Is there, can there be, anything redemptive in the story of a girl kidnapped and held captive by a delusional young man? I read these two articles just after reading Stolen by Lucy Christopher, and I’m still not sure:

The Redemptive Narrative in Jaycee Dugard’s Captivity Story by Karen Swallow Prior at Christianity Today.
Jaycee Dugard’s Memoir, An Acclaimed Novel, and the Art of Writing About Captivity by Ruth Franklin in The New Republic.

Both articles refer to captive Jaycee Dugard’s memoir, A Stolen Life, and novelist Emma Donoghue’s best-selling fictional account of a mother and son in captivity, Room. Stolen is a YA novel, and it’s fundamentally different from the memoir and the novel because there is no rape or sexual abuse involved, and consequently no children are born. However, the girl in the story, Gemma, who is kidnapped by a man who has been stalking her for some time, does begin to identify with her captor, just like many real-life captives do.

The New Republic says of Jaycee Dugard and her kidnapper: “she stops short of calling him insane, which he clearly is.” Gemma at first thinks her kidnapper, Ty, is insane, but later she is confused by just how much she identifies with him and how reluctant she is to call him either evil or mad. And Stolen takes the reader step by step into that sort of world where everything one knows to be true is turned upside-down–without using the obvious plot/character device of making Ty into an evil rapist. Ty is delusional, and what he has done—kidnapping an innocent girl–is wrong, but Ty is not evil. Gemma wants to escape, but when she does, she’s torn by her continued concern for Ty’s well-being and her new-found love for wide open spaces. (Ty takes her to the Australian outback.) In other words, it’s complicated.

I’m not sure to whom I would recommend this book. It seems a little scary and other-worldly for most teens, but maybe some would be haunted by it in a good way, as I have been. There are no paranormal elements in the book, except for a little bit of aboriginal mysticism about being part of the land, so those who are looking for vampires and werewolves wouldn’t find them. Adults and young adults who have read and liked Room might like this YA novel, but if the child narrator part of Room was what you enjoyed, you won’t really find that in Stolen. Gemma is young, but she’s pretty much left childhood behind; certainly by the end of the book, she’s an adult with adult problems and issues.

At any rate, I did find Stolen to be absorbing and evocative. The descriptions of the Australian countryside and desert landscape are worth the time, if you like that sort of thing.