- Published: 1 April 2015
- ISBN: 9780099587590
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 240
- RRP: $22.99
Prayers for the Stolen
- Published: 1 April 2015
- ISBN: 9780099587590
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 240
- RRP: $22.99
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
[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
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
Psychologies
With Ladydi, Jennifer Clement has created a feisty teenage heroine who is an unforgettable character
Good Housekeeping
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
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
This book has attracted a huge amount of attention and deservedly so
Four Shires
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
Yann Martel
The brutal background of this terrific novel is only too real; Clement brings a modern tragedy to vivid life
The Times
Kaleidoscopic... Glints with occasional shards of comedy as black as the charcoal used to obscure female beauty
Sophie Baggott, Times Literary Supplement
This is a harrowing, compelling story, and will stay with you for a very long time
Louise O’Neill, Irish Times
This is an illuminating tale of womanhood in rural Mexico and a stunning portrait of a hopeful heroine in the face of adversity
Antonia Charlesworth, Big Issue
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
Cambridge News
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
Kazuo Ishiguro, New Statesman
Lyrical, disturbing and not without optimism
Kazuo Ishiguro, New Statesman
Clement's first-person telling of the story through her spirited narrator…in spare prose delivers emotional immediacy and demands engagement.
Guardian, Book of the Year
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.
Rick Bass
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.
DBC Pierre