Prayers For The Stolen - Softcover

Clement, Jennifer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1444823272 ISBN 13: 9781444823271

Publisher: Ulverscroft Ltd, 2015

Synopsis

'Now we make you ugly,' my mother said. 'The best thing you can be in Mexico is an ugly girl.'

The Narcos only had to hear there was a pretty girl around and they’d sweep onto our lands in black SUVs and carry the girl off. Not one of the stolen girls had ever come back, except for Paula.

She came back a year after she’d been kidnapped. She held a baby bottle in one hand. She wore seven earrings that climbed the cupped edge of her left ear in a line of blue, yellow and green studs and a tattoo that snaked around her wrist.

'Did you see that? Did you see Paula’s tattoo? my mother said. You know what that means, right? Jesus, Mary’s son and Son of God, and the angels in heaven protect us all.'

At the time, I didn’t know what that meant. But I was going to find out. Guaranteed.

About this title

Review:

"Prayers For The Stolen is stark and brutal, but not without happiness. “Mexico is a warren of hidden women”, says Jennifer Clement. This book is a way of seeing them" (Stylist)

"Every sentence in Prayers for the Stolen is direct, potent, unexpected; twisting on the page like a knife in the gut... This work also gives us all of a novel's pleasures – a story laden with significance and drama and meaning, a keen feeling of relationship between reader and characters, a fully realised world through which we may roam" (Kirsty Gunn Guardian)

"[Clement] shows the black comedy in the details and the emergency in the broader picture" (Gaby Wood Telegraph)

"Bleak, but beautifully written... Clement's prose is luminous and startlingly original. The sentences are spare and stripped back, but brilliantly manage to contain complex characters and intense emotional histories in a few vividly poetic words. Her portrayal of modern Mexico is heartbreaking; a dangerous and damaging environment for women, but her portrait of Ladydi and her refusal to be one of the lost girls is defiantly bold and bravely uncompromising" (Eithne Farry Sunday Express)

"Ladydi’s irreverent voice sings off the page and there are laughs to be had as she relates her mother’s drunken wisdom and seeks to find a way to live" (Cathy Retzenbrink Metro)

Book Description:

It was Paula’s mother who had the brilliant idea of digging the holes. My mother said that the State of Guerrero was turning into a rabbit warren with young girls hiding all over the place...

About this edition

• Publisher: Ulverscroft Ltd
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1444823272
• ISBN 13: 9781444823271
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296