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A review by danbydame
Them by Joyce Carol Oates
3.0
Anyone who knows me knows I am a JCO fan. So please take that into account when weighing my review.
Quick summary. them is a portrayal of the other side of post WWII America. We all know about the Donna Reed, Dick Van Dyke, Father Knows Best idea of what life in our country should have been in the 50s and 60s. This is the flip side of that coin -- the ugly bit of city life for the (sometimes) working poor.
But don't go looking for the main characters to be redeemed, to save themselves from their circumstances. Small spoiler here: they all take what they can get, without too much worries about how. It's survival mode. It's ugly. It's violent.
The story and setting are nothing particularly unique. But it's written by JCO, which makes all the difference. Oates is fearless. She dives into the twisted, bruised psyches of her characters like a cliff diver diving for pearls. She jumps into that pool of water with no tether, no lifeline, no idea how deep the water is or if she'll make it back to the surface. And as she is rocketing downward to the darkest deepest regions, she has you, her reader, firmly in her grip. Can you hold your breath that long (and I do think you almost hold your breath reading some particularly intense passages)? Or do you have to look away from the page, come up for air?
There were things that bothered me. Actual dialogue seemed uncomfortable, or uneven, or maybe unlikely? I'm not sure how to describe it, but I definitely found it odd. And at times, motives and emotions were alluded to where I think I needed more in order to "get" it.
And I learned something! Wikipedia Detroit riots. I've heard of them, but never really looked into them.
Quick summary. them is a portrayal of the other side of post WWII America. We all know about the Donna Reed, Dick Van Dyke, Father Knows Best idea of what life in our country should have been in the 50s and 60s. This is the flip side of that coin -- the ugly bit of city life for the (sometimes) working poor.
But don't go looking for the main characters to be redeemed, to save themselves from their circumstances. Small spoiler here: they all take what they can get, without too much worries about how. It's survival mode. It's ugly. It's violent.
The story and setting are nothing particularly unique. But it's written by JCO, which makes all the difference. Oates is fearless. She dives into the twisted, bruised psyches of her characters like a cliff diver diving for pearls. She jumps into that pool of water with no tether, no lifeline, no idea how deep the water is or if she'll make it back to the surface. And as she is rocketing downward to the darkest deepest regions, she has you, her reader, firmly in her grip. Can you hold your breath that long (and I do think you almost hold your breath reading some particularly intense passages)? Or do you have to look away from the page, come up for air?
There were things that bothered me. Actual dialogue seemed uncomfortable, or uneven, or maybe unlikely? I'm not sure how to describe it, but I definitely found it odd. And at times, motives and emotions were alluded to where I think I needed more in order to "get" it.
And I learned something! Wikipedia Detroit riots. I've heard of them, but never really looked into them.