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Title: Middle Age: A Romance by Joyce Carol Oates ISBN: 0-06-093490-5 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.31 (26 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Adam Berendt Who are You?
Comment: Almost immediately, at the very beginning of Joyce Carol Oates, "Middle Age, A Romance," you come upon her dedication which reads: "To my Princeton friends, who are nowhere in these pages." Oates is, of course a professor of Humanities at Princeton University.More importantly, this dedication serves as Oates notice to her readers that the characters in "Middle Age" are a breed, a type, of a world... apart from herself and her friends. She is setting up a barrier between herself and her characters. As a general rule, in most cases this would not be a good sign for the reading to come. But because Oates has proven to be masterfull at best and interesting at least we take the dedication with a grain of salt and read on. "Middle Age" is Oates ode to middle age among a tightly-knit group of mostly wealthy residents of Salthill-on-Hudson in upstate New York. The catalyst for the various stories is one Adam Berendt whose death prompts a flood of tears and concern among the women and men of Salthill that propells the novel through it's various chapters. Add to this the fact that Berendt appears to be without family, has always been mysterious about his background and the source of his income, that the men seem as attracted to him as do the women and that he has not had sex with any of his many admirers, and you have the beginnings of a fascinating novel. Oates, though seemingly detached from her flood of characters is nonetheless very sympathetic towards them and as a result we are also. The style of "Middle Age" is a departure for Oates: very much unlike the furtive, paranoid, sexually explicit "Man Crazy" or the technicolor, movie-like "We Were the Mulvaneys." In "Middle Age" Oates is removed yet ultimately attracted to her characters: longing for their lifestyle yet damning of their foibles. It is ultimately not a great novel in the sense that "Mulvaneys," "Because it is Bitter and Because it is my Heart" or "What I Lived for" are for example. But a good Joyce Carol Oates novel is worlds above most author's best and because of this a must read for anyone serious about contemporary fiction.
Rating: 5
Summary: My first Oates read
Comment: An avid reader I have glanced at Joyce Carol Oates books in the past and something about the writing style has turned me away...The write up on Middle Age got my attention and though I started it hesitantly once it's 500+ grabbed me (which only took a chapter or two) I didn't want it to end. Each character was so deftly created and had some trait that set them completely apart from all the others - the woman with all the dogs which ended up being a bit of a disaster at the end...the relationships depicted between the children and their parents...All the characters went through major life quests and changes in this story which gives such a hopeful note to the human condition...and what about the mystery which still surrounded Adam at the end. One question I was left with at the end of the novel concerned Adam's sexuality - all the women were entranced/in love with him yet it seemed that he did not have a sexual relationship with any of them - was he gay? Because of my enjoyment of this novel I am jumping on the bandwagon and have We Were the Mulvaneys waiting in my pile to read.
Rating: 5
Summary: Amazing
Comment: I feel humbled trying to write anything about this wonderful novel. How can I, a mere mortal, say anything about Joyce Carol Oates' incredible writing? How can I say anything meaningful about the twists and turns that the plot takes? The suprises that lurk?
In the opening pages, I didn't like Adam. Nope. Not at all. I thought he was a fake, a fraud, a man who played with the hearts of women and was untrustworthy to men. His small redeeming quality was that he owned a Siberian mix- a rescued dog at that. No one who lives with the wily ways of a Sibe can be all bad. :-)
He started redeeming himself to me a little by saving the child, but only a little since she would have been saved no matter what he did. When Marina Troy came into the picture, I thought she was overdone and overly dramatic. But then, *more* women came in and I started to really wonder about the man.
Joyce Carol Oates can write like no one else and her characters move through so much and are so much themselves. There is tragedy and joy- there is complexity. I have a hard time putting down anything she's written.
this novel isn't as dark as "We were the Mulvaney's" but it is nearly as powerful.
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Title: I'll Take You There : A Novel by Joyce Carol Oates ISBN: 0060501189 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 16 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Beasts by Joyce Carol Oates, Joyce Carol Oates ISBN: 0786711035 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: 22 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Wonderland by Joyce Carol Oates ISBN: 0865380759 Publisher: Ontario Review Pr Pub. Date: May, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Faithless: Tales of Transgression by Joyce Carol Oates ISBN: 0060933577 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 04 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Blonde: A Novel by Joyce Carol Oates, Atkinson Jayne ISBN: 006093493X Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 10 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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