Harrowing and explicit

I started my journey with Joyce Carol Oates with Blonde. Unfortunately that audiobook was abridged but it was still so amazing, that I have ordered the book so I can read the full original version for myself.
Then I started this one and I have to say it's very unusual. It is the single most riveting, brutal, unusual and certainly the most beautifully written thrillel I have ever read.
Hannah can be caricatured perhaps as this superficial, naive, stupidly submissive person, who allows herself to be taken for granted, even brutalised and convinces herself that this is how she's going to be happy. Her husband, if not physically abusive, takes her as much for granted as YK but having been born and raised in the 60s, there wasn't an awful lot of room for a girl to form her own ideas about how she wants to be treated and who she wants to be - regardless of what the men want. It becomes pretty clear what she would lose if she wanted to go her own way. And although this book is set in the 70s, I don't think it's a very big leap to say that this story could very much be moved into today's setting. In this day and age when we think we are so enlightened about the equality of sexes, we really aren't that much more equal.
I could go on for ages about this but I won't.
One review I read in a paper said it was magical, which I found a very odd choice of adjective for such a brutal book, because it really is brutal.
The explicit details of violence are perhaps even unnecessary, self-gratuitous maybe, I really don't know. It gives very personal and subjective accounts of things, always how one or the other character experiences them. And if the writer was ready for going that far in her head to experience what one of her character was going through, then I don't think it's fair to say she should have stopped at any point. Considering that one of the major principles of writing is that you should not be censoring your own writing, it is not a realistic expectation.
If you don't take well to violence, then this book is seriously, seriously not for you. But if you can push through that and can read a book without censoring it. then it is definitely worth reading.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Intriguing and very well read .. but the ending was very disappointing .

A beautifully written narrative … disturbing subject handled well .. but the ending was abrupt and unsatisfactory .

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

Awesome

JCO writes magnificently as always. Wonderfully narrated.
No words can adequately describe such a talented author.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

Repetitive, self conscious and not for me ...

Regretfully this is my first (and last) Joyce Carol Oates book as despite all the lovey things I have heard about her writing, sadly I could not get beyond the first opening chapter when the male narrator takes over and describes the child serial killers.

In ways the little I read was completely like two books and while I did not care much for the first storyline, I found the second just too dark, disturbing and depressing. Don't get me wrong, the first few chapters were also deeply depressing but in a more boring and less distressing way.

Why I was attracted to this book enough to pre-order? It was because of the 70's setting which is so in vogue these days and because it seemed like it would be a stylish thriller. It was not long before I knew I had made a mistake and while the writing in some ways was stylish and slightly hypnotic it was so repetitive I felt as if I was listening to a learn-in-your-sleep study guide.

I have never heard a party/function atmosphere being described as "aqueous" but in one short space of time I heard it used three times in this way - describing the same event, I noticed it particularly as it seemed mispronounced to me but perhaps this is the way they say it in the US.
The narration was OK, at first I really did think the narrator was Kelly Rutherford as sounded very like her.

These first few chapters is a mainly monotonous stream of consciousness of a 39 year old wife of a rich man driving a White Buick Riviera wearing a white linen suit, kid leather high heeled pumps and a red neckerchief on her way to a hotel to meet a mysterious man she met at a charity event and worrying about her children and her illegal immigrant Filipina housekeeper.

You may wonder how I know so many details after only half listening to a few chapters while browsing on my computer as it did not hold my attention enough to give it my full attention?
The reason is because it was so very repetitive much like the repetitive thoughts of this woman going round and round her head as she drives, full of perceived hatred from men on the busy highway.

A lot of these endlessly swirling thoughts were obsessing, dissecting and overanalysing how the mystery man asked her "Which one are you?" and wondering what this meant. On and on and on her musing went on this one. As the mystery man spoke with a foreign accent and English was not his first language I am surprised this was left out of the endless questioning of a quite dull and unenigmatic question.

Then the way he encircled her wrist with his thumb and forefinger ... how it made her feel. What his intentions were, how else he could have done it and what would that have made her feel. This is the kind of twaddle you would read in a tweenager's diary who has very little else to occupy her mind, very little life experience, general newness to the world and curiosity in male/female interaction - not a 39 year old woman, married for 10 years with two children.

I found myself thinking "Get over it, you met some sort of sleazy player at a function who came on to you which appealed to your self obsessed shallow self and gave you a buzz as your unfaithful husband was also at the party and you felt you too had game" Plus it really just seemed to go on and on forever repeating the same old dull riff like being trapped in someone's very dull and limited brain.

I suppose it made a change from my own dull repetitive thoughts which endlessly loop around my head and it was strangely hypnotic almost like a verse or mantra .... it was also quite nice to get the 70's atmos. However reciting the endless thoughts of a vacuous and unfulfilled, unhappy woman does get old quite quickly.

I get that this was in some way a reflection of women's more limited and stifled role in marriage in the 1970's but then as now there were dull women trapped by their own circumstances and lack of imagination and those who rise above social stereotypes - and this is how change for women happened. There will always be women and men who muddle along in mediocre lives feeling uninspired never looking further than the end of their own noses but they seldom make interesting characters in thrillers and certainly being subjected to their dull thoughts on a loop seems like a huge waste of time.

There were also some descriptions of murdered women and crime scenes intercut with this endless musing which warned there was much darkness ahead.

So while far to early in the book to be classed as any sort of spoiler - it did seem like this society woman was going to be the next victim. Or perhaps she will be one of the few women in fiction to ever make an appointment with a man whose name she does not even know, in a bedroom of a large impersonal hotel after telling nobody where she is going.

I don't know as I did not really have the interest to find out.

Also my stomach was turned by the child murder segment.

Perhaps this could be made into a fabulous movie where the glamour and otherness of the 70's put a gloss on the grime and gore of the story. I can see an aerial shot a Gwynth Palthow style woman bombing down a Detroit (or maybe they might relocate the story to California) highway in large white convertible with a nod to Grace Kelly glamour - the endless musings of her guilty mind tightly edited and intercut with flashbacks.

Yes, that is definitely a film I would adore to see with the darkness of the serial child killer stylishly sanitised and given the kind of Hollywood gloss which makes it intriguing with a frisson of danger instead of just sickening and sad.

Of course this shows you that I am far from highbrow and look for entertainment not upset or depression,so it is entirely possible that many people will enjoy this book and it was simply over my murder mystery whodunnit loving head.

But for me, even the short portion I read made me feel rather queasy like a rough sea passage I did not enjoy and certainly did not want to continue for one moment more.

Abandon book!

Returning.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful