Reviews

Expensive People by Joyce Carol Oates

gwynnestri's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

lindseysparks's review against another edition

2.0

This was so disappointing. I thought The Garden of Earthly Delights was fantastic and immediately bought the rest of the Wonderland quartet. This starts off with one of the best openings I've ever read - "I was a child murderer." The narrator then begins explaining that he was a child who murdered someone, not someone who murdered a child and he weirdly comes across as charming in these opening pages. I begin expecting something like Lolita - Nabokov does an incredible job of getting in a sick twisted person's head and seeing how a pedophile justifies his actions. Oates does that here with a child murderer, but in both cases the story slumped in the middle. I caught myself skimming several times, which is highly unlike me. This book felt much longer than it is - it's only 224 pages in my Modern Library edition and that's with an afterward, but it felt closer to 500. Maybe ideas like these would work better as short stories? I felt like most of the middle was just repetitive and boring instead of truly developing the characters and helping me get in his head more. I did like how the narrator is writing his memoir and is unreliable - he's telling us his side of the story and trying to explain how he became a murderer, so you can't exactly trust his perspective. Despite these positives, I just did not enjoy reading the book.

spinstah's review against another edition

2.0

I think this was the first Oates novel that I've read and haven't liked all that much -- mainly because of the narrator. I'm not a huge fan of things written from the viewpoint of an unreliable narrator, and so that was one of the problems. Another thing that bothered me was the narrator's constant references to the fact that he was writing the account -- even going to far as to frequently talk about how poorly written it was, and how many digressions there were, and how the last three chapters really could have been cut out, etc. There was just too much of it, and it was too pathetic and ingratiating for my taste. (Normally the self-referential narrator doesn't bother me, but I don't think I've encountered it being done so heavily before.)

I think that the plot itself would have made a wonderful novella or short story -- there was enough going on that you'd have characters that were fully-developed enough for that purpose, but to my mind there wasn't enough development for a novel-length work (some of the room given to the narrator going on about how he couldn't write would have been put to better use if it was used for character development).

I read the original version of this, not the Modern Library re-release (Oates has gone through those and edited her young self). I can't help but wonder if my dislike of this book is because she wrote it so early in her career, before she really found her voice and her style. Who knows. If I liked it a little bit more I might immediately read the Modern Library re-release . . . but I don't, so there will be no comparison.

jordan_garno's review against another edition

dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Oates writes with an Ellison-esque bravado that is poignant, prophetic, and profoundly American. Expensive People's critique of the 1960's American Ideal is uncanny to America's current political and socioeconomic landscape. Richard's anxieties--sexual and social--reflect society's loss-of-self found in America's middle class. Each character experiences angst by attaining things they thought they would love. 

Oates' prose is incredible and her insight eerily precise. I could not recommend this novel highly enough!

reasie's review against another edition

4.0

Laugh-out-loud funny in a dark way. You really feel invited into the bizarre world of the moderately rich in the 1960s.

I was disturbed by the treatment of black characters, though.

timbo001's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

anfribogart's review against another edition

4.0

Il mondo dei ricchi visto con gli occhi di un bambino problematico. Con genitori molto assenti e troppo preoccupati di apparire in società, Richard sviluppa un morboso attaccamento alla madre, che finirà per smarrirlo completamente e farà di lui un infelice. Nonostante il tema possa sembrare particolarmente drammatico e cupo, il registro narrativo di J.C.Oates è brillante e ironico, la scelta di usare un bambino troppo maturo per la sua età per descrivere questa coppia squinternata è perfetta. Ci sono molti momenti divertenti e alcuni episodi irresistibili (la storia dello sfigatissimo cagnolino Spark è un gioiellino di comicità). Cosa penseranno di noi i nostri figli viene da chiedersi.
Il finale (già suggerito fin dal principio) è decisamente surreale, ma forse poi nemmeno tanto se si pensa a certi fatti di cronaca (penso al nostro ricco nord-est).

reginamarie's review against another edition

4.0

Holds nostalgic value as the book that introduced me to Oates.

savshu's review

adventurous challenging dark reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0