Little Bird Of Heaven

Description

Joyce Carol Oates returns with a dark, romantic, and captivating tale, set in the Great Lakes region of upstate New York—the territory of her remarkably successful New York Times bestseller The Gravedigger's Daughter.

Set in the mythical small city of Sparta, New York, this searing, vividly rendered exploration of the mysterious conjunction of erotic romance and tragic violence in late-twentieth-century America returns to the emotional and geographical terrain of acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates's previous bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and The Gravedigger's Daughter.

When a young wife and mother named Zoe Kruller is found brutally murdered, the Sparta police target two primary suspects, her estranged husband, Delray Kruller, and her longtime lover, Eddy Diehl. In turn, the Krullers' son, Aaron, and Eddy Diehl's daughter, Krista, become obsessed with each other, each believing the other's father is guilty.

Told in halves in the very different voices of Krista and Aaron, Little Bird of Heaven is a classic Oates novel in which the lyricism of intense sexual love is intertwined with the anguish of loss, and tenderness is barely distinguishable from cruelty. By the novel's end, the fated lovers, meeting again as adults, are at last ready to exorcise the ghosts of the past and come to terms with their legacy of guilt, misplaced love, and redemptive yearning.

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Customer Reviews

Disappointing Oates
I read this after seeing Oates on stage in conversation at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. She said her attempt was to portray the phenomenon of what happens when a family member is accused of a crime but subsequently never acquitted--how a cloud of disrepute continues to hang over that person within the community.

Of course Oates is a skilled storyteller. But what unpleasant characters; not a single one I'd want to meet. The book could have benefited from better editing as well.

2010-02-21 (Northern California) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 2

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Slow Reading
Although I consider myself to be a major fan of JCO, this book was very hard to get into. Krista's story was so full of redundant details that kept leading up to a parallel set of expectations (Dad, Aaron) that never actually materialized. None of the characters ever pulled me in and, while I had some sympathy for the situation, I never felt that I could relate to any of the characters. All in all, this wasn't her best writing.

2010-02-12 | Author of Graves' Disease, A Practical Guide (Colorado) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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repetitious
I read a lot and this is the first time I have felt the need to write a review opinion. I choose this book because of the great ratings from previous readers. The story sounded interesting. But this was not the case. I am very surprised it got such good reviews from others. There was so much unnecessary repetition. As a reader you have to reread the same statements and feelings over and over. The conclusion was not all that great either. I would not recommend this book

2010-01-11 | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 1

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Stunning
I first discovered Joyce Carol Oates about ten years ago, when I read one of her short stories ("Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" It's a MUST read, by the way). I fell in love with her stories and novels because of the subject matter; Oates's novels usually deal with obsession usually of the sexual kind (them is a perfect example of this). Oates's novels are always dark and gritty, never easy reading but somehow satisfying nonetheless. Little Bird of Heaven is Oates at her best.

The setting is a working-class town in upstate New York (typical Oates) in the 1980s. The story isn't told linearly, but unfolds gradually over time. Some of the information we're given is repeated, but each time the story is told from a different point of view. Krista Diehl is the daughter of Eddy Diehl, suspected of but never charged with the murder of a local singer named Zoe Kruller, with whom he was romantically involved. On the other side of the coin is Aaron Kruller, the woman's son. Both he and Krista become obsessed with the murder of his mother--and, by extension, with each other, in a weird way. The first half of the book is told from Krista's perspective, the second from Aaron's.

Part of the beauty of Oates's novels is a common theme that runs throughout: obsession. Krista and Aaron are of course obsessed with Zoe Kruller's murder; Eddy Diehl is obsessed with clearing his name and having his life returned to normal. Another thing I loved about this book is the not-knowing; the reader never really knows until the end for sure who killed Zoe Kruller, and that's part of what kept me turning the pages. And yet Eddy Diehl certainly does keep acting guilty, doesn't he? I certainly think he does feel guilt, in a way, but maybe he didn't really do it?

Another thing I love about Oates's novels is her prose. I'm pretty sure that, if you plugged one of her sentences into Microsoft Word, it would flag that sentence as a run on; but Joce Carol Oates's writing is pure poetry. She breaks the rules of writing in a way that only she can. Sure, she does use a fair bit of profanity, which can be a bit disturbing. It's also exhausting at times to read, but well worth the effort of doing so. The only thing I didn't really get was Aaron Kruller's voice, especially as a child; I doubt that a boy of eleven, especially one with a bad reputation, would call his parents "Mommy" and "Daddy." Also, Oates goes a little bit overboard on the Elvis comparisons (it seems that a lot of people in Sparta, New York look like him!) But other than that, I highly recommend this book.

2010-01-07 (New York, NY) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Extraordinary
Little Bird of Heaven is a disturbing story of the effect of a murder on two families as seen through the eyes of the daughter of the alleged killer and the son of the victim. The relationship between the daughter and her self centered, probably alcoholic father is particularly poignant, because Joyce Carol Oates seems to burrow inside her soul. Her longing for emotionally absent parents is vivid and real. .. so real that the critical incident of the murder and its aftermath creates another world. Members of my Book Club found ourselves discussing the book as if the characters and their social setting in a small town in upstate New York really existed! I don't think there can be a greater tribute to the author's skill and insight. This book creates another world for its readers-- a gritty world where there is no completely happy ending.

2009-12-06 | Retired in Florida | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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Little Bird of Heaven: A Novel

Product Details

• Notes: Mark New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Persuade: NEW
• ISBN13: 9780061829833

Description

Joyce Carol Oates returns with a dark, romantic, and captivating tale, set in the Great Lakes region of upstate New York—the territory of her remarkably successful New York Times bestseller The Gravedigger's Daughter.

Set in the mythical small city of Sparta, New York, this searing, vividly rendered exploration of the mysterious conjunction of erotic romance and tragic violence in late-twentieth-century America returns to the emotional and geographical terrain of acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates's previous bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and The Gravedigger's Daughter.

When a young wife and mother named Zoe Kruller is found brutally murdered, the Sparta police target two primary suspects, her estranged husband, Delray Kruller, and her longtime lover, Eddy Diehl. In turn, the Krullers' son, Aaron, and Eddy Diehl's daughter, Krista, become obsessed with each other, each believing the other's father is guilty.

Told in halves in the very different voices of Krista and Aaron, Little Bird of Heaven is a classic Oates novel in which the lyricism of intense sexual love is intertwined with the anguish of loss, and tenderness is barely distinguishable from cruelty. By the novel's end, the fated lovers, meeting again as adults, are at last ready to exorcise the ghosts of the past and come to terms with their legacy of guilt, misplaced love, and redemptive yearning.

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Customer Reviews

Disappointing Oates
I read this after seeing Oates on stage in conversation at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. She said her attempt was to portray the phenomenon of what happens when a family member is accused of a crime but subsequently never acquitted--how a cloud of disrepute continues to hang over that person within the community.

Of course Oates is a skilled storyteller. But what unpleasant characters; not a single one I'd want to meet. The book could have benefited from better editing as well.

2010-02-21 (Northern California) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 2

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Slow Reading
Although I consider myself to be a major fan of JCO, this book was very hard to get into. Krista's story was so full of redundant details that kept leading up to a parallel set of expectations (Dad, Aaron) that never actually materialized. None of the characters ever pulled me in and, while I had some sympathy for the situation, I never felt that I could relate to any of the characters. All in all, this wasn't her best writing.

2010-02-12 | Author of Graves' Disease, A Practical Guide (Colorado) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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repetitious
I read a lot and this is the first time I have felt the need to write a review opinion. I choose this book because of the great ratings from previous readers. The story sounded interesting. But this was not the case. I am very surprised it got such good reviews from others. There was so much unnecessary repetition. As a reader you have to reread the same statements and feelings over and over. The conclusion was not all that great either. I would not recommend this book

2010-01-11 | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 1

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Stunning
I first discovered Joyce Carol Oates about ten years ago, when I read one of her short stories ("Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" It's a MUST read, by the way). I fell in love with her stories and novels because of the subject matter; Oates's novels usually deal with obsession usually of the sexual kind (them is a perfect example of this). Oates's novels are always dark and gritty, never easy reading but somehow satisfying nonetheless. Little Bird of Heaven is Oates at her best.

The setting is a working-class town in upstate New York (typical Oates) in the 1980s. The story isn't told linearly, but unfolds gradually over time. Some of the information we're given is repeated, but each time the story is told from a different point of view. Krista Diehl is the daughter of Eddy Diehl, suspected of but never charged with the murder of a local singer named Zoe Kruller, with whom he was romantically involved. On the other side of the coin is Aaron Kruller, the woman's son. Both he and Krista become obsessed with the murder of his mother--and, by extension, with each other, in a weird way. The first half of the book is told from Krista's perspective, the second from Aaron's.

Part of the beauty of Oates's novels is a common theme that runs throughout: obsession. Krista and Aaron are of course obsessed with Zoe Kruller's murder; Eddy Diehl is obsessed with clearing his name and having his life returned to normal. Another thing I loved about this book is the not-knowing; the reader never really knows until the end for sure who killed Zoe Kruller, and that's part of what kept me turning the pages. And yet Eddy Diehl certainly does keep acting guilty, doesn't he? I certainly think he does feel guilt, in a way, but maybe he didn't really do it?

Another thing I love about Oates's novels is her prose. I'm pretty sure that, if you plugged one of her sentences into Microsoft Word, it would flag that sentence as a run on; but Joce Carol Oates's writing is pure poetry. She breaks the rules of writing in a way that only she can. Sure, she does use a fair bit of profanity, which can be a bit disturbing. It's also exhausting at times to read, but well worth the effort of doing so. The only thing I didn't really get was Aaron Kruller's voice, especially as a child; I doubt that a boy of eleven, especially one with a bad reputation, would call his parents "Mommy" and "Daddy." Also, Oates goes a little bit overboard on the Elvis comparisons (it seems that a lot of people in Sparta, New York look like him!) But other than that, I highly recommend this book.

2010-01-07 (New York, NY) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Extraordinary
Little Bird of Heaven is a disturbing story of the effect of a murder on two families as seen through the eyes of the daughter of the alleged killer and the son of the victim. The relationship between the daughter and her self centered, probably alcoholic father is particularly poignant, because Joyce Carol Oates seems to burrow inside her soul. Her longing for emotionally absent parents is vivid and real. .. so real that the critical incident of the murder and its aftermath creates another world. Members of my Book Club found ourselves discussing the book as if the characters and their social setting in a small town in upstate New York really existed! I don't think there can be a greater tribute to the author's skill and insight. This book creates another world for its readers-- a gritty world where there is no completely happy ending.

2009-12-06 | Retired in Florida | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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Faithless: Tales of Transgression

Description

In this collection of twenty-one unforgettable stories, Joyce Carol Oates explores the mysterious private lives of men and women with vivid, unsparing precision and sympathy. By turns interlocutor and interpreter, magician and realist, she dissects the psyches of ordinary people and their potential for good and evil with chilling understatement and lasting power.

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Penzler Pick, March 2001: I guess it's no secret that I regard Joyce Carol Oates as one of the great living American writers, both of mystery-crime-suspense fiction and of virtually every other form invented. I previously reviewed Blonde, which went on to be nominated for a National Book Award, and it's my joy to be able to recommend Faithless: Tales of Transgression, the stories within which are about as good as the short story gets. (Full disclosure here, with the admission that I might be a trifle prejudiced in favor of this volume. It is dedicated to Alice Turner, the former fiction editor of Playboy, and to me--largely, I reckon, because several of these stories were written especially for several anthologies of which I was the editor.)

There are 24 stories in this generous volume and while some inevitably linger longer in the memory than others, there is not a dull spot in its nearly 400 pages. The title story is a haunting tale of the disappearance of a woman as recalled by her two daughters, grown now. The ending is utterly expected but, nevertheless, comes as a shock. "The Vampire" is not at all a horror story, at least not in the sense that it involves in any way elements of the supernatural, but has a growing sense of pure terror as the reader comes to see the way in which one person can absorb all the life out of another.

In "The High School Sweetheart: A Mystery," a famous mystery writer reads a speech as he accepts the presidency of the most prestigious of all mystery organizations. The speech is delivered as a piece of fiction that appears to be a confession of a horrific crime committed during his teen years while besotted with a girl two years older than he. When the speech ends, the audience cannot imagine applauding because the story seems so true. Is it?

Once again, the incomparable Joyce Carol Oates has produced a compelling and important volume for the shelves of anyone who cares about distinguished suspense fiction. --Otto Penzler

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Customer Reviews

Dark Short Stories
This collection of short stories was surprisingly dark - well-written, but quite dark. Short stories are really not my favorite thing to read, and this was unfortunately no exception. Some of the stories were more engrossing than others - but those were frustrating, too because they left me wanting more... I guess it is the format that really disappointed me the most. I should probably stop trying out short story collections - the only one that hasn't been a disappointment was _Nocturnes_.

2009-06-01 (Chicago, IL) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Faithless
I read it but it is not Joyce C. Oates best work. It is a good one to compare an contrast with in a formum sitting.

2008-09-14 (AZ USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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spellbound
This book offers some of Oates' finest short stories. If you are an Oates fan you must purchase this book and if you want to become one you also have to buy that book.
I must confess I like her short stories best, they explore the depths of the human mind and soul leaving you wonder how you would have acted in a certain situation. The books are often too complex and she tends to lose focus but not so with her short stories. You can devour them at once or take your time and eat one at a time;-)

2007-04-12 | Al | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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There is no stopping this amazing author!
Joyce Carol Oates is one of my all-time favorite authors. Her work is amazing and with prose so beautiful that it is at times lyrical. I have loved all of her short story collections and marvel at the fact that am all the more impressed every time I pick up a new Oates book. Faithless: Tales of Transgression isn't an exception. This amazing short story collection covers a vast variety of subjects that speak to you and move you to the core. Some are dark and others are downright shocking, but they are always memorable. My favorites are "Ugly," "Physical," "Secret, Silent," "The Vampire," "A Manhattan Romance," "We Were Worried About You," and "Faithless." Here you will find stories centered on self-esteem, relationships gone awry and even murder mysteries (I should add that the story "The Vampire" isn't centered on the paranormal, but it is a quite impressive and somewhat disarming tale that ought to be read). There is something for every reader in this collection. I for one have fallen in love Oates's keen storytelling all over again. I cannot recommend Faithless enough.

2004-11-27 (MA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Bleak and bleaker
The stories are bleak and depressing and should be sold with a warning label. I came away from reading the book feeling sorry for Ms. Oates for her miserable perceptions on life.

2004-02-08 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 1

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Zombie: A Novel (P.S.)

Product Details

• ISBN13: 9780061778919
• Notes: Label New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Prerequisite: NEW

Description

Meet Quentin P.

He is a problem for his professor father and his loving mother, though of course they do not believe the charge (sexual molestation of a minor) that got him in that bit of trouble.

He is a challenge for his court-appointed psychiatrist, who nonetheless is encouraged by the increasingly affirmative quality of his dreams and his openness in discussing them.

He is a thoroughly sweet young man for his wealthy grandmother, who gives him more and more, and can deny him less and less.

He is the most believable and thoroughly terrifying sexual psychopath and killer ever to be brought to life in fiction, as Joyce Carol Oates achieves her boldest and most brilliant triumph yet—a dazzling work of art that extends the borders of the novel into the darkest heart of truth.

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Customer Reviews

Nightmaric. Simply Nightmaric!
I came across this one a few (well more than a few) years ago while I was working in a public library. I read the back cover and thought "Oh, no Joyce! Not another story about rape/murder!" But Zombie caries an intriging twist...

It deals with psychology. The mental malfunction of a madman. And how (sadly) so many criminals can fall through the cracks and meander through society...only to hurt others again.

We get a horrifying look into the mentality of Quentin P. A sociopath who preys upon young boys. We get to hear him ramble and rant, gloat whenever he thinks he has others fooled.

It's truly disturbing...even anger evoking in parts.

Definitely better than Rape: A love story.

2010-02-07 | bookworm extroardinaire | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Damn you, Joyce!
I knew I was a fan of Joyce Carol Oates after being forced to read her by an English prof in college. She has a perspective and a skill with prose that really impressed my impressionable bachelor's degree mind. I'll grant, however, I am not a big reader and don't keep up with Oates' complete catalog. It was about a month ago when I ran across this title and thought, "Wow, Joyce Carol Oates is doing her take on the latest zombie phenomenon? I need to check this out." Dumb a**. Of course, she's not writing about zombie zombies. But that's kinda what I thought when I started reading it. I didn't know anything about it, much less that this book was originally published more than a decade ago.

I think coming into it virtually blind made the book a more intense experience for me vs. someone who has read the reviews, synopsis and so on. (Kinda like how I enjoyed "The Blair Witch Project" more than most because I went into it blind and believing.)

For that reason, I'm not sure how much I actually want to say about the story. When I got the book, I began reading it right away just because I was in a reading mood. Then I couldn't put it down. I wanted to, though. I felt like throwing up at least four or five times while reading it.

I wasn't finished with the story when I had to put the book down to go make a living. After I'd put it down I was reluctant to pick it up again. I'd pass by it on the bookshelf and give it the stink eye.

Then, finally, the other night all the circumstances collided making it the right time to finish this book.
It's a slim read, practically a novelette. But it's a testament to Oates' abilities. She knows just how to turn a phrase, flip syntax, reroute a time line - like a puppet master pulling at the threads of your emotion. It's so funny how unassuming she seems in person, her lady-next-doorness. She's pretty damn brilliant.

Despite that, I cannot recommend this book to anyone I know because it is just too damn creepy. It would be like recommending rape or something. That's it. My mind has been raped! Okay, well, it's not that bad. Well, sorta. I don't know. I mean, it's basically the journal of a sociopath who describes in calm self-righteous detail his gruesome and terrifying deeds.

It got me to thinking about how a lot of people are like this, maybe everyone. Not the horrifying sadosexual acts, but just that sociopathic drive to get what you want - trudging a path to a self-serving goal without a thought to those hurt along the way.

Yet Quentin is hurt by those he hurt. He finds ways to be offended and victimized by his own victims as he stalks and tortures them - completely insane.

In the end you realize, really, Quentin is the zombie - dead inside, a soulless automaton on a path of destruction. I so desperately wanted to reach through the pages and stop him. But I couldn't. I could only read on, paralyzed. The horror.

That night, after I'd put the book down, I got ready for bed, got under the covers and turned out the light. About 10 minutes later I got up, grabbed Zombie and put it outside on the patio, went back in and locked the door.

Because I'm such a contemplative reader, I usually keep all the books I read. I like to refer back to them, remember lines and phrases. However, "Zombie" is going with me on my next visit to the used book store - it will ride in the trunk of the car, of course. I don't need Quentin anywhere near me again. Though I am afraid he will forever reside in my paranoia.

2009-10-20 (USA) | Helpful Votes: 5 | Rating: 5

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Zombie
I stumbled across this book while browsing. It looked interesting, though I had not read Joyce Carol Oates' books in the past. This is the diary of a sex-obsessed serial killer, who wants his own personal zombie to take care of his special needs. We follow along as he tries and fails to create his zombie. Then he spies the perfect candidate and sets about developing the plan to create his magnum opus. No more from me. Don't want to spoil this grizzly chiller. You may never look at your shy, but slightly odd, landlord again in the same way.

2009-10-05 (Portland, OR) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Expensive People (Modern Library Paperbacks)

Description

Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. In Expensive People, Oates takes a provocative and suspenseful look at the roiling secrets of America’s affluent suburbs. Set in the late 1960s, this first-person confession is narrated by Richard Everett, a precocious and obese boy who sees himself as a minor character in the alarming drama unfolding around him.

Fascinated by yet alienated from his attractive, self-absorbed parents and the privileged world they inhabit, Richard incisively analyzes his own mismanaged childhood, his pretentious private schooling, his “successful-executive” father, and his elusive mother. In an act of defiance and desperation, eleven-year-old Richard strikes out in a way that presages the violence of ever-younger Americans in the turbulent decades to come.

A National Book Award finalist, Expensive People is a stunning combination of social satire and gothic horror. “You cannot put this novel away after you have opened it,” said The Detroit News. “This is that kind of book–hypnotic, fascinating, and electrifying.”

Expensive People is the second novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, A Garden of Earthly Delights, them, and Wonderland, are also available from the Modern Library.

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Customer Reviews

Oates Ahead of Her Time
Joyce Carol Oates writes so much that a reader of my generation can hardly catch up with what she's written in the past, much less with what she continues to produce, unless they were to choose to read her work almost exclusively. I walked into a bookstore the other day, and sure enough, she has yet another new book out! Having read Them, I decided I was going to read all of The Wonderland Books, and living in a suburban area, I thought that this would be an interesting one to take on next. Oates tells a story that to me seemed ahead of its time. In our generation, we look back on Columbine as having occurred 10 years ago, only to realize that Pearl Jam wrote Jeremy a whole 10 years before that. A student shot up a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, where I got my doctorate, just a couple years ago. While Expensive People doesn't deal with school violence, it certainly begins to chip away at the psychology of troubled youth that all too often come from affluence--not poverty. And she does it 20 years before Jeremy. This book is well worth the reader's time.

2009-10-27 | lifeandlifeonly (Crystal Lake IL) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Beautifully Tortured
I adore JCO enough to read a book like this that wanders about and somewhere just past the middle is it's own book.

It's own story is right there in the middle, it lasts about 3 pages and it might have been the book.

This is an uncomfortable book for any parent to read because we see our own flaws and indulgences, the ridiculousness of schooling and adulthood and the distance we create.

But it's beauty makes it less shocking.

A wonderful and engrossing read.

2008-05-28 | Mommy Blogger (Los Angeles, CA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Funny, Tragic A Hard Read
I am reading a lot of Joyce Carol Oates books, as I love her style, and the way she takes you into her stories. At present I am reading her set of four books written in the 60s as part of the Wonderland Quartet, her first book A Garden of Earthly Delights is magnificent and superb story. Expensive People is a trying read. The highlights of this book are the way Oates describes people with money, and how little they give back to society...a commentary which still fits the high income level suburbs in Northern California as well, the plasticity of the individuals living in these areas, with their big houses, small yards, little interest but in jogging, going to teas, country clubs, etc...She is talking not about people with old monies, but the nouveau riche, and she does this very well. Oates uses a young overweight 18 year old as her primary narrator and character, he is the neglected son...is fixated with his mother, and his oedipal alliance creates lots of trauma for him and in the end causes tragedy and loss...In a sense the book has great images, it is written exceptionally well...might be that I did not read it fast enough, it surely was not a page turner for me, like other of her novels...I would recommemd it with reservation... it is an interesting book.

2007-08-01 | picky reader (Richmond, CA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 4

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one of the finest American novels
Darkly funny, richly allusive, Oates' satire of the upper middle class is a wonderful read. Many Nabokovian resonances.

2004-06-11 | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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A flawed but engaging early work by the prolific Oates
Joyce Carol Oates must be one of the most prolific contemporary novelists of our time. Her taste for torrid themes, in particular the brutal and bizarre, are well known. "Expensive People", one of her early works, starts off with a bang. A more direct opening you'll not find. The scene is set. You're instantly captivated and as she reels you in, you succumb and immediately find yourself in Richard Everett's head as he unveils his life story to you...bit by bit. You know you're dealing with dysfunctionality as soon as you meet his parents. There's a seething madness underneath just waiting to get out. If the medium were film, you'll see them cast in grainy black and white. But it isn't. Sad to say, the book loses momentum midway and it becomes tedious. You keep waiting for something to happen and when it does, it's anticlimactic. In the words of Richard, life isn't fiction. Nor is it half as dramatic. Oates is a colourful and engaging writer. She's got craft but has a tendency to indulge herself and when she does, she loses focus. "Expensive People" isn't a conventional thriller. It's a social critique of American society at the turn of the 60s decade and about the falseness of respectable society on the brink of a social revolution that will forever shatter time tested norms. While flawed and not entirely satisfying, it's an impressive early work and Oates got much better by the time she wrote Black Water.

2001-09-03 | Helpful Votes: 15 | Rating: 4

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Wild Nights!: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway (P.S.)

Product Details

• <a title='Condition Guide' href='/content/Condition_and_S hipping_Guide.htm' target='_blank'>Click here to representation our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices</a>
• Notes: Label New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Term: NEW
• ISBN13: 9780061434822

Description

Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Samuel Clemens ("Mark Twain"), Henry James, Ernest Hemingway—Joyce Carol Oates evokes each of these American literary icons in her newest work of prose fiction, poignantly and audaciously reinventing the climactic events of their lives. In subtly nuanced language suggestive of each of these writers, Oates explores the mysterious regions of the unknowable self that is "genius."

Darkly hilarious, brilliant, and brazen, Wild Nights! is Joyce Carol Oates's most original and haunting work of the imagination.

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Customer Reviews

versatility
Personally I didn't feel connected with the stories as I normally do with the author's other books, but I must say that I was impressed by her versatility again. All five stories are so different and her imagination has no limits.

2010-02-23 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Necropsy postmortem examination
I like Oates as a writer, I often find her interesting. I don't think it's necessarily effective to go for the jugular quite as much as she does (that tendency to inspire comments like 'unflinching', 'not scared to...' in reviews...), but okay. On this occasion I could sense Oates' interest and imagine her poring over her subjects - their faces, their styles, the mental landscapes they inhabited, and 'Wild Nights' is a very self-assured piece of work (in the world of letters you have to earn the right to take on a project this ambitious). But by the end it felt like watching a surgeon saw off the tops of some illustrious heads to poke around in the goo, as though Oates had gone to considerable effort trying to figure out what made her fellow writers tick, without understanding what made them human.

2009-10-18 (Rome, Italy) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 3

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Wild Nights is a fictional imagining of the last days of five seminal American literary voices by the eminent Joyce Carol Oates
Wild Nights (the phrase is borrowed from a poem by Emily Dickinson) is a collection of five short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. The prolific Princeton professor imagines the final days of five great American writers. Oates has a fecundly wicked imagination displaying her literary acumen as she examines:
Edgar Allan Poe-Oates places him on a remote island south of South America where his job is to tend a lighthouse. In this macabre tale reminiscent of something which Poe might have produced he becomes mad, copulates with a weird one eyed sea creature and laments his loneliness. The tale is written in diary form with entries being inscribed by the fictional Poe. The tale is grotesque and unpleasant.
Emily Dickinson: An upper middle class couple buy a clone-like computerized doll of Dickinson. The computerized device acts like the reclusive Emily staying hin her room, baking bread, tending flowers and placing hastily scribbled poems in her apron pocket. When her owner attempts to rape the sexless robot the wife and Emily bond in rebellious acts. Weird but fascinating worthy of a Twilight Zone episode. The tale will also appeal to feminist in its depiction of male domination and brutality manifested in the stupid male owner's rape of the doll.
Mark Twain: He is portrayed as Captain Admiral Twain whose aquafish (prepubescent girls who are virgins and under 16) cavort at parties and secret assignations in Central Park all to the dismay of his scornful daughter Clara. Twain was disillusioned, in poor health and bitter against the world when he died in 1910. He had been neglected by his father,found American imperialism revolting and was an atheist. His interest in young girls was creepy. Twain is not the belovedly irascible old coot telling tall tales of boyhood most Americans picture him as being. Instead he was a trenchant social and political critic who had been broken by the deaths of his daughter and wife.
Henry James-The dullest of the stories finds the prudish James working at St. Bartholemew's Hospital for wounded World War I soldiers in London. James gets an understanding of human pain and suffering. As a homosexual he is attracted to a few of the men whom he tends.
Ernest Hemingway: My favorite among these tales. Papa Hemingway was a burnt-out, sexually impotent, mentally disturbed man by the time he killed himself with a shotgun in Ketchum, Idaho in 1961. Hemingway hated his mother; his father had also committed suicide. A sad final chapter for a great American stylist. Hemingway was a narcisstic man whose ego was massive; disdain for women profound and hatred of his family gargantuan. He cared only for himself and the written word of his art.
These stories will not be everyone's cup of tea. It helps the reader to have some background understanding of the works and career of each artist who is profiled. I enjoyed them and appreciated Oates ability to write in the style of the writer she is chronicling in her fiction.

2009-07-13 | Michael Mills (Knoxville Tennessee) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Wild Oates!
"Wild Nights!" -- the latest from Joyce Carol Oates, prolific novelist and essayist -- is a dizzying hall-of-mirrors where she presides over a literary seance, calling from the deep five legends of American letters: Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Ernest Hemingway. They are each reflected, or deliberately distorted, in the mirror of Oates' consciousness. In five chapters -- discrete short-stories, essentially -- Oates, herself 70 years old, fictionalizes the last days of her fellow writers. She meticulously impersonates, without quite caricaturing, the breathless, hallucinatory first-person of Poe, the chilly remoteness and angular symbolism of Dickinson, the freewheeling, epistolary Twain, the penetrating psychology of James, and the staccato rhythm of Hemingway. The energy never lags. Each story is a nimble, fantastically imaginative exercise in imitation.

Oates, however, is not content with an exercise. The five stories offer a profound leap into dark waters: the secret consciousness of a dying genius. Inevitably, imagining the Last Days of a writer is an eschatological exercise, an invitation to meditate on the final things. Grounding the spiritual in the material, Oates pays careful, almost perverse attention to the indignity of the authors' failing bodies. (Hemingway's liver is "like a leech" and portly James is likened to Humpty-Dumpty "fearing a sudden spill.") But glimpses of the spiritual loom like opium-inspired visions, often nightmarish: Poe, in isolation-induced madness, hears his "ethereal and virginal" bride, Virginia, tell him: "I shall not see you again, husband. Neither in this world nor in Hades." `Papa' Hemingway insists on his unbelief, and yet "it would not surprise Papa that his name was known in Hell and in Hell his most ardent admirers awaited him." Mark Twain, in his dotage, struggles to write what he believes will be his masterpiece, starring Satan "as an elegantly attired, monocled and moustached Viennese gentleman, with a seductive smile. Satan as the Mysterious Stranger who inhabits us, in our deepest, most secret beings."

Oates attempts to penetrate the deepest, most secret being of her literary forebears. She is like an actor discovering the essence of her character through imitation, and in adopting the voices of others she has succeeded in sounding exactly like herself. It is a virtuoso performance.

2009-01-20 | O, for a Muse of Fire | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Well at least Oates is never boring..
Few authors would have the guts to take on this group, but Oates has never been a writer to shy away from a challenge. Collecting 5 stories from various sources where Oates takes on the guise of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Henmmingway, this book gives the reader a look at various "last days" of these writers, sometimes successfully and at other times painfully.

Poe, Posthumous: is an example of the aforementioned "painfully". Here Oates channels Lovecraft, rather than Poe, in a story that drifts so far into the ridiculous that I was stunned by its wretchedness.

Things don't get much better for Emily Dickinson, who is transformed into robotic pet for a couple, leading to an inevitable and predictable conclusion that once again left me puzzled by Oates intent. Are we supposed to see Dickinson as the eternal victim or manipulator?

Twain also gets hit pretty hard but to better effect by Oates in "Grandpa Clemens and Angelfish, 1906. I had to go check my copy of Kaplan's The Singular Mark Twain: A Biography to find mention of Clemens's odd fascination with this group of young girls. But where Kaplan makes it plain that this was a Twain eccentricity that was seen as non-threatening, Oates puts a much darker spin on it, making it effectively dark and disturbing to Twain fans, like myself.

I have not read much Henry James but "The Master at St. Bartholomew's Hospital" is a glimpse of a very reserved old man exposed to a world of damaged young men and who must be punished for the sin of becoming to attached. This is an odd little fantasia with perhaps more meaning for someone more familiar with Henry James.

Finally Hemmingway is dissected by Oates in the sharpest piece here. His arrogance and attitude seem to be well-captured in this examination of his last day. The ego and machismo are well-defined as this story unfolds, examining a man who considers himself a shadow of what he was and deciding to leave on his own terms, abusing and insulting on his way out.
Despite my not being enthused about all these stories, I still can't help but admire Oates for doing them. She remains an intriguing writer who refuses to be boring.

2008-12-31 | Jack (Island Heights,NJ) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 3

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