Child molestation is an ugly subject event when seen from a distance, and Yglesias pulls the readers inside the children’s heads. The outrage is intense . . . This makes the reader feel exactly what the girl feels: violated. Not that it ever happened to me—but it could have. If I hadn’t told.” —Miami Herald “Yglesias delivers a powerful message about victimization, healing, and empowerment in a novel that is as timely as it is poignant.” —Booklist “Many contemporary works of fiction are bold, but few are this courageous. With The Wisdom of Perversity, Rafael Yglesias has written a frightening, evocative, and intensely compassionate novel that manages somehow to do the impossible, shedding light on one of the darkest corners of this human theater.” —Helen Schulman, author of This Beautiful Life “[A]n affecting novel that is big-screen lurid without being superficial or too slick . . . [with] a touch of Agatha Christie-like mystery.” —Kirkus Reviews—Review quotes
Review quotes
‘Childhood was the ideal soft metal for the permanent engravings of evil.’ This beautifully, bleakly precise statement occurs early in Rafael Yglesias’s painful and candid new novel about the consequences, seemingly irremediable, of childhood sexual molestation…From the perspective of three child victims, The Wisdom of Perversity bravely dramatizes and confronts these issues in the plainest language possible. Here is the antithesis of Nabokov’s Lolita…set beside the grim literalness of The Wisdom of Perversity, as beside any case history of sexual abuse, Lolita is a lark, an extravagance, a phantasm of romance, a tour de force, a jubilant metaphor. Yglesias has known the real thing, and has chosen not to refashion it into anything other than itself.” —Joyce Carol Oates for The New York Times Book Review “The sly courage, the deft intelligence, and the fierceness of vision that we, his fans, have come to expect from a Rafael Yglesias novel all blaze brightly forth—and cast very dark shadows—in The Wisdom of Perversity.” —Michael Chabon, author of Telegraph Avenue “Child molestation is an ugly subject event when seen from a distance, and Yglesias pulls the readers inside the children’s heads. The outrage is intense . . . This makes the reader feel exactly what the girl feels: violated. Not that it ever happened to me—but it could have. If I hadn’t told.” —Miami Herald “Yglesias delivers a powerful message about victimization, healing, and empowerment in a novel that is as timely as it is poignant.” —Booklist “Many contemporary works of fiction are bold, but few are this courageous. With The Wisdom of Perversity, Rafael Yglesias has written a frightening, evocative, and intensely compassionate novel that manages somehow to do the impossible, shedding light on one of the darkest corners of this human theater.” —Helen Schulman, author of This Beautiful Life “[A]n affecting novel that is big-screen lurid without being superficial or too slick . . . [with] a touch of Agatha Christie-like mystery.” —Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
2015-01-07
Three New York friends, in their childhood and adult selves, deal with a wily pedophile in an affecting novel that is big-screen lurid without being superficial or too slick. In his 10th novel, Yglesias (A Happy Marriage, 2009, etc.) presents the children's past trauma and their present-day reckoning in alternating chapters. Jeff's adult cousin, Richard Klein, has already molested the 8-year-old boy when his predatory attention turns to Jeff's best friend, Brian. The third victim is Julie, Jeff's young cousin, who is 11. It's hard to say whether the more devastating scene is the 23-page playlet in which Klein traps Julie on his lap in a room full of adults and children and forces the boys to watch him secretly molest her; or the paragraph in which Jeff makes an imaginary adventure of his desperate efforts to dispose of bloodied underwear without his mother's knowledge. As adults, Brian is single and a successful screenwriter, Julie is a library archivist and married with a teenage son, while Jeff, on his third marriage, is the top film director in the U.S. After years apart, the three reunite because Klein has just managed to elude exposure in another scandal and the trio is debating going public. Yglesias provides several revelations that ramp up the shock in an already awful tale and add a touch of Agatha Christie-like mystery. The author's experience with Hollywood as a producer and screenwriter (his own novel Fearless and other scripts) brings color and humor to the Brian and Jeff characters. Early in the book, a strange apologia for a character named Aries Wallinksi, who is clearly Roman Polanski (could this be a roman à clef in more ways than one?), previews many of the novel's themes and then reverberates late in the story with Julie's cry: "I want people to understand it isn't just priests and a couple loner weirdos." Yglesias of course exploits headlines and Hollywood to tell his tale but not without sensitivity. Most important, he shines a Kleig light where it may be most needed, into the parlors and playrooms where many Americans endure or perpetrate these nightmares.
