Kellcey by Kacey Kells tells the story of a bright happy teenager living in Victoria, British Columbia, with her parents and sister, Cindy. Their idyllic family life is shattered by the untimely death of Cindy and Kellcey becomes increasingly lonely as her grief stricken parents constantly bicker, blaming each other for the untimely death of their daughter.Kacey (alias Kellcey), a beautiful … beautiful teenage girl, is unable to find the love and attention she needs at home and finds it in Ben, a fellow student at her high school. Head over heels in love with Ben, she commits herself totally to him, despite her reservations about the company he keeps. A horrific sexual assault at a party where Ben fails her badly, is to leave Kellcey traumatised and unable to continue to live in her beloved Canada.
She tries to rebuild her shattered life in far off London with a new friend and an online alter ego: ‘Kellcey’. Kacey Kell’s compelling and at times disturbing book takes us on the teenager’s life journey. Courageously, she deals with the dramatic issue of violence against girls and women, and its consequences.
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This should be required reading in high schools!
Being a victim of rape myself, this was a very emotional read for me. My heart goes out to Kacey for all that she was brutally subjected to and I’m sure still endures to this day. It had to be a heart wrenching challenge to relive the horror in the writing of this book, but hopefully it was somewhat cathartic as well.
Since rape can and does occur anywhere, no matter how reputable your attire or professionally you are presenting yourself (in my case, at my job at a floor covering business) the victim may not necessarily have control to change where they are, but perhaps by reading this book it may prevent a person from committing this heinous crime or being a willing participant with someone else.
At any rate, I pray that Kacey can someday find closure and peace, and that this book will help bring awareness to the unmerciful emotional, physical, and psychological torment a rape victim has to learn to overcome. You never know what a person may be carrying inside them just trying to get through each day. So be kind .
Prayers to you, Kacey.
Teenager reveals her plummet and recovery after sexual,physical,and emotional abuse.#metoo
The tragic events that this young woman faced and lived through is/was tragic.A difficult read for me.#metoo
I,wholeheartedly,recommend Kellcey because,in my opinion,it’s groundbreaking ,in terms of gaining insight into the horrible treatment,twisted rape subculture that subversively pervades our society! The resilience,however,yes,resiliency which is heroic,in my opinion,will leave you informed,torn,inspired,and,perhaps,even a lot more understanding of some horrific realities that face some of our very own teenagers.
A first-person, chronologically forward-moving novel, Kellcey begins with the heroine describing her early life, a “beautiful, peaceful and safe environment’ before delivering the hook which inexorably draws the reader into the story. Fast forward then to early teens to reveal the heroine tragically losing her sister but ‘blossoming’ into a confident 15-year-old falling in love for the first time with a confident, broad-shouldered, muscular handsome hero.
Ben, the ‘dreamboy’ of Kellcey’s desire is so deliciously described, one could be forgiven for thinking it the beginning of a wonderful romantic novel; an illusion maintained in subsequent chapters which describe the day her romantic ‘hero’ asks and takes her on a date, their blossoming romance, the meeting parents, holiday surfing and stolen kisses in the school yard. The fantasised contrasts with courtly love, vampire romance and Regency’s le bon ton are also worthy of mention; I particularly loved the tragically ironic juxtaposition of the maternal dragoness and the fair maiden rescued by the knight in shining armour.
Of further interest was the way a free-spirited grandmother and a more stubborn grandparent who embodied ‘millenia of archaic traditions’ were contrasted. The author provides a wonderfully coloured palette, upon which, like a classical painter of old, the heroine paints interesting arguments on social Darwinistic follies. Is it, she argues, fair for parents to expect their daughters to behave maturely when they are cocooned in the cotton wool pseudo protectionism of traditional genderist dogma? The real question it quite rightly elicits though, is, why, after millions of years of evolution, are we even in this situation? Surely to God, in a world of equality our daughters (and sons) should always be free to come and go as they please without the fear of negative consequences? Alas, this question still has no reassuring answers in a society where we are constantly bombarded with the stark reminders of how the innocent, too many times, fall victim to the indifferent, cold-blooded, fork-tongued champions of greed, lust, envy, wrath, pride, gluttony and sloth.
One such malign entity comes in the form of, John, who from the start makes crude and inappropriate remarks around Kellcey forcing Ben to intervene. This foreshadowing and framing of a culture that treats women as property at extremely young ages and teaches boys the objectification of women is a normal part of the homosocial order is the central theme of the story and casts its malevolent shadow over the blossoming romance between the two star-crossed lovers. Kellcey is, in many ways, a profound social commentary on a par with other greats such as Priestley’s “An Inspector Calls” and Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” both which, similarly highlighted the suffocating injustices and inequalities suffered by women.
What I thought quite excellent in Kellcey, and what gave the book its own unique powerful voice was how the heroine as her older, wiser self, would share her own thoughts and effectively coach the reader pointing out danger signs, suggesting what is right, what is wrong, and more importantly, how things in life can start to go amiss in ways one may not fully appreciate at the time. The eloquent message she drives home is especially relevant to all young lovers – beware the folly of building up your hopes and dreams on the shaky foundations of a bad romance.
And in spite of Kellcey’s initial deification of Ben, it is indeed a bad romance. His abuse and excessive drinking cause him to all but pass out at a party. This is seen as a green light by John, who, together with a group of his friends commits the most despicable of crimes. The chapter describing exactly what happens next comes with a warning as indeed it should. It pulls no punches and is not for the faint hearted. Reading it will leave you horrified, mortified and infuriated and in my case, an overwhelming desire to climb into the story book and deal out some summary justice.
In the aftermath and like Cormier’s classic novel, we find who the real ‘heroes’ are. The maternal dragoness, the girls in the rape crisis centre, kind-hearted Philip and the wounded veteran amongst others, all help Kellcey in different ways to come to terms with the contemptible crime committed against her. We have a flash forward to older Kellcey’s perspective and whilst I won’t drop any spoilers, the additional message she leaves is one of hope which really should be written in stone: A balanced and strong society cannot treat girls and women as a weak link; rather, it must see them as a full part of the community. A society cannot achieve all its potential if such discriminations remain.
In conclusion, I confidently predict generations of students will be studying Kellcey in future English literature modules in a way not too dissimilar to the way we study other such classical texts as Hemingway, Steinbeck & Priestley. Kellcey is a heroine with a powerful voice and the message she delivers is way too important for any civilised society to ignore.
Kellcey is a story everyone should read. It is especially timely in today’s “Me Too” era, but this narrative about the effects of a brutal sexual attack on a teenaged girl is timeless. I’m neither young nor female, but I can vouch for the impact this memoir carries. I could feel her pain.
It’s a message that we all have to hear. Rape is not just a horrible, traumatizing experience, it changes a victim’s life forever. Its impact is not just physical; it’s emotional, psychological, and it destroys self-esteem. Just as importantly, the damage never completely goes away. This is not new information to those who pay attention to the plight of many women in today’s culture and throughout history. I have seen, firsthand, the lasting effect such abuse has on a woman even decades after it occurred.
What may be new for some readers are the details of the abuse and the very real struggle that follows. We follow the life of Kacey Kells from an early teen to a young adult, and she pulls us into the memoir in the beginning and never lets us go.
Yes, for the most part, the narrative reads like the diary written by a young girl who hasn’t yet experienced much of life, and who has little use for proper punctuation and pacing. But it is, after all, exactly that–a diary. The editor in me was put off early on, by the overabundance of exclamation marks, multiple question marks, intrusive parenthetical comments, and paragraphs that regularly run for more than a page. The thing is, these very issues are what pulls you into the mind and emotions of a teenaged girl who still has a lot of growing up still to do. It is, in effect, real. Warning: Some of that reality may be too much for the faint of heart.
Kells takes us through family tragedy and turmoil that confuses and confounds her throughout the bulk of the narrative. But it’s the violent rape and the brutal verbal abuse that accompanies this despicable act that sticks with the reader well after the last page.
But Kellcey is not an essay on the effects of sexual abuse. It is a chance to go inside the mind and emotions of a victim of that abuse, in a way that only that victim can portray.