[REVIEW] Magenta Rave, by Janna Zonder

302 pages, Paperback $11.66/Kindle $4.99

Review by Hannah Rodabaugh

A Crime Is Its Cutting End: Janna Zonder’s Magenta Rave

Magenta Rave, Janna Zonder’s first novel, is a crime story in its heart. Inspired by the Lorena Bobbitt trial, it follows a wave of serial assaults in the Atlanta area on recent prison parolees who were incarnated for sexual assault. The perpetrator, who calls herself Magenta Rave, surgically removes the members of the men after drugging them at sleazy bars (roofies, or Rohypnol, makes a lot of appearances) and luring them to motel rooms.

The book opens with the first victim waking after what he imagines was a wild night with a strange woman only to find his penis missing and a carefully applied surgical bandage in its place. The victim is rushed to the hospital, and there we meet the main protagonists of the story: Atlanta detectives Simone Rosenburg and her partner Marty Sloan. Both detectives are in their 40s. Rosenburg, originally from Jamaica, is divorced with a teenage daughter; Sloan is country man who, when not doing police work, tills the family farm.

The other important characters in the story center around Dr. Delia Whitfield, a respected psychiatrist, and a few of the women in her evening therapy group for sexual assault and abuse survivors. As the book progresses, it zeros in on Delia and two of the group women: Tina Galenski, a sex worker with PTSD, and Catherine O’Donnell, a local actress with dissociative identity disorder (previously referred to as multiple personality disorder). As the novel progresses and the victim count rises, it becomes increasingly obvious that one of these three women is Magenta Rave, and Zonder does a good job deflecting your suspicious back and forth as new information is presented.

One of the things Zonder does a tremendously competent job of is the way she makes all the characters unique with distinct ways of talking and acting. To me, this is one of the real strengths of the novel, and she jumps between wildly different perspectives with ease. Catherine, the character with DID, uses her different personalities as characters in her one woman show about childhood sexual abuse. The ways of speaking between the different personalities, and the characters they portray, are striking. In one part, we go from a tap dancing cop who sings about how women deserve sexual assault, (“If rape is your fate, why hesitate. You tempted the boy. Lay back and enjoy. Enjoy. Enjoy. Enjoy.”), to a monologue by a young prostitute named Tanya:

She was under the misguided notion that if she only went so far, she wasn’t really a prostitute, since “any fool knows a blow job ain’t really sex.” …

“Men are like cows,” she said. “You got to milk ‘em on a regular basis. I provide a public service, see? The penis is directly connected to the brain. You milk ‘em to drain the pressure so their heads don’t blow up. Them other organs in between? They’re just for show.”

As entertaining as this type of reading experience is, Zonder is also using her story to ask some complex and uncomfortable questions about our ability to effectively punish serial rapists and sexual offenders within American society and beyond. To that end, she works hard to make you emphasize with the assault and abuse survivors in the book. Many of the chapters where the group therapy women’s stories are conveyed are presented as case studies for Dr. Delia Whitfield’s research, and this gives them an air of truth, as if you were reading the actual stories of actual survivors.

The role and presentation of Magenta Rave complicates this, however, as the book seems ambiguous as to whether we should identify with her actions as a vigilante or not. For example, in one scene, Magenta Rave throws her most recent victim’s dismembered penis into a ravine where someone’s body had been dumped after being raped and murdered:

She removed the gauze-covered penis from its plastic bag and held it for a moment. How inconsequential it is, she thought. So small. So light. How can anything this insignificant be the source of so much devastation?

“My dear Lana, I whisper your name in this unholy place to free it. Is your spirit trapped here, trying to find its way home? Were you still alive when that monster threw you away, sacked up like garbage?”

She was crying now and shuddered, as she once again felt the deep chasm’s pull on her, like the devil’s own mouth trying to suck her through the gates of hell. She braced herself against the onslaught. “I offer this sacrifice in your memory and in memory of millions of women and children throughout time who have been sacrificial lambs to the depravity of men.”

She lifted the severed penis in one hand, palm up, as an offering. She bowed her head, and humbly and silently prayed for God to show her the error of her ways. Was she wrong in what she was doing?

At the same time, the book’s conclusion suggests (albeit in a lukewarm way) that the idea of fixing crime with more crime is not the way to mitigate rape and abuse. Whatever your perspective on these issues, Magenta Rave is a piquant thriller that asks some hard questions along the way. While I had a pretty good idea who Magenta Rave was before the end, it is still a pretty fun ride to get there.

***

Hannah Rodabaugh received her MA from Miami University and her MFA from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School. Her work was included in Flim Forum Press’ anthology: A Sing Economy. Recently, her work has been published or is forthcoming in Defenestration, Used Furniture Review, Palimpsest, Similar:Peaks::, Horse Less Press Review, Drupe Fruits, Smoking Glue Gun, and Nerve Lantern. Her chapbook, With Words: Verse in Concordance, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press.