Joyce Carol Oates – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.18 CARTHAGE by Joyce Carol Oates /2014/carthage-by-joyce-carol-oates/ Fri, 28 Feb 2014 13:42:44 +0000 /?p=25639 Book Quote:

“Shouting himself hoarse, sweat-soaked and exhausted— ‘Cressida! Honey! Can you hear me? Where are you?’

He’d been a hiker, once. He’d been a man who’d needed to get away into the solitude of the mountains that had seemed to him once a place of refuge, consolation. But not for a long time now. And not now.

In this hot humid insect-breeding midsummer of 2005 in which Zeno Mayfield’s younger daughter vanished into the Nautauga State Forest Preserve with the seeming ease of a snake writhing out of its desiccated and torn outer skin. “

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (FEB 28, 2014)

Carthage is quintessential Oates. It is stylistically similar to many of her other books with the utilization of parentheses, repetitions and italics to make the reader take note of what is important and remind us of what has transpired previously. The book is good but it is not Oates’ best.

As the novel opens, the Mayfield family resides in Carthage, New York in the Adirondacks. Zeno Mayfield, once mayor of Carthage, and a political bigwig in a smallish town is the head of the family. His wife, Arlette, along with his two daughters, form the whole. Juliet, 22 years old is the “beautiful” daughter and Cressida, 19 years old is the “smart” one. Juliet is still living at home and she is an obeisant and sweet child, a devout Christian. She is engaged to marry Brett Kincaid, an Iraqi war hero who has been seriously injured in battle. He has suffered head injuries and walks with a cane. His face is badly scarred and he suffers from myriad problems requiring many psychotropic medications. However, Juliet’s love for him has never faltered. She drives him to rehab and stands by his side in all ways.

Cressida is the “difficult” child, always a loner and finds it difficult to look others in the eyes. Her parents have wondered at times if there is something wrong with her. She finds solace in drawing pictures reminiscent of M.C. Escher. She does not like people and is witty but sarcastic, cruel at times. She wears primarily black, avoids colors, and does not smile for the camera; for one day, she says, her photo will be her obituary photograph. She is an impulsive student in high school, doing very well in some classes and poorly in others because she thought the teachers did not like or respect her. She ends up going to St. Lawrence University where she lives mostly inside her head, continuing to be a loner, an “intellectual.”

In the book’s beginning pages there is an allusion to Brett’s temper and the fact that he has hit Juliet. She, however, has covered up for him by stating that she bumped her face.

Brett breaks his engagement to Juliet who is heart-broken. Secretly, Cressida is in love with him and one night she goes to a bar to see Brett who is not happy to see Cressida at all. He is drunk and Cressida gets drunk as well. He offers to drive her home but she never gets there. There is evidence of a struggle in the car – blood on the windshield and some witnesses who saw them arguing outside the car. What happened to Cressida? There is a huge search and eventually Brett confesses to having killed her despite the fact that Cressida’s body is never found even after a comprehensive and ongoing search.

Oates does a remarkable job of examining the fallout of Cressida’s death/disappearance on her family and the community of Carthage. Zeno never gives up hope that his daughter is still alive. Arlette becomes more involved in her church and volunteer activities, working on forgiveness and moving on with her life. Juliet is never the same due to the circumstances surrounding Cressida’s disappearance. Additionally, the reader is privy to the horrors of the Iraqi war including subsequent injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder that soldiers incur. Brett Kinkaid’s life is explored in depth before and after his deployment.

Thus we have the foundation for the novel. On another level, it is not likely a coincidence that Ms. Oates chose the characters’ names at random. Zeno is a famous pre-Socratic philosopher who is known for his paradox of never reaching one’s destination. If you are going somewhere and divide your destination by half, half of the distance will always remain. There is quite a bit about Plato, Sophocles and the early Greeks in this book. Juliet, of course, is the star-crossed lover in Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet. Cressida is also a character in a play by Shakespeare. However, “Cressida has most often been depicted by writers as ‘false Cressida,’ a paragon of female inconstancy,” according to Wikipedia.

The novel has some fascinating turns but, ultimately, it did not ring true to me. I can’t go into specifics without giving spoilers so I will leave it at that.

I try to read as much Oates as I can but she seems to write faster than I can read. She an an amazing and prolific writer. Even when she is not at her best, she is extraordinarily good.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 75 readers
PUBLISHER: Ecco (January 21, 2014)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Joyce Carol Oates
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read reviews of more Joyce Carol Oates books:

Bibliography:

Tales:

Stories:

Written as Lauren Kelly:

Written as Rosamond Smith:

Younger Readers:

Nonfiction:

]]> THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2011 edited by Geraldine Brooks /2011/the-best-american-short-stories-2011-edited-by-geraldine-brooks/ Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:41:23 +0000 /?p=21446 Book Quote:

“Daddy hadn’t meant to hurt her, she knew. Even Momma believed this, which was why she hadn’t called 911. And when the doctor at the ER had asked Lisette how her face had got so bruised, her nose and eye socket broken, she’d said that it was an accident on the stairs – she’ been running and she’d fallen.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (OCT 5, 2011)

This year’s editor of The Best American Short Stories 2011 is Geraldine Brooks, an accomplished journalist and fiction writer. She says of her selections “that the easiest and the first choices were the stories to which I had a physical response.” I would agree that the best stories in this collection are those that are most visceral and physical in nature. Ms. Brooks also states that “In the end, the stories I fell upon with perhaps the greatest delight were the outliers, the handful or so that defied the overwhelming gravitational pull toward small-canvas contemporary realism.”

There are twenty stories in this alphabetically arranged collection. About half of them swept me away and the other half didn’t move me as much as I’d hoped they would. Each year, I look forward to this collection with much anticipation and excitement. This year’s collection felt a bit below par in consistency and quality.

I agree with Ms. Brooks that the best stories in this collection are those to which I had a physical response. They tended towards themes of violence and/or grief. One such story is by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In “Ceiling,” she writes about a man who realizes he is in the wrong life. He feels lassitude in his marriage which is superficial and without depth. He yearns for his college sweetheart who he’s built up in his mind as perfect. As Ms. Brooks states, this story “perfectly captures the yearning spirit of a man who has settled for the wrong wife, the wrong life, in the stultifying salons of Lagos’s corrupt upper class.”

In “Housewifely Arts” by Megan Mayhew Bergman, a single mother drives nine hours to visit her dead mother’s parrot because the parrot is so perfectly able to mimic her mother’s voice. The parrot has more of her mother inside her than the daughter does.

Nathan Englander’s story, “Free Fruit for Young Widows,” opens with a violent act and continues with acts of violence. The story examines the roots of violence as it explores the possibilities and rationales that make violence an appropriate act. Part tale of vengeance and part philosophy, the reader puzzles the situations as does the young son whose father is telling him the story.

Allegra Goodman’s “La Vita Nuova” is a haunting story of grief. A woman who is a children’s art teacher is left by her fiancé. She brings her wedding dress to school and lets her students paint all over it. The story is about the depths of grief and loss.

“Soldier of Fortune” by Bret Anthony Johnston tells about Josh, a high school freshman who is in love with his neighbor Holly, a senior. When Holly’s three year-old brother accidentally gets severely scalded by boiling water and the family has to spend weeks at the hospital, Josh takes care of their home and dog. He grows up during this pivotal time.

In “Peter Torrelli, Falling Apart,” by Rebecca Makai, a man and his friend, Peter, have known each other since high school. Both are gay and they initially bonded over that commonality. Peter was beautiful and charismatic and went on to become an actor. At one of his performances he has a meltdown and can’t work again. His friend gives his all to Peter getting nothing in return. The reader wonders why his friend would risk so much for Peter.

Joyce Carol Oates, in “ID,” tells about Lisette, an eighth-grader who is recovering from a shattered eye socket and broken nose incurred by a beating from her estranged father. Lisette lives with her mother, a black jack dealer in Atlantic City. Lisette’s mother has been gone for several days, leaving Lisette alone with no idea of when she’ll be back or where she went. The police appear at her school and ask her to ID a corpse that they think might be her mother.

George Saunders writes about prisoners who are used in an experiment where they are given psychoactive drugs that take them to the deepest recesses of their souls. “Escape from Spiderland” is about these prisoners, the experiment, and the feelings of ultimate love, eloquence and sexuality that these drugs render. The prisoners can be brought to the depths of despair and the height of exaltation and then returned to their baselines in a few seconds.

Overall, there are some very good stories in this collection and some that are just mediocre. The ones that stand out are definitely the ones that feel like a visceral gut punch and that pound on the reader’s psyche. Ms. Brooks did not want “small-canvas contemporary realism” but sometimes it is the small canvas that shows the most detail and beauty. One just needs to look at it from the right angle.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 18 readers
PUBLISHER: Mariner Books (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Best American Short Stories
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Our reviews of some of Geraldine Brooks’ novels:

Partial Bibliography:

]]> A WIDOW’S STORY by Joyce Carol Oates /2011/a-widows-story-by-joyce-carol-oates/ Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:35:35 +0000 /?p=16107 Book Quote:

“I think with horror of the future, in which Ray will not exist.”

Book Review:

Review by Doug Bruns  (FEB 15, 2011)

This is perhaps the bravest book I’ve ever read. It is searingly personal, raw and and stark. It portrays its creator, the author, in a relief, almost without exception, that is equally painful and tragic. There is no turning away, no place the writer hides–and consequently little relief afforded the reader. There she is, the new widow, Joyce Carol Smith–the persona behind the writer Joyce Carol Oates–struggling to stay alive amidst blinding grief, as revealed in a journey the destination of which is unsure. We know of her because the widely acclaimed writer, Joyce Carol Oates, tell us of her. (I will set aside, for the moment, the alter-ego artifact that is the dualistic structure of this book.) We cannot divert our eyes. A book that is brave, like A Widow’s Story is brave, is in my scheme of things, worthy. It is worthy simply because whenever truth is revealed so unapologetically, without reservation–hence bravely composed–one must simply recognize it as such and deem it of consequence. It simply has, consequently, an intrinsic worth. What would we make of existence if it were otherwise? If art is, in any manner a reflection of experience, then we must salute it when it is created without deference to the consequences–no matter how uncomfortable it might make us feel.

Joyce Carol Smith lost her husband Ray Smith on February 18, 2008. The cause of death: cardiopulmonary arrest–pneumonia. The time of death: 12:50 a.m. His wife of 48 years had left the hospital, gone home to rest, her husband seemingly on the mend. “Ray is said to be improving,” Oates wrote a friend the night before his death. But twenty-four hours later, at 12:38 a.m. (details permeate the narrative) the call comes–”a phone ringing at the wrong time.” It is the call the author has “been dreading since the nightmare vigil began–informing me that ‘your husband’–‘Raymond Smith’–is in ‘critical condition’–his blood pressure has ‘plummeted’–his heartbeat has ‘accelerated’–the voice is asking if I want ‘extraordinary measures’ in the event that my husband’s heart stops–I am crying, ‘Yes!…Save him! Do anything you can!”

I quote at length because in this one passage the reader can sense the shock, the terror, the frustration and panic that infuses almost every page of the book. Raymond dies before Joyce returns to him at the hospital. Leaving his side is the first of what she deems to be her many missteps–missteps that will haunt her throughout the ensuing weeks and months. It is the first instance of what she will reflect upon to torture herself. She will likewise resolve that she should have taken him into Manhattan, where his care might have been of a higher order, rather than Princeton where they live; that she should have been home and not out of town when he presumably caught the chill that presaged the illness; that she should have long-ago challenged her husband’s general practitioner and his casual prescriptions for antibiotics over the years. Surely they weakened Raymond’s immune system. And so on.

The Smiths are a couple, who, without children and sharing complementary careers–she the writer, he an editor and publisher–wove their lives together into a tight and resilient singular fabric. Ms. Oates relates that the number of nights spent apart in the decades of marriage can be counted on a couple of hands. So, when the separation of death is made manifest, a vacuum of seemingly horrid proportions descends. “I am thinking that never have I been alone so much,” she writes a couple weeks following the death. “…so starkly unmitigatedly alone , as I have been since Ray has died….There is a terror in aloneness. Beyond even loneliness.”

The exploration of “a terror in aloneness” is relentless–and exhausting. To Ms. Oates suicide becomes a option worthy of consideration. She hoards pills, and considers methods. Indeed, this book is equal parts grief and survival. Her grief transports her into a world where the continuation of (her) existence becomes a matter of objective consideration. Mid-way through the book, Ms. Oates experiences a hallucination, a metaphor for suicide, in a “reptile-thing–the basilisk” which haunts and dogs her, intoning words of existential doubt: “You know you can end this at any time. Your ridiculous trash-soul. Why should you outlive your husband? If you love him as you claim…Outliving your husband is a low vile vulgar thing and you do not deserve to live an hour longer…” The basilisk, a mythic creature, who according to Pliny the Elder will render dead on the spot anyone who beholds its eyes, chases Ms. Oates through the latter half of the book. We obviously know the outcome, that she survives, lives to write the book, but we are left with the impression that she does not master the beast. It would be a delightful literary nuance, the beast’s survival, if the implication were not so tragic.

Like a finely constructed novel, a theme is developed mid-book which shines a light into the corners of the narration. It is, in these dark corners, revealed that despite the longing, the horror of loss, the basilisk’s threats, something has not settled properly in the reflection of this long marriage. We got a hint of this earlier. “In our marriage it was our practice not to share anything that was upsetting, depressing, demoralizing, tedious–unless it was unavoidable.” It is a phrase that will catch the eye of anyone who has experienced a long and successful marriage. “For what,” she concludes, “is the purpose of sharing your misery with another person, except to make that person miserable, too?” Given that all long marriages are possibly successful for reasons particular to each, we can look past this polite practice of insulating the troublesome aspects of experience from loved ones. But there is more: Her husband did not read her work. “In this way, I walled off from my husband the part of my life that is ‘Joyce Carol Oates’–which is to say, my writing career.” There are secrets here too. There is Raymond’s sister whom she has never met–and the in-laws she hardly knows. (“Where Ray became very fond of my parents…I scarcely knew Ray’s parents.”) And his experience in seminary? “Exactly what happened at the seminary, I don’t know–Ray didn’t speak of it except generally, obliquely–Things didn’t work out. I dropped out after a few months.”

This theme, that of the gaps in the marriage, runs parallel to those of grief and existential doubt. It is a deeper current and we must dive down to it. And that is precisely what Ms. Oates does. She is a master story teller and even here, here in this most brave of narrations, she controls the pace, she works and develops a theme, exercising her considerable talent and rendering (her) experience into a fashion of art. The marriage gaps are best symbolized in the discovery of a novel, long-ago set aside and abandoned by Raymond. She knew of it’s existence previously, but had not read it. Like other things in the marriage, it had been respected by the other as off-limits. She had not asked to read it, had not inquired about it. “As a wife, I had never wanted to upset my husband. I had never wanted to quarrel, to disagree or to be disagreeable. To be not loved seemed to me the risk, if a wife confronted her husband against his wishes.” She reads the novel–but the mysteries between them only seem to deepen.

I mentioned above the dual nature of this searingly self-reflective memoir. There is the writer, Ms. Oates, writing about the widow, Mrs. Smith, who dons the cloak of Ms. Oates, transforming herself into a master of the literary arts, who turns back and writes about Mrs. Smith. It is a curious “meta” relationship. It is too, obviously, the method the widow must employ to protect herself, to survive the terror of aloneness. Mrs. Smith is, in other words, the subject matter of Ms. Oates, the observer and scribe. Curiously, the grief of Mrs. Smith is the rough marble by which Ms. Oates chisels her craft into art. The book is plainly a success on this level, but as a memoir one almost wonders, oddly, if Mrs. Smith, the widow, is not being exploited by Ms. Oates the artist? That question alone brings a prism of complexity to the book that, in my experience, the typical memoir typically lacks. Ultimately the reader experiences a fashion of classic Aristotelian catharsis, pain transcended through art, through this literary device. We hope the widow to be as fortunate.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 173 readers
PUBLISHER: Ecco (February 15, 2011)
REVIEWER: Doug Bruns
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Joyce Carol Oates
EXTRAS:
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read reviews of more Joyce Carol Oates books:

Bibliography:

Tales:

Stories:

Written as Lauren Kelly:

Written as Rosamond Smith:

Younger Readers:

Nonfiction:

]]> GIVE ME YOUR HEART by Joyce Carol Oates /2011/give-me-your-heart-by-joyce-carol-oates/ /2011/give-me-your-heart-by-joyce-carol-oates/#comments Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:36:39 +0000 /?p=15466 Book Quote:

“He had appealed to the officer who had discharged him. Don’t send me back to them. I am not ready to return to them yet. I can’t live with civilians. I am afraid that I will hurt civilians. The Lance Corporal was asked why would he hurt civilians of his own kind who loved him and the Lance Corporal said Because that is the only way to stop them loving me sir.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (JAN 17, 2011)

Give Me Your Heart, the newest collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates, shimmers with violence, actual or imagined. Reading these stories is like hearing footsteps in your home when you know you’re the only one there. They’re like seeing something impossible out of the corner of your eye and being sure that you’ve seen it no matter what your rational self tells you. The stories make your heart race and your eyes open wide in horror. They do not come to us gently. Joyce Carol Oates grabs the reader and pulls him into her unique vision where fear, panic, tension, death, love and murder prevail, often simultaneously. These are horror stories without any element of the super-natural. She’s the real McCoy of this genre.

This collection contains ten stories, many of them about the dark side of needing love. In “Give Me Your Heart,” we hear an ex-lover rant about wanting her lover’s heart – actually and metaphorically. We listen to her as she goes more and more around the bend. In “Split/Brain,” Trudy Gould has been caretaker for her ill husband day and night, spending all her time at the hospital. One day, he demands that she return home to get a journal that he forgot. When she arrives at her home, she recognizes her sister’s car parked there and imagines her troubled, drug-addled and violent nephew in her house. She plays out this scenario in head: she either enters the house and is killed by her nephew or she turns and leaves. What will her choice be?

Some of these stories deal with the obsessive character of love or the feeling that you don’t really know the person you love. In “The First Husband,” a married man stumbles across photos of his wife with her first husband. He can’t get over his jealousy and believes that his wife is hiding something from him. He becomes obsessed with her first husband and this leads to tragic consequences.

The theme that love is dangerous is apparent in almost every story. In “Strip Poker,” a group of older men in their twenties get a fourteen year-old girl to go with them to their lake cabin. They get her drunk and play strip poker with her. The game is tense and on the verge of becoming dangerous. How the girl turns events to her favor is a joy to behold in all its poignancy. In “Smothered,” a troubled woman with a history of drug addiction and rootlessness has recovered memories of her parents smothering and killing a baby girl. This memory is part of a sensational murder case that occurred in 1974. The smothered child was never identified and the murderer was never found. When the police come to question the woman’s mother, she is shocked. The memory appears to be part of a drug-addled incident in the daughter’s teen-aged years. However, the mother feels torn and betrayed as this is just another way her estranged daughter has turned against her.

Sometimes, the most dangerous person is the one that is closest to you. In “The Spill,” John Henry is what we’d now call developmentally disabled or chronically mentally ill. When he is an adolescent, he is brought to live at his uncle’s home as his mother can no longer handle him. It is 1951 and there is no such thing as special education in the rural Adirondacks where this story takes place. John Henry, after repeating fourth grade, is told he can’t return to school. His uncle has him doing difficult farm chores all day. His aunt Lizabeta has a special connection with John Henry while also being very leery of him with her own children. Her emotions start to get twisted up inside her.

“Bleed” is my favorite story in the collection. A boy evolves from closeness with his parents to distance. He leaves his childhood behind him. This is due to two distinct incidents, both involving child abductions and rapes. His parents question him about these incidents, of which he has no knowledge. However, these images continue to haunt him and, as a young man, he finds himself caught up in a nightmare situation consisting of rape and abduction.

These are not stories for the fragile or weak-hearted among us. They are all scary and they all play on our visceral fears and nightmares. Joyce Carol Oates is a master of this. She understands those things we all fear, the nightmares that are common to us all. That these stories do not contain elements of the super-natural is not comforting. It makes them all the more frightening.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 26 readers
PUBLISHER: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (January 7, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Joyce Carol Oates
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read reviews of more Joyce Carol Oates books:

Bibliography:

Tales:

Stories:

Written as Lauren Kelly:

Written as Rosamond Smith:

Younger Readers:

Nonfiction:

]]> /2011/give-me-your-heart-by-joyce-carol-oates/feed/ 2 A FAIR MAIDEN by Joyce Carol Oates /2011/a-fair-maiden-by-joyce-carol-oates/ Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:37:45 +0000 /?p=15367 Book Quote:

“You are thinking that I have some sort of design on you, dear Katya. I know, I can read your thoughts, which show so clearly, so purely, in your face. And you are correct, dear: I do have a design on you. I have a mission for you, I think! If you are indeed the one.”

“What do you mean? The One? Katya stammered, not knowing whether this was serious or one of Mr. Kidder’s enigmatic jokes.

“A fair maiden – to be entrusted with a crucial task. For which she would be handsomely rewarded, in time.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (JAN 13, 2011)

Joyce Carol Oates is one of the greatest and most prolific writers working today. She is the winner of the National Book Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and more awards than can be fit into this short review. Her recent short novel, A Fair Maiden, is one of her more minor works. Though I call it minor, it is by Joyce Carol Oates and, by any standard, that makes it major.

Katya Spivak is sixteen years old and is working as a summer nanny on the Jersey shore for a relatively wealthy family. She comes from the wrong side of the tracks, a lower class area of New Jersey where most of the adults, if they are working at all, work at minimum wage jobs. Many adults have been in jail or are in jail. Children grow up with no books in their houses and their role models are uneducated, impulsive and often violent adults.

Katya is amazed at how the rich live with their maids, nannies, yachts, and affluent life styles. One day she is walking with the two little children who are in her care for the summer and an elderly man approaches her. She happens to be gazing into a lingerie shop, focusing on an intimate red lingerie set. When the elderly man, Marcus Kidder, asks her what she is looking at, she tells him she is looking at a white virginal night gown. He asks her to his house for tea with the children and she agrees.

Their relationship develops and it is a strange one, mixed with both longing and repulsion on Katya’s side and sexual longing and a fairy-tale like longing on Marcus’s behalf for Katya. He sees her as his soul mate, his “fair maiden.” When she visits him a second time he presents a present to her, a package that contains the white gown and the red lingerie set. She can’t figure out how he knew she was really looking at the red set and she is insulted, leaving the house shortly.

Katya is determined not to return again but she can’t help herself. Though the people she nannies for are wealthy, they are not in the same class as Marcus Kidder who is an icon of the town. He refers to himself as a trust fund baby. There are libraries named after him, plaques around town with his family name on them and he is well-known as a philanthropist.

Their relationship gets stranger and stranger – convoluted, sexually desperate, ambivalent and wrought with tension. Mr. Kidder tells Katya there will be a big prize for her in the future. What it is she does not know. One horrific night, he tells her a fairytale about a Fair Maiden who helps a great king defy the horrors of death by killing him herself so that he dies rapturously in her hands. This, for him, would be his great gift. It horrifies Katya.

Impulsively, Katya does something that sets forth a horrible chain of events. She sees this as a throw of the dice, a saying that her grandfather Spivak used all the time to describe their lives. People do things without thinking and what comes out is like a throw of the dice when gambling. Katya is wrought with guilt but what she has done can not be undone.

Like many of Oates’s stories this one has a dark and gothic feel. It is like a Grimm fairy tale or a Tim Burton movie. The dark side predominates and the Spivaks are like many of the poor families we meet in Oates’s other novels. Oates has a wonderful way of superimposing the lives of the poor and the rich. We see the darkness of both worlds and the freedom that money affords the rich. However, all people are caught up in their own nightmares, no matter how much money they have.

This is a short novel, perhaps even a novella, at 165 pages. However, the way it catches a noir world it does not feel too short. Oates is a master story-teller and while this is not one of her best books, it is better than most books you’ll read.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 40 readers
PUBLISHER: Mariner Books; Reprint edition (January 1, 2011)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Joyce Carol Oates
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read reviews of more Joyce Carol Oates books:

Bibliography:

Tales:

Stories:

Written as Lauren Kelly:

Written as Rosamond Smith:

Younger Readers:

Nonfiction:

]]> SOURLAND by Joyce Carol Oates /2010/sourland-by-joyce-carol-oates/ Thu, 14 Oct 2010 15:18:11 +0000 /?p=12913 Book Quote:

“It was a bitch. The summer was jinxed. Her father died on her birthday which was July 1. Then, things got worse.” (Bitch)

Book Review:

Review by Maggie Hill  (OCT 14, 2010)

Here’s how I ended up reading one of these stories: Standing up – stepping away from it, yelling (sort of) at JCO for being a freak, wishing I was half as good a freak, sputtering inside my head, “Oh yes, this must be exactly what a four-year-old child feels/thinks/is afraid of!” Then, just, oh. She did not. She did that in the end? No way. She did do that. If she was here right now, I’d … let her tell me a thing or two.

Is there anyone literate in the United States of America who has not read a little Joyce Carol Oates? She’s a Master. She’s living. Read her. End of report.

In Sourland, the latest collection of stories by this venerable writer, Oates has fully slipped into her imagination’s dark night of the soul. This is a writer who nails down the floorboards, inside the cloud, of the dream/nightmare she creates. She’s like James Cagney, smashing a piece of grapefruit in our faces as she makes us know what she’s talking about. I wonder, does her wisdom, her analogies, her knowing – thrillingly accurate, eerie, sublime – arrive naturally in her head?

“Nothing is more evident to a child of even ordinary curiosity and canniness than a family secret…” (The Story of a Stabbing)

“His mood was mercurial – as if he’d been hurt, in the midst of having been roused to indignation. (Pumpkin-Head)

“For the world is “pitiless” to aging women, even former Vogue models. (Bonobo Momma)

“When you die every fact of your body can be exposed.” (Bounty Hunter)

And, is there anyone who consistently conveys a character’s particularity in less than 20 words?

“A coarse sort of angel….with stubby nicotine-stained fingers and a smile just this side of insolent.” (Uranus)

“The cry that came from me was brute, animal. I had never heard such a cry before and would not have believed that it had issued from me.” (The Beating)

“Sonny’s lips parted in a slow smile that seemed about to reverse itself at any moment.” (Honor Code)

Joyce Carol Oates doesn’t sneak up on you in the middle of a story, then startle you with a loud, Boo! No, she looks right at you, says, “You comin’, or what?” as she stands, alone, looking out into the void. What she sees, she shares with you. But she’s not going to hold your hand. You knew something awe-ful might happen, that’s why you’re here. Oates takes a simple and generic phrase like, “…the party was in full swing…” and uses it to send us, sea-sick, into the story “Uranus.” I’m not even going to hint at what “Donor Organs” is about; figure it out. “Pumpkin-Head” is a goofy title for a story that says, arguably, more about education, immigration, widowhood, violence, dislocation, and powerlessness than War and Peace – in 21 pages. In other words, every story in this collection – are they collections merely because they’re set together under one binding? – lures you into a complex, rich, lots-of-ideas-going-on co-habitation with infinite suspense.

I love Joyce Carol Oates. But, be warned. Every one of these stories is dangerous. Don’t operate heavy machinery while reading them.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 21 readers
PUBLISHER: Ecco (September 14, 2010)
REVIEWER: Maggie Hill
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Joyce Carol Oates
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read reviews of more Joyce Carol Oates books:

Bibliography:

Tales:

Stories:

Written as Lauren Kelly:

Written as Rosamond Smith:

Younger Readers:

Nonfiction:

]]> LITTLE BIRD OF HEAVEN by Joyce Carol Oates /2009/little-bird-of-heaven-by-joyce-carol-oates/ Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:17:35 +0000 /?p=4854 Book Quote:

“I thought No love like your first.
The hope in their eyes! So blinding sometimes, I have to look away.
Or maybe it’s fury. Smoldering-hot acid-fury jammed up inside their ulcerated bowels.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (SEP 15, 2009)

Little Bird of Heaven is inimitably Oates. It has all her signatures – -the stylization of her writing, the focus on family narrative as destiny, and the mixture of pain and love. The stylized writing in this book is more pronounced than in some of her others. She repeats some things multiple times for emphasis and for varied affect. Initially, this bothered me but as the book progressed, I was so caught up in the narrative that nothing could deter me from wanting to turn to the next page.

As in her other books, love is closely mixed with pain, sexual and emotional longing, cruelty and betrayal. The family narrative is examined as destiny. She explores the theme of wanting to rewrite our narratives with the hope that this time it can turn out differently. The characters are drawn to people and events that remind them of their pasts, painful as they were. However, they hope that by reliving the past, they can change the outcome. Oates asks the reader, “Can we really change our destinies?” She acknowledges the fact that life is ever-changing but people are caught up in the current of family destinies.

This novel is about the murder of a young woman named Zoe Kruller. She is a singer in a local band, mother of Aaron and estranged wife of Delray. There are two persons of interest, suspects in this murder – – Delray Kruller, Zoe’s estranged husband, and Eddie Diehl, Zoe’s lover. Eddie is the father of Krista and he has been having an affair with Zoe for quite some time. Once the murder occurs he is shunned by his wife and made to leave their home.

The story is told in two parts, from two viewpoints. The first half of the book is told from the vantage point of Krista Diehl, Eddie’s daughter. She is close to her father and loves him unconditionally. She believes with all her heart that he could not have murdered Zoe. She believes that Delray Kruller is the murderer. Krista becomes obsessed with Aaron Kruller though at the time of the murder she is in grade school and he is a middle school student, about four years Krista’s senior. She believes she loves him and begins to shadow him, appearing at places he is known to go.

Aaron’s story is the second half of this novel. He is the one who finds the murdered Zoe and this breaks a part of him. He is aware of Krista but has no idea why she is appearing at places he frequents. He believes that Eddie Diehl, Krista’s father, murdered his mother. Aaron and Krista come from different sides of the track. Aaron is part Seneca Indian and there is a lot of prejudice against his people in their small town of Sparta, N.Y. There is one scene where Aaron finds himself Krista’s savior and the profundity of love, cruelty and pain is described in a poignant and almost revolting manner.

Oates does a wonderful job of describing the pain that children endure when they grow up in addicted families. Both Eddie Diehl, Zoe and Delray Kruller are alcoholics and drug addicts and their children live with shame, secrecy and silence as they harbor a loyalty to their parents – – no one must know what goes on inside the home. At the same time, they become what is known as “parental children,” children who parent the adults. As Aaron says “He’d been an adult for as long as he could remember, before even Zoe had died. Only vaguely could Krull recall a boy – – a little boy named ‘Aaron’ – – on the far side of Zoe’s death as in a shadowy corner of the house on Quarry Road”. Not only do Aaron and Krista lose their childhoods to the ravages of addiction, Aaron feels that this has become his legacy.

“Headed to hell after her. Drinking beer till his head buzzed and his gut was bloated like something dead and swollen in the water thinking how it was so, Zoe had plunged into hell and was pulling them after her like dirty water swirling down a drain. The kind of family situation, you could call it an inheritance, you’d naturally need to get high and stay high as long as you could.”

This is a powerful book, not a light read. It is a book about despair, pain, longing, betrayal, addiction and cruelty. It is a book about life on the edges of the precipice where the characters are holding on by the mere strength of their fingertips. It is a book with brilliant insight and a riveting narrative.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 39 readers
PUBLISHER: Ecco (September 15, 2009)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Joyce Carol Oates
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read reviews of more Joyce Carol Oates books:

If you like this book, you may also like:

Bibliography:

Tales:

Stories:

Written as Lauren Kelly:

Written as Rosamond Smith:

Younger Readers:

Nonfiction:

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