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A review by danbydame
Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates
4.0
Yes, this is a "hits the soft spot" 4 stars. I love JCO. And I love stories set in the gritty, past-its-prime upstate NY that I understand so well. So this book gets mentally shelved with other JCO and alongside Richard Russo and Russell Banks.
If those stories are your thing, then this will be too.
But what is it? Its an exploration of how an event like a crime of passion murder hurts so many more people than just the victim and those accused of the crime. In this case, the murder victim is a mother, the accused are her husband and her lover, but the true victims are the children of those in this love triangle. The story is the children and how much they lose, and how it seems to go unnoticed by those who should care.
If those stories are your thing, then this will be too.
But what is it? Its an exploration of how an event like a crime of passion murder hurts so many more people than just the victim and those accused of the crime. In this case, the murder victim is a mother, the accused are her husband and her lover, but the true victims are the children of those in this love triangle. The story is the children and how much they lose, and how it seems to go unnoticed by those who should care.