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A review by honnari_hannya
The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates
4.0
This is either a 2-star or a 5-star, and for lack of a better system of rating I'm just going to put it at a 4-star because I can't say that I enjoyed any particular part of this book but I was riveted.
We follow members of the very insulated, posh town of Princeton, New Jersey—in particular, several old families that have very deep roots in the area. There isn't much of a straightforward plot in this novel, though I'm not sure I would say it is necessarily character driven. We are being told a story in hindsight, from a member of the community who is connected to the characters in a very ambiguous way that the readers do not discover until well into the book. The sequence of events all stem from a "curse" that has gripped the community—driving people into fits of madness, adultery, and the like—and the readers are left to parse for themselves whether the curse is real or simply a product of mass hysteria that took over the town that year.
Everyone in this book is awful. Hands down. If you have to connect with a character in order to enjoy a book, this is probably not the story for you. Oates delves deep into the psyche of her characters in order to explain their connections to the curse, and most of these people are not pleasant. In fact, they are the height of privilege, classism, and racism to varying degrees—some more overt than others. And these views are not explicitly challenged in the text by any characters; rather, Oates leaves the interpretation of whether this community "deserved" these tragedies up for the reader's interpretation.
It was honestly gripping, though likely for a very specific reader. If you enjoyed THE STRESS OF HER REGARD or THE HISTORIAN, this might be a book for you.
We follow members of the very insulated, posh town of Princeton, New Jersey—in particular, several old families that have very deep roots in the area. There isn't much of a straightforward plot in this novel, though I'm not sure I would say it is necessarily character driven. We are being told a story in hindsight, from a member of the community who is connected to the characters in a very ambiguous way that the readers do not discover until well into the book. The sequence of events all stem from a "curse" that has gripped the community—driving people into fits of madness, adultery, and the like—and the readers are left to parse for themselves whether the curse is real or simply a product of mass hysteria that took over the town that year.
Everyone in this book is awful. Hands down. If you have to connect with a character in order to enjoy a book, this is probably not the story for you. Oates delves deep into the psyche of her characters in order to explain their connections to the curse, and most of these people are not pleasant. In fact, they are the height of privilege, classism, and racism to varying degrees—some more overt than others. And these views are not explicitly challenged in the text by any characters; rather, Oates leaves the interpretation of whether this community "deserved" these tragedies up for the reader's interpretation.
It was honestly gripping, though likely for a very specific reader. If you enjoyed THE STRESS OF HER REGARD or THE HISTORIAN, this might be a book for you.