Having lost my husband only a week -- only a week? -- ago, I have turned to several widows' memoirs in search of comfort, advice, and maybe even a little warning of the pitfalls of grief that await me. While I did find some of those things in this memoir, I also found a woman for whom I cannot fe...
Anche in questo romanzo l'autrice riesce a catturare fin dall'inizio l'attenzione del lettore e a tenere alta la tensione nel raccontare i fatti.La vicenda si dipana e scopre i suoi lati oscuri,chiarendo a poco a poco la vicenda e rispondendo alle domande solo nelle ultime pagine, in un continuo ...
Full disclosure: I only read half of this, the first three stories. I am returning it to the library because I am not in the mood for something so dark right now. I will probably borrow this again in the future and finish the rest of it. I've read some Joyce Carol Oates before- a few short storie...
This was recommended to me by a friend, but I'm not sure if my apathy toward it is the result of the book itself, or just maybe that it wasn't my cup of tea. The first piece, The Corn Maiden, is the longest part and the story of a little girl held captive by teenagers as part of a disturbing sacr...
Didn't quite finish...this book couldn't keep my attention. That's it! I'm off JCO. I thought I could take one more, but no no no more JCO.
Dysfunction JunctionJoyce Carol Oates is an excellent writer and does a great job pulling you into this story of a murdered woman and two families that fall apart. I think she shows just how complicated and destructive family relationships can be. What I think is most interesting is how Oates’ ...
I honestly can't remember if this took over six months to read but I've lost track of time and haven't done a very good job updating my lists here! I do know that it seemed like this book stayed on my nightstand for quite some time. I initially picked it up at the end of my local library's book s...
This is a good book. Not an amazing book, but a good one. Certain stories I wasn't as interested in, or found anti-climatic. I was intrigued by Magda Maria; the descriptions of this woman he was obsessed with, how she changed from being this glamorous, youthful looking woman to basically looki...
2.5 really. I'm not sure what happened here. These stories weren't cohesive and many of them weren't particularly interesting if not outright boring. I had to force myself to keep going through sections. A few of the stories were actually quite good (Strip Poker, Bleeed, Vena Cava)---tense, dark...
Joyce Carol Oates's short stories always leave me wanting more, and not in a good way. She is great at developing interesting characters, but just when it seems like something is going to happen, the story ends abruptly, leaving a million unanswered questions. I realize that this seems to be her ...
Ci fu un momento di silenzio tra noi. Capivo che non dovevo parlare, dire una parola. Come avessimo vissuto così, a nostro agio l'uno con l'altro, per i quattordici anni in cui ci eravamo persi.We were the Mulvaneys è la storia della società americana che caratterizzava una certa epoca, ma prima ...
‘It was the fate of mothers, to remember. What nobody’s else would know or care about. That, when they are gone, goes with them.’ (p. 397)If you follow me, you’ve probably heard me mention Joyce Carol Oates a couple of times or more. She is one of my favorite authors. I’m not only impressed with ...
Η Joyce Carol Oates, είναι μία από τις πιο διακεκριμένες Αμερικανίδες συγγραφείς, έχοντας αποσπάσει πληθώρα βραβείων στην διάρκεια της συγγραφικής της καριέρας. Ένα από τα βιβλία της, είναι και "Ο Βιασμός", ο οποίος επανακυκλοφόρησε σε νέα, συλλεκτική, οικονομική έκδοση, από τις εκδόσεις Μεταίχμι...
Spoiler AlertA young adult book, "After the Wreck" is about Jenna, a teenage girl who is in an accident with her mother who is killed. Jenna feels, though she isn't sure, that she may be to blame. Jenna's life begins spiraling out of control"after the wreck" as her loneliness and guilt lead her t...
This book made me angry. I understand that Joyce Carol Oates writes books that make you feel like you need a shower, and I was cool with that. I expected it even. What I didn't expect was for this to be written like drivel. An excerpt."Twelve years old & in seventh grade & now I was wearing glass...
Finally returned to print in a beautiful paperback edition, a haunting gothic tale of a nineteenth-century immigrant family of confidence artists—a story of morality, duplicity, and retribution that explores the depths of human manipulation and vulnerabilityThe patriarch of the Licht family, Abra...
You can't help pitying the people who show up in the novels of Joyce Carol Oates. From the first page, you sense that they're going to be known to death, literally splayed by her insight. And before you realize it, she's done the same thing to us. For 40 years, she's coyly enticed us with the got...
I am really pissed off, because I spent a long time writing a whole long review of this book but then this fucking website just spontaneously erased it.But whatever. It wasn't a great review by any means. I'll just write another, similarly mediocre one.Being as I'm a lady boxing enthusiast who li...
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)So what's the dark fear that lies in the inner heart of all erudite nerds? Namely this -- that no m...
In spite of my contrarian nature, sometimes I like to fit in. When a moved to Virginia eight years ago, I started to drink sweetened iced tea. We southerners call it ‘sweet tea.’ So now, here I am on GR and I seem to be surrounded by people reading and loving romance novels. I have never been a r...
Articolo pubblicato su: http://leanimesalve.wordpress.com/201..._Dacci un'occhiata! Grazie! :)Colibrì« ...ma tu continuavi ad essere bambina,sciocca come l'antichità, crudele come il futuro,e fra te e la tua bellezza posseduta dal poteresi mise tutta la stupidità e la crudeltà del presente. »Pier...
Freaky Green Eyes is a book with many things going on all at once. Franky, the main character, has to deal with her parents, and all of their family issues. Franky's parents say that they are getting along fine, that they will love each other forever and will never get a divorce. But her parents ...
There were a few standout stories here for me, but mostly this felt like a big pile of Same. Basically, Joyce Carol Oates likes dark stories of the American working class underbelly, heavy on on-the-lam grifters and skeevy predators. No big surprise there, I guess. But I was surprised at how s...
This collection is collated and introduced by Carson's sister and is mostly short stories. However, it also includes articles, poems, brief notes about writing and a detailed outline of her most famous novel, "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...). A few pieces ...
"The living and the dead. Braided together. Woven together. An immense tapestry taking in centuries."A little over 100 pages into this novel I stumbled across the above lines, and even though I had another 500+ pages to go, I instinctively sensed that I had discovered the key to this immense, ...
Oh, how I love a compelling family tragedy! But this whole drama could have been avoided if the husband had just followed my advice--Dude, if you're going to pay for a young woman's abortion, and the young woman happens to be your wife's friend, and you are not--repeat ARE NOT having an affair wi...
This is a great novel that I'd only recommend selectively. It's long (752 pages) and written in a precious mid-1800s tea-party diction. It took me about a hundred pages just to realize that this wasn't merely a tour-de-force of stylistic mimicry, but also a parody of the style so subtle that it d...