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A review by mjpatton
A Book of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates
3.0
My three star rating leans towards a two, but that seems harsh for anything coming from JCO; in fact, if A Book of American Martyrs had been written by anyone other than JCO, I probably would have set it aside early on, but I stuck with it, hoping that she would redeem herself over the 750 pages with which she was working. Within a dozen pages or so, I found myself flipping ahead to assure myself that the seemingly endless monologue of a fanatic, evangelical Christian murderer of an abortion doctor was not going to be the entire book. As it turns out, it is just a much too long 100 page slog through the stereotyped mind of such an individual going on and on and on about Jesus. Lordy, I wanted this to end way before 20 pages, much less 100, were up. Luther Dunphy's monologue is followed by a somewhat more interesting block, interesting if for no other reason than it includes multiple viewpoints, but even this leans heavily on stereotypes of the other side of the abortion question. Anyone looking for insights into the thought processes of either side will find nothing here.
However, somewhere midway through the novel, Oates shifts to the next generation, the children of the abortion doctor and of his murderer. From here the novel is much stronger although not strong enough to excuse the first half. Problematically, at least for me, the second half seems like a second book altogether. The abortion issues and questions are dropped almost entirely as we focus on the children of the damaged families. If this is the real issue of the book, then the first half could have been done away with almost entirely, relying on a chapter or so in which any sort of conflict that set off one man murdering another would have sufficed to get us to the challenges facing the next generation.
The ending (no spoiler coming) is particularly unsatisfying as well since the action in the final paragraph could have gone in multiple directions any of which could be seen to follow logically from the preceding 750 pages. It was time to stop, and so she stopped -- seemingly choosing a final sentence based on whether she wanted the story to suggest a particularly positive or negative future at that precise moment. If she had gotten out of the other side of the bed that day, the opposite sentence may very well have been written.
However, somewhere midway through the novel, Oates shifts to the next generation, the children of the abortion doctor and of his murderer. From here the novel is much stronger although not strong enough to excuse the first half. Problematically, at least for me, the second half seems like a second book altogether. The abortion issues and questions are dropped almost entirely as we focus on the children of the damaged families. If this is the real issue of the book, then the first half could have been done away with almost entirely, relying on a chapter or so in which any sort of conflict that set off one man murdering another would have sufficed to get us to the challenges facing the next generation.
The ending (no spoiler coming) is particularly unsatisfying as well since the action in the final paragraph could have gone in multiple directions any of which could be seen to follow logically from the preceding 750 pages. It was time to stop, and so she stopped -- seemingly choosing a final sentence based on whether she wanted the story to suggest a particularly positive or negative future at that precise moment. If she had gotten out of the other side of the bed that day, the opposite sentence may very well have been written.