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Foxfire

3.75 of 5 stars 3.75 · rating details · 3,594 ratings · 199 reviews

The time is the 1950s. The place is a blue-collar town in upstate New York, where five high school girls are joined in a gang dedicated to pride, power, and vengeance on a world they never made - a world that seems made to denigrate and destroy them.

Foxfire is Joyce Carol Oates' strongest and most unsparing novel yet...an often engrossing, often shocking evocation of fema...more

Published (first published August 1st 1993)

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Sep 20, 2007 Matt Eckel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If rock'n'roll is your ideal, then this is a book you want to read. Not that Foxfire deals explicitly with music at any point, but Oates is able to distill that same electricity.

The story is set in the 50s, but, except for a few scattered cultural markers, it could just as easily be set in the contemporary moment. And I read it in that context. Nothing felt put on, or "for show." I've known women like the characters in this book, including some close friends I've gotten to know over the years. T...more

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Mar 03, 2010 SomePig rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There is no faulting the flow of Oates' prose. Having read Foxfire, I would even venture to say that I agree that she is a tour de force in contemporary fiction, but the star rating, as laid out by Goodreads, is all about how much I LIKE or don't LIKE a book. I really can't say I like this book. There are elements that I like. I like the character of Rita; I like the way Oates develops the foxfire motif, and I would even go as far as to say that certain passages would translate perfectly to a gr...more

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Aug 23, 2010 Andrea Carolina rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, biblioteca-mia

Yo no sé como vine a dar con este libro exactamente, leí el nombre de la autora alguna vez en algún sitio que no recuerdo, sitio pagina virtual, supongo que lo apunte en una de las tantas listas de libros y autores que tengo y que me llevo conmigo hasta la Patagonia pero que nunca saco para leer cuales son los autores o títulos que me interesan, así que en ese sitio donde venden los libros más baratos del mundo, me pille a Joyce Carol Oates y sí, mi memoria es pésima, pero yo quería leer libros...more Yo no sé como vine a dar con este libro exactamente, leí el nombre de la autora alguna vez en algún sitio que no recuerdo, sitio pagina virtual, supongo que lo apunte en una de las tantas listas de libros y autores que tengo y que me llevo conmigo hasta la Patagonia pero que nunca saco para leer cuales son los autores o títulos que me interesan, así que en ese sitio donde venden los libros más baratos del mundo, me pille a Joyce Carol Oates y sí, mi memoria es pésima, pero yo quería leer libros de mujeres así que algo quedo en mi cabeza, y no iba con la intención ni medianamente consciente de buscarlo de encontrarlo, porque esos libros de autores mujeres contemporáneas casi no se consiguen y no me lo pensé dos veces y lo compre con otros tantos.

Los autores gringos no me llaman la atención, prejuicios pendejos, aunque cada vez la cultura gringa me cae mejor, si mátenme por lo que digo, pero cada vez los entiendo mejor, trabajo para ellos, ellos me pagan y casi todo bien. Gente muy reprimida la gringa, muy ingenuos de corazón y con una sensibilidad artística particular: una mezcla de bondad con algo alternativo, y esa ingenuidad quizá también es la que los lleva a los extremos de la psicopatía. Y como Carol es de mi banda de chicAs yo no iba a dejar de leerla solo porque fuera del hemisferio norte, menos cuando los autores hombres no llegan aun a un entendimiento de las mujeres que a mí me convence.

Ella lo entiende todo y cuando digo todo es todo. Entiende los principales prototipos de feminidad, allí en esas cinco chicas de Firefox, convergen quizá todos los prototipos de mujeres posibles: sexys, tímidas, rechazadas, populares, intimidantes, gordas, tontas, reprimidas, extrovertidas, femeninas, masculinas, inteligentes, analíticas, lesbianas, heterosexuales, bisexuales, princesas, rebeldes, humilladas, humilladoras, divertidas, fanfarronas, serias, irónicas, sensibles, lo único que tienen en común las cinco chicas de Firefox son sus familias desastrosamente disfuncionales, que bien, eso se parecía mucho a mi. Créalo, así es la genialidad de esa autora, por eso y por entender también a la perfección el mundo de una mujer adolescente en la peor institución del universo: el colegio.

Ella entiende ese ámbito agreste, ridículo, estúpido, que si te duermes te come vivo. Lleno de esos profesores trastornados y de esos chicos idiotas si de esOs chicOs idiotas que a esa edad son incapaces de entender nada de una mujer, o del género opuesto. Pero también es iluso, quien no hubiera dado lo que sea por perteneces a una banda como Firefox, una banda de chicas, una banda que lucha por la Justicia, en un ámbito donde pulula la imperfección propia y de los otros y donde los que se creen perfectos se aprovechan de ello de las formas mas macabras. Eso es iluso Legs es una ilusión de las más grandes que uno pueda tener: una líder mujer que defiende a otras mujeres en la pubertad en la mísera pubertad! Uno se enamoraría de Legs claro, que fuerza, que sentido de la justicia, pero ella solo existe en los libros. La realidad es que los incompetentes sociales nos quedamos sin defensores en el colegio y para siempre hasta que uno aprende a defenderse, la realidad es que ese podrido mundo de los colegios seguirá siendo un asco y Firefox es solo una utopía hermosa y claro, peligrosa.

Yo encontré a mi Legs alguna vez, pero ya era grande y ya me había defendido sola, en realidad nunca tuve que defenderme yo siempre estuve al margen de los idiotas aprovechados y de los que fueron aprovechados (creo que en ese sentido CH me puede entender, yo se que el fue un poco asi), a mí nadie me tocaba, nadie me hablaba, nadie se metía conmigo ni para bien ni para mal, era una especie de bicho raro literalmente en mi colegio, Andrea? Esa vieja es rarísima, no habla, no dice nada, no se mete con nadie, está en otro planeta. Y sí, yo siempre estuve en otro mundo pero ese es otro tema. Pero aun así era como una observadora, los entendía a ellos a todos, no entender en el sentido de comprensión bondadosa, no! La empatía no es lo mío (por eso deje la psicología). Yo solo sabía que había en cada uno de sus corazones, que pretenciosa, pero así es, y aun lo sé a donde vaya, a quien conozca, se ver adentro sin hacer tantas preguntas, y quizá por eso ellos se mantenían al margen y lo siguen haciendo (venga, soy una ilusa, es una hipótesis no mas).

Legs me hace acordar mucho de JQ, su casa desordenada, espontanea, llena de objetos que uno no entiende porque están ahí, el olor a hogar, si la casa de JQ tiene el olor a hogar, no como la mía: perfectamente ordenada y con sentido, sentido, que ironía. La casa de CH también es como la de Legs, con esas paredes de papeles viejos, olor a perro, gente por aquí por allá, los mismos objetos sin sentido, el desorden, la falta de armonía estética, el olor a hogar. Ellos tiene la fuerza de Legs, el sentido de justicia de Legs, la perspicacia, la astucia y por eso los amo, pero ellos no fueron líderes de cambio como Legs, por eso Legs es una ilusión, y yo soy como Maddy esperando a ver que dicen, que hacen, analizándolo todo, observándolo todo, con ideas extrañas, un poco tímida, nada empática, más bien juzgona, miedosa, leal, con la nevera llena de comida vieja, pasada, y ellos siempre llegan ahí a comerse eso que uno no se come, a meterse en la cama de uno en la que si duermen, a desordenar la casa perfecta, a hacer ruido en la casa silenciosa, asi es la casa y la nevera de Maddy, lo juro, y así es la mía, ellos lo saben. (less)

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Jan 03, 2009 Laurie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This novel is a fictionalized account of an all-female gang that forms in a working class community in upstate New York. The gang, Foxfire, is founded by a group of girls who've all suffered alientation and lack of parental attention. The girls share a sense of being alienated and restricted from any sort of real social benefits or meaningful relationships becuase of their age, gender, economic status, and family situation. The gang is formed, and begins, by using public humilation and minor vio...more

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Jan 27, 2011 Renee rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Foxfire is the book that impacted me the most in Middle school. Take that as you must, but I'm happy to see that, unlike The Catcher in the Rye, it holds up reading it with adult eyes. Of course, now, 10 years older than the last time I read it, I find issues with some of the characters I loved as a teenager, but I can see a desperation and naivete I couldn't see before. This book is one of many that cements Oates into the the hall of fame of awesome American writers.

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Apr 02, 2009 Caitlin Constantine rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love this book so much that I find it difficult to write about it without gushing. I mean, there is the obvious reason why, which is that it's about a girl gang that targets predatory men and boys - and of course, horrible pet shops - with a sense of prefeminist vengeance. Feminist vigilantism appeals to me on this base, primal level, even if I have problems with violence in general.

The book said a lot about the time and place in which everything took place. The sharp class divides, the socia...more

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Jul 21, 2009 Courtney rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: chick-lit

Reading some of the reviews for this book led me to believe that this book would be a good read. I was wrong.

One of my biggest pet peeves is authors who ignore good grammar and proper punctuation, and Joyce Carol Oates is one of those authors. This novel reads like it was written by a kid in junior high. All the switching between first and third person narrative left me confused. The book is written from the perspective of the adult Maddie, but tends to read like someone observing the girls of...more

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Mar 06, 2013 My Inner Shelf rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporains

Un roman sur un gang, même de filles (surtout de filles !) a priori ça ne m’attire pas plus que ça. Mais Oates étant ce qu’elle est, je me suis jetée avec confiance dans son récit.

Ados dans les années 50, ça ne devait déjà pas être forcément facile. Fille ado dans un quartier populaire des années 50, n’en parlons pas. Legs, adolescente sans mère et au père incompétent, est à l’origine du gang Foxfire avec son amie Maddie, l’intellectuelle de la bande. Sans père et bientôt privée d’une mère tout...more Un roman sur un gang, même de filles (surtout de filles !) a priori ça ne m’attire pas plus que ça. Mais Oates étant ce qu’elle est, je me suis jetée avec confiance dans son récit.

Ados dans les années 50, ça ne devait déjà pas être forcément facile. Fille ado dans un quartier populaire des années 50, n’en parlons pas. Legs, adolescente sans mère et au père incompétent, est à l’origine du gang Foxfire avec son amie Maddie, l’intellectuelle de la bande. Sans père et bientôt privée d’une mère tout aussi défaillante que le père de Legs, elle se replonge des années plus tard dans ses notes et rédige ses souvenirs du temps de Foxfire. Les membres du gang ont toutes quelque chose à reprocher à la gente masculine, sa misogynie, les maltraitance, l’absence de respect, le viol, le mépris. Nées pauvres et filles, les membres de Foxfire se retrouvent donc entre « sœurs », se soutiennent, s’entraident, et se vengent. Si la création du gang est tout d’abord une réaction de défense face l’oppresseur (l’homme), les filles vont aussi se rebeller face à l’opulence des nantis, des riches et des bourgeois qui oppriment la classe ouvrière dont elles sont issues. Mais la rage qui habite Legs va les mener trop loin, jusqu’au drame.

Le sujet laisserait supposer des excès de glauquitude, mais non. Les scènes violentes restent modérées, les affronts faits aux filles sont suffisamment clairs pour ne pas avoir besoin d’être trop explicites, sans en atténuer l’intensité. L’auteur fait preuve de beaucoup de subtilité et ses personnages, bien que nourris par leur haine et leur colère restent finalement des enfants, de très jeunes filles désespérées qui voient en Legs un exemple et une grande sœur, voire une mère. Point de sordide donc, mais de la finesse dans la violence des propos. À savoir que le roman a fait l’objet d’une première adaptation ciné en 96, et d‘une seconde, plus réussie et plus fidèle sortie en janvier 2013.(less)

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Sep 04, 2010 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Foxfire is a book that read itself. At first, I found the choppy stream-of-consciousness style hard to deal with. I had to re-read the first few pages several times. But after the first third, or so, I began to get a feel for the odd prose style. The run-on sentences, capital letters, and lack of punctuation dragged my eye across the page and made the book very difficult to put down. I read most of the last two hundred pages in a single sitting and can’t remember the last time I finished a book...more Foxfire is a book that read itself. At first, I found the choppy stream-of-consciousness style hard to deal with. I had to re-read the first few pages several times. But after the first third, or so, I began to get a feel for the odd prose style. The run-on sentences, capital letters, and lack of punctuation dragged my eye across the page and made the book very difficult to put down. I read most of the last two hundred pages in a single sitting and can’t remember the last time I finished a book so quickly.

Foxfire is many things. It is at once a blistering critique of the status of women in post-World War Two America, a coming-of-age novel, the thrilling, action-packed saga of a girl-gang in poor, working-class New York, and (above all) a portrait of Margaret “Legs” Sadovsky. The book succeeds on all fronts, but the depiction of Legs (and her motivations) is what has stayed with me most after reading it.

In many ways, Legs is as multi-faceted as the book itself. At once courageous and naïve, she is an undying proponent of individuality and freedom. Throughout the book, she spouts socialist phrases and ideologies, although she has no understanding of what any of it actually means, and experiments with commonly accepted paradigms of gender and power. (One scene, in which she unexpectedly discovers sexual power while dressing up as a man for a job interview is one of the most memorable and surreal episodes of the entire book.)

Though Foxfire is narrated by the quieter, bookish Maddie Wirtz, it is unquestionably Legs’ story. The Foxfire gang is her creation and Legs becomes an odd combination of bully and mother-hen to the group of lost girls that fall under her charge. Think of Legs as a sort of female Peter Pan; the working-class town of Hammond, New York is her Never-Never Land: a gigantic playground for female passion and imagination gone awry.

Indeed, the story is told in a remarkable, childlike style with an emphasis on the visual. Some of the images seemed to pop right off the page and I remember thinking, as I read, that the book would make a great film. (I’ve since heard that there is a Foxfire movie out there, starring Angelina Jolie. That surprised me, since I kept picturing Keira Knightly as Legs Sadovsky while reading the book.)

One example of the book’s emphasis on image is the heavenly motifs that pepper the text. Joyce Carol Oates emphasizes ‘sky’ and ‘altitude’ throughout the book. In fact, the sky seemed to take on an almost salvific quality for Maddie and Legs, the two main protagonists.

Legs’ interest in the heavens is established early on in the story, but both characters develop a pattern of looking upwards whenever they wish to escape their dreary, Earth-bound circumstances. One example is a memorable scene in which Legs climbs up a tall water tower to escape a seething crowd of male oppressors on Memorial Day Weekend. Later on, while stuck in an isolation ward in prison, she finds solace watching a group of hawks circle outside her window.

In addition, Maddie also develops a fascination with stars and astronomy. She is pictured reading astronomy books throughout the story. At the end, it is revealed that she eventually became an astronomer’s assistant and was (for a time) married to an astronomer, as well. While one can’t be sure whether such repetition was intentional,
Joyce Carol Oates strikes me as too deliberate a writer for the motifs to be entirely accidental.

She is also a hugely prolific one. So far, I’ve only read two of her novels: Foxfire and them, so I can’t comment on how Foxfire compares to the rest of her ouvre. However, both novels have left me suitably impressed with the quality of Ms. Oates’ writing and I look forward to exploring her body of work for many more years to come.

Foxfire is by far my favorite of the two books. It’s well worth reading, and offers taut prose, memorable characters, and a harrowing climax to anyone willing to slog through the first fifty pages. Some have complained that the book’s male characters are weak and one-dimensional, but I didn’t see that. It’s true that men are unquestionably painted as the villains in Foxfire, but Ms. Oates seemed to be making an effort here to make the men well-rounded. Mr. Whitney Kellogg, the main male character, came across as downright nice compared to the male characters populating them. For these reasons, I recommend Foxfire: not only as a compelling story, but as a good introduction to Ms. Oates’ body of work, as well.

(less)

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Nov 21, 2007 Carla rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: girls, women who run with foxes

Foxfire never says die.
I have a Tattoo, based from this Book and the Movie that followed,...that starred Angelina Jolie. ;)
It's the story of a group of misfit girls, who fight back. Yes, they are a girl gang, but they aren't the offshoot of a boy gang. They aren't the girls of some local hoods. They are the ones running the show.
You are my Heart, Joyce. Foxfire Forever.

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Nov 18, 2011 Leilani rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I like the way in which the book was written. Different from what I'm used to. Some interesting revelations on the self and growth. My favorite:
"Say there's a mirror you have trusted to give you a solid unblemished surface reflecting the world then suddenly it breaks and shatters revealing a thousand new surfaces, miniature angles of seeing that must have been there all along hidden in the mirror's bland face, but you hadn't known. Who is, who was. Whoever's reading this, if anyone is reading...more

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Aug 04, 2011 Laurel Watson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, women-s-studies

Set in the late '50s-'60's, this book chronicles the lifespan of women's gang. Legs Sadovsky is the gang leader, and she utilizes feminist guerrilla tactics in order to combat childhood sexual abuse, racism, classism, and just general injustice. At some point in the book, however, these tactics become even more extreme and radical, which leaves the reader wondering--at one point does activism become self-serving and addictively destructive. Wonderful book. Love Joyce Carol Oates. If you've seen...more

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Dec 28, 2008 Adele rated it 3 of 5 stars

Really, this is the only *novel* I've read by the infamous Oats. To be honest, any opinions about the book have been eclipsed by the more recently watched film starring Angie Jolie as a lesbian with a mission. Cut to Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley fame singing awful songs in what was a more awful movie, and you've basically ruined anything associated with this story. Hey, I like girl gangs as much as anybody else, but truly, my absolute inability to remember anything meaningful about this novel has l...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Brian added it

In the tradition of Robin Hood Joyce Carol Oates’ Foxfire describes a saintly outlaw’s heroic quest for justice and equality against odds that are overwhelming. Delightfully modern in its prose, Oates creates a female teenage Shane who rides into a fictional upstate New York metropolis to rescue gender-oppressed women, redistribute wealth, and inspire hope among youth before she disappears in a sunset made more resplendent by her passing. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Yes, there is even...more

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Feb 14, 2010 Steen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010-books, fiction

I wasn't really sure I was going to finish it, but once I got past the way she wrote it it was alright. Although it drove me nuts when Maddie who is telling the story would refer to herself in first person but switch to third person a sentence later. The book kept my interest enough for me to finish it but it was one of those 'meh' books for me. One I won't read again. Legs was an interesting character, the rest of them mostly, aside from Maddie, seem to have been just there for the most part. L...more

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Oct 20, 2007 Nicole rated it 2 of 5 stars

Just 'eh.' Not as exciting as a book about a girl gang should be.

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Aug 10, 2012 Serena Tardioli rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is Joyce Carol Oates at her best. Foxfire is about jealousy and revenge. A group of girls led by Legs Sadovsky decide to plot against the men who have oppresed them, abused them, violated them, and used them. The reader watches the evolution of Foxfire; Foxfire develops from a few girls planning revenge against a teacher by spraypainting his car to a murder. Justifying their revenge through their angerness, the Foxfire women refuse to be victimized further. What makes Foxfire is amazing is...more

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Aug 03, 2009 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

I appreciate that Oates took what on the surface is a purely titillating story of a group of "bad" girls who take revenge on their male aggressors and gave it more depth by inviting the reader to partake of the girls' deeper feelings of sexual shame, guilt, insecurity, and jealousy. She captures the thoughts and feelings of teenage girls really well. The book was a fun read but it did not leave me much to chew on afterwards. Also, I didn't like the skipping around between first-person, third-per...more

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Apr 09, 2013 Ellen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who wants to read an exciting story that is wonderfully written

Shelves: feminism, read-in-school

I really enjoyed reading the book. I thought the story was very interesting and different from everything I’ve ever read before. It surprised me all the time, and I could never guess what would happen next. It was thrilling and exciting, and I had a hard time putting the book down, I wanted to keep reading.
My favourite part of the book was when Legs was in Red Bank, the correction facility. In this part you got to know a lot about Legs’ feelings and personality. I grew very fond of Legs when rea...more

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May 14, 2012 Mariano Hortal rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: genre-contemporary, north-american-literature

"Puro fuego" de Joyce Carol Oates. Editado directamenten en bolsillo en España, es una placer encontrarnos una obra como esta. Bajo la aparente simpleza de la trama: el diario de una banda de chicas adolescente con todo lo que van pasando, es esconde una obra excelent un ejercicio de estilo maravilloso conjuntado con una trama absorbente que además nos ofrece varios niveles de lectura, desde el simple relato de aventuras hasta un retrato de la amistad por encima de todo que se produce entre las...more

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Jun 24, 2012 Victoria rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: chick-lit, american-literature

I greatly enjoyed the story of Foxfire, the girl gang set on taking vigilante justice on their and others male oppressors, and the overall themes of strength, womanhood, and freedom. The illustration of freedom in Leg's love, almost obsession of, heights and reaching into the sky is brilliant.

The characters were likable and interacted well. But I was left slightly wanting more insight into even the main characters - Maddy, Rita, and the others.

The part that I had the hardest time with though w...more

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Jan 14, 2012 Christina rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: joyce-carol-oates, favorites, feminist

This is a really fun and exciting read, my favorite JCO work thus far. Here, Joyce Carol Oates is at her best. With such a young cast of characters Oates is at full liberty to show the smooth transition between social marginalization in childhood and an adult life that was far from ideal, a life of thievery. The links between poverty, social marginalization, institutionalization, and crime are clear to those who have experienced them. Never have I found a work of fiction that combines all these...more

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Feb 18, 2011 Chad rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

There is a chaotic energy that permeates Joyce Carol Oates' "Foxfire" such that with every word, it seems to be reaching up through the page, grabbing you by the scruff of your neck, and demanding that you pay attention to it. The narrator and principal characters are, for the most part, ordinary girls existing on the fringes of the mainstream in the 1950s. They are, to an exent, a bit more angry than the rest of us, but they are recognizable as real people. But Oates does not achieve a startlin...more There is a chaotic energy that permeates Joyce Carol Oates' "Foxfire" such that with every word, it seems to be reaching up through the page, grabbing you by the scruff of your neck, and demanding that you pay attention to it. The narrator and principal characters are, for the most part, ordinary girls existing on the fringes of the mainstream in the 1950s. They are, to an exent, a bit more angry than the rest of us, but they are recognizable as real people. But Oates does not achieve a startling success by writing them as real people as real people exist. The brilliance is in writing them as the girls see themselves.

I teach middle school, so I'm acutely aware of the intensity, the melodramatic fervor, the almost painful egotism through which many teenagers interpret their lives. There is a strong over-the-top quality to the way they deal with even the most mundane circumstances, and it is that manic desire to blow everything up to hyperbolic importance that Oates captures in these pages. Watching kids act that way every day in my occupation makes it particularly enjoyable to read about such an exaggerated reality, then to translate it back into the more grounded actual reality that more likely occured.

To ratchet things up a bit further, Oates eventually nudges these recognizable girls into somewhat more extreme territory. There is some nebulous moment where the Foxfire Girls flip from just being angst-ridden teens, to corrupted delinquents with their hands in illicit deeds that are beyond their means to truly deal with. Almost as if to point out how, should the lives of teenagers ever actually follow the imaginary trajectories the teens themselves think they're following in the midst of their melodrmatic reveries, society would never hold together, with everyone being consumed in the heat of spectacular flame-outs before we ever reached adulthood.

There is great fun and chaos lurking within "Foxfire", and things do veer into wild territory that is probably outside the norm. But as for the tone, it is very striking how accurately Joyce Carol Oates portrays the rebellios and heroic martyrdom that teenagers see as the primary characteristic of their lives.(less)

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Nov 14, 2010 Sonia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Non avevo mai incontrato la Oates nelle mie letture e ora trovarla nelle parole di Maddy-Monkey e nei gesti di Legs è stato un incontro determinante.
E' la storia di una gang femminile degli States negli anni 50, una gang che vuole lottare contro il maschio, contro gli uomini e che si ritrova a comportarsi esattamente come gli stessi uomini, nelle loro violenze, nei loro agganci, nei loro imbrogli.
E' un libro duro e delicato allo stesso tempo. Una storia drammatica e a lieto fine, in un certo s...more

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Feb 10, 2009 Kristin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: gender-issues

This was decent. Joyce Carol Oates writes in a pretty heavy, overtly emotional style. The character Legs seems a little contrived, and so do portions of the plot. However, it's entirely plausible to let someone like Legs, who seems to be the epitome of individuality and freedom, lead you down a path you rapidly lose control of. That's the point right -- doing things you've always wanted to or were maybe too afraid to because of what they meant. Somebody like Legs is equally necessary and destruc...more

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Nov 16, 2009 Jayaprakash Satyamurthy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Joyce Carol Oates is the Lon Chaney of literature - the writer of a 1,000 voices. She chilled me with the sociopathic journalising of ZOMBIE, delighted with the purposely pompous, sometimes Gothic narrative of THE MYSTERIES OF WINTERTHUN and in Maddie Wirtz, professional stargazer and former girl-gang member, she has again created a unique voice to tell a powerful and hard-hitting tale. The girls of FOXFIRE are teenagers from the wrong side of the tracks who band together to try and be self-reli...more

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Dec 22, 2007 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

I remember seeing the movie based on this book in Blockbuster shortly after it came out on video, but I kept confusing it in my head with The Craft. So maybe that's why I was surprised to learn that, not only was it a book, but it was a book by Joyce Carol Oates.

I still haven't seen the movie, although I did Tivo an airing of it on Lifetime recently, but I gather that they decided to set it in the present day. The book is set in the 50's, where even the gangs seemed more innocent and quaint (One...more

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Nov 17, 2012 Megan Jones rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: edgy

Yeah, I liked this novel - I mean it's my favorite author ever - JCO!! But I've become very found of her short stories and novellas. So it was a bit different reading what I could envision as a dozen short stories in this one novel. It was just different, thus not a five-star rating. There were numerous redeeming qualities in this book which are more detailed in other readers reviews. I'm just not overly excited enough to write about them. I do agree with other reviewers that although the settin...more

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Nov 24, 2011 Kaitie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: teen, movie

I kind of hated this book.

It's not that it was bad. I can see how people like it, I just didn't. I couldn't support the girls in their gang activity and I wasn't sympathetic towards them for most of the book. In addition to the characters, the writing really bugged me. Sentences just went on and on, so the lack of punctuation just drove me nuts. In my head, all those run-on sentences get read in a frantic, hurried way, which didn't lead to a very enjoyable experience.

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Aug 05, 2009 Debbie rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this book, admittedly, after seeing the movie on tv. It seemed like a completely different story. Or rather, that the movie was based on the first 50-100 pages or so of the book. Actually, I only somewhat paid attention to the second half of the movie, so maybe I'm wrong, but anyway, the tone felt completely different. In the book, it seemed like every man was a pervert, sexual predator and misogynist. Which the movie also touched upon, but not nearly as extremely. And I kept being bother...more

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About Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She is also the recipient of the 2005 Prix Femina for The Falls. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, and she has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. Pseudonyms ... Rosamond Smith and Laure ...more

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“The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can't see, whose beginning you've forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable.” — 108 people liked it

“The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct” — 25 people liked it

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