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Extracts

Gun Love by Jennifer Clement

Prayers for the Stolen

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…

The theme of Prayers for the Stolen is the wanton violence inflicted on women and the destruction of communities as a result of the drug trade in Mexico, but Clement's eye for the revealing detail, the simple poetry of her language and the visceral authenticity of her characters turn that deadening reality into a compelling, tragically beautiful novel

A moving  novel narrated by an open-hearted teenage girl growing up in the  borderlands of Mexico controlled entirely by the drug cartels. Lyrical,  disturbing and not without optimism, this work deserved far more acclaim  when published last year

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

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

[Clement] shows the black comedy in the details and the emergency in the broader picture

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

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

Despite its violent premise, this is a darkly comic read with one of the funniest, most touching narrators in years, highlighting a very real issue in a remarkably fresh way. An inspiring story of female resilience

With Ladydi, Jennifer Clement has created a feisty teenage heroine who is an unforgettable character

This book has attracted a huge amount of attention and deservedly so

The brutal background of this terrific novel is only too real; Clement brings a modern tragedy to vivid life

Kaleidoscopic... Glints with occasional shards of comedy as black as the charcoal used to obscure female beauty

This is a harrowing, compelling story, and will stay with you for a very long time

This is an illuminating tale of womanhood in rural Mexico and a stunning portrait of a hopeful heroine in the face of adversity

This is a rollercoaster of a novel that will make you laugh, wince and gasp. We look forwards to reading more of Clement’s work

Lyrical, disturbing and not without optimism

Clement's first-person telling of the story through her spirited narrator…in spare prose delivers emotional immediacy and demands engagement.

The most enchanting journey I’ve taken in a long, long time, and the most important. Prayers For The Stolen is a hand-guided tour through a ruthless true corner of our century, with characters so alive they will burrow into your heart like worms. Stunningly written, magically detailed, you see, smell and taste the action on every page, feel every foible, and miss the candour of these funny, achingly human voices long after you put them down. As the heroine herself might say: not something to read but to lick off a plate.

Prayers For the Stolen is a magnificent story, as filled with a wisdom so dense and ancient as to seem almost unbearable. One wants to turn away, but cannot. It’s a mesmerizing read, illustrative of the idea that even traces of beauty, deeply felt, can help carry a traveler through the harshest landscape, or the harshest life.

Jennifer Clement was born in 1960 and has lived in Mexico since 1961. She is a graduate of New York University. She is the author of the memoir Widow Basquiat and two novels: A True Story Based on Lies, longlisted for the Orange Prize and The Poison That Fascinates. She is also the author of several books of poetry, and is co-founder and director of the San Miguel Poetry Week. Jennifer Clement was awarded the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) Fellowship for Literature 2012. She was also President of PEN Mexico from 2009 to 2012 and is a member of Mexico's prestigious Sistema Nacional de Creadores. She lives in Mexico City.

‘Now we make you ugly,’ my mother said. ‘The best thing you can be in Mexico is an ugly girl.’ 
 
On the mountainside in rural Mexico where Ladydi lives, being a girl is dangerous. Especially a pretty one. If the Narcos hear there is a pretty girl on the mountain, they steal her. So when the black SUVs roll into town, Ladydi and her friends hide in the warren of holes scattered across the mountain, safely out of sight. Because the stolen girls don’t come back. 
 
Ladydi is determined to get out, to find a life that offers more than just the struggle to survive. But she soon finds that the drug cartels have eyes everywhere, and the cities are no safer than the mountains.

Jennifer Clement

Jennifer Clement's new novel is appallingly timely ... Ms Clement creates a weird poetry of murderous force. Chekhov’s narrative principle—that a gun hung on the wall in the first act must eventually go off—has become a metaphorical rule of storytelling. To reflect American reality, Ms Clement puts a gun on every wall in every room

A neon fairytale... written in the punchy, exaggerated style of a graphic novel, it’s surprisingly enjoyable

Clement's book is charged with gut-punch sentences and indelible images, but [the] second act is particularly searing ... Propelled to its inevitable denouement less by plot than by the intensity of its author's prose and singular vision, this is an uncompromising snapshot of America's ills

Clement's spare, often oblique style makes this book feel like a great lost murder ballad by the likes of Johnny Cash or Nick Cave ... excellent at describing the intensity of the love between a mother and child within a claustrophobic environment, and the disruption that a hostile male presence causes to this bond ... One of those rare books that the reader might wish to be a few dozen pages longer, to spend more time in this fully realised world

Haunting ... poetic ... Full of sorrow and aching sweetness, “Gun Love” provides a glimpse of people who dwell every day knee deep in the toxic waste of our gun culture. They may be America’s forgotten children, but after reading this novel, you are not likely to forget them

Though this world is harrowing, it's also fortified with ample wit and tenderness. The sweet sorrow of doomed maternal love is at the novel's thrumming center, as is the author's cockeyed affection for the region. "In our part of Florida everything was puzzled," Pearl tells us. Gun Love potently illuminates this puzzled land, and the complicated fates of those who dwell in the pockets visitors won't find on a map

Offer[s] a glimpse of what a poetics of gun violence might look like… In this book, the machinery of violence purchases a sense of belonging—of thrilling, life-or-death simplicity

The writing is crisp and the images are sharp

It’s been a long time since I’ve been so mesmerized with a novel’s each next sentence. Jennifer Clement is one of our most inventive novelists. There’s no telling what she’ll see. Whatever it is, it’s something right in front of us, but—here is the magic trick—something we have never before seen. Gun Love is an amazement: fierce, inventive, tender

Through a memorable coming-of-age story set in America’s margins, Clement makes all of these things true at once: A gun is a valentine, a secret-bearer, a penitent, a world destroyer, an exposed belly, an insurance policy, a sudden act of God

Clement is a brilliant stylist... her metaphors and similes are superb; and together they create a haunting atmosphere ... Always evocative, it is an unforgettable knockout not to be missed

Pearl’s story takes place in a world both strange and familiar, in the fairy tale of her mother’s imagination and in an America pockmarked by gun violence and poverty ... Clement’s quiet tragedy is moving, unsettling, and filled with characters who will haunt you long after the story ends

Clement’s affecting and memorable novel is also an incisive social commentary that will give readers much to ponder

Clement turns her hypnotic pen to the story of America’s love affair with guns

Taut, spare, musical, metaphor-laden, haunting, and every so often it hits you so hard in the gut that you gasp

The inventiveness and charm of Clement’s narrative voice are such that Gun Love never stops being a pleasure to read. Every paragraph is nutty and passionate and glamorous

**Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction 2018** 
 
 'Haunting ... poetic ... Full of sorrow and aching sweetness' Washington Post 
 
Gun Love is a hypnotic story of family, community and violence. Told from the perspective of a sharp-eyed teenager, it exposes America's love affair with firearms and its painful consequences. 
 
'My mother called anyone or anything that seemed alone, or ended up in the wrong place, a stray. There were stray people, stray dogs, stray bullets, and stray butterflies.' 
 
Fourteen-year-old Pearl France lives in the front seat of a broken down car and her mother Margot lives in the back. Together they survive on a diet of powdered milk and bug spray, love songs and stolen cigarettes. 
 
Life on the edge of a Florida trailer park is strange enough, but when Pastor Rex's 'Guns for God' programme brings Eli Redmond to town Pearl's world is upended. Eli pays regular visits to Margot in the back seat, forcing Pearl to find a world beyond the car. Margot is given a gift by Eli, a gun of her own, just like he's given her flowers. It sits under the driver's seat, a dark presence... 
 
'One of those rare books that the reader might wish to be a few dozen pages longer, to spend more time in this fully realised world ' Observer 
 
*Soon to be a film adaptation directed by Julie Taymor*

Jennifer Clement

Praise for Gun Love

Jennifer Clement's new novel is appallingly timely ... Ms Clement creates a weird poetry of murderous force. Chekhov’s narrative principle—that a gun hung on the wall in the first act must eventually g ...

A neon fairytale... written in the punchy, exaggerated style of a graphic novel, it’s surprisingly enjoyable

Clement's book is charged with gut-punch sentences and indelible images, but [the] second act is particularly searing ... Propelled to its inevitable denouement less by plot than by the intensity of ...

Jennifer Clement's new novel is appallingly timely ... Ms Clement creates a weird poetry of murderous force. Chekhov’s narrative principle—that a gun hung on the wall in the first act must eventually g ...

A neon fairytale... written in the punchy, exaggerated style of a graphic novel, it’s surprisingly enjoyable

Clement's book is charged with gut-punch sentences and indelible images, but [the] second act is particularly searing ... Propelled to its inevitable denouement less by plot than by the intensity of ...

Jennifer Clement's new novel is appallingly timely ... Ms Clement creates a weird poetry of murderous force. Chekhov’s narrative principle—that a gun hung on the wall in the first act must eventually g ...

A neon fairytale... written in the punchy, exaggerated style of a graphic novel, it’s surprisingly enjoyable

Clement's book is charged with gut-punch sentences and indelible images, but [the] second act is particularly searing ... Propelled to its inevitable denouement less by plot than by the intensity of ...

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