Rattled

 

I seem to be reading a lot of books about violence against women at the moment -- maybe there are just a lot more of them coming out at the moment. I raced through Ellis Gunn's account of her experience of being stalked -- it's extremely pacy and readable. Rattled is perhaps less scholarly than some books on this subject, but gripping in its use of anecdote and almost poetic summaries at the end of each chapter which really drive the reality of women's experience home.

Some might say Gunn was 'lucky' in that her stalker ('The Man') never physically attacked her, and eventually gave up his pursuit, but his stalking shattered her life for many months, making her terrified to leave her house, terrified to stay home alone, terrified to visit her usual haunts, terrified to travel anywhere new. But perhaps even more confronting than her account of the ordeal The Man inflicted on her is Gunn's almost casual recounting of other incidents in her life when she encountered or witnessed male violence: from an abusive marriage to seeing an elderly man on a train trying to persuade a young lone backpacker to come and stay at his house. Haven't all our lives been filled with incidents like these? Haven't we all, even if we haven't experienced violence ourselves, at least felt the feather's touch of the 'lucky escape,' or shuddered at a friend's story? And yet for so long we've shrugged off this behaviour as being just the way the world is. Perhaps things are finally shifting -- but alas, experience teaches us that any ground gained will probably be followed by an even worse backlash. 

Watch this space.