In 1936 the Schwarts, an immigrant family desperate to escape Nazi Germany, settle in a small town in upstate New York, where the father, a for... read full description
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May 12, 2008
Jason
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)
So what's the dark fear that lies in the inner heart of all erudite nerds? Namely this -- that no matter how educated, intelligent or well-read you are, there are always going to be a certain amount of very well-known authors you have never read at all, not even one single page of, and tha More...
So what's the dark fear that lies in the inner heart of all erudite nerds? Namely this -- that no matter how educated, intelligent or well-read you are, there are always going to be a certain amount of very well-known authors you have never read at all, not even one single page of, and tha More...
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Feb 05, 2011
Nate
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I've not read a great deal of Joyce Carol Oates' copious publication list, but the Gravedigger's Daughter seems to be at the more reserved, conventional end of her spectrum. It is the story of a lifetime, a classic American lifetime from blighted immigrant upbringing to eventual success, or success-through-children as is often the case. In the meantime, much contemplation of the perils of being a women, and of being a single mother, and of being a foreigner. Of perseverance and the loneliness of
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(3 people liked it)
Apr 02, 2009
Robin
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This book would have had much higher marks from me if it would have ended differently.
This is my first Joyce Carol Oates read and was for a face to face bookclub. In general I'm not drawn to "women in jepordy" stories but I'm always willing to give something new a try.
I was drawn to the character Rebecca and wanted to see her life work out for the better. And ultimately things did get better for her. She finally did re-marry although she was permenently damag More...
This is my first Joyce Carol Oates read and was for a face to face bookclub. In general I'm not drawn to "women in jepordy" stories but I'm always willing to give something new a try.
I was drawn to the character Rebecca and wanted to see her life work out for the better. And ultimately things did get better for her. She finally did re-marry although she was permenently damag More...
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(6 people liked it)
Jul 03, 2008
Madeline
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I guess I liked this book, but reading it once is plenty for me. It was very well-written, but I just could not handle how ungodly depressing it was. Honestly, the main character can't seem to go ten pages without getting the shit kicked out of her (literally and figuratively) by all the Mean Bad Men in her life. First there's her father, who goes apeshit when his daughter dares to enter a spelling bee (I still don't get that); then there's her husband, who chooses beating the shit out of her as
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Feb 21, 2008
Lori
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A character's worst fear should be to appear in a Joyce Carol Oates novel. It's pretty well guaranteed his or her like is going to suck.
Still, though, I keep picking them up. And as decently written as they may be, I'm miserable right along with everyone else. There's never a glimmer of hope, a break from the compounding gloom. As a reader, the weight lands firmly on your shoulders for the length of the book. Join us for a walk of pain.
Gravedigger's Daughter is no excepti More...
Still, though, I keep picking them up. And as decently written as they may be, I'm miserable right along with everyone else. There's never a glimmer of hope, a break from the compounding gloom. As a reader, the weight lands firmly on your shoulders for the length of the book. Join us for a walk of pain.
Gravedigger's Daughter is no excepti More...
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Apr 30, 2008
Ruth
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This was my necessary breezy read after the last one. It's the second thing I've read by this author, who seems to be really well-appreciated by the world, but I am still ambivalent about her work. It is easy to get into but also easy to fall right back out of- I guess that's what I will say. She is very prolific, though- it could be that I'm just reading the wrong things. This one is about a woman who has a really hard childhood and young adulthood and gets a lot of abuse, and then she goes
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Dec 03, 2007
Deb
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Joyce Carol Oates is probably our most prolific writer. I've read so many of her novels, and she always gets me in her spell. She often writes of troubled young women who become victims to brutish men because of making bad choices and having low self-esteem. She has killer lines, which she often uses as repetitive phrases or tropes effectively throughout the book. She can do so much in one line, for example:
"Mrs. Chester Gallagher
Each time she signed her new name it seemed More...
"Mrs. Chester Gallagher
Each time she signed her new name it seemed More...
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(3 people liked it)
Feb 10, 2008
Jenny
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Once again, I must diverge from the critics who loved this Joyce Carol Oates novel. Apparently I didn't learn my lesson with "We Were the Mulvaneys." I don't know where to start, so I'll just list the major problems: a bloated and disjointed narrative, overwrought prose, and a nonsensical epilogue. Good times...
Aug 05, 2009
Christina Stind
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This is a book about identity, about coming to terms with your past and being who you are. About family, battered women and their husbands. About the immigrant experience.
Oates details the story of Rebecca Schwart's life from her earliest childhood and on. Rebecca is the third child of poor, immigrant Jewish parents who arrived in the States in the 30 and Rebecca was actually born in New York Harbor, making her a US citizen as the only one in the family.
The book starts wi More...
Oates details the story of Rebecca Schwart's life from her earliest childhood and on. Rebecca is the third child of poor, immigrant Jewish parents who arrived in the States in the 30 and Rebecca was actually born in New York Harbor, making her a US citizen as the only one in the family.
The book starts wi More...
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(1 person liked it)
Aug 27, 2007
Sarah
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This story depicts the tale of the Shwarts who, in the mid 1930s, fled Nazi Germany and have been reduced to life in a tiny cottage while their father, a former school teacher, can only find work as a cemetary caretaker. Perceived and actual intolerance by members of the community only exacerbate the family's frail mental health and, ultimately, tragedy strikes when our protagonist, Rebecca, is only 13 years old. The reader witnesses Rebecca's trials of youth, her struggles to escape an abusive
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(1 person liked it)
Mar 06, 2011
Melissa
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I'm exploring the works of Joyce Carol Oates (though she writes so prolifically that this could take a lifetime). I chose this novel after reading a review of it in the NY Times. I agree with the reviewer that she is too long-winded, particularly in the first half of this 582-paged novel, but I found it worth reading nonetheless. I knew nothing of the terrible treatment Jews received in America (yes, America) during WWII and following, and this is one of the several topics woven throughout this
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(1 person liked it)
May 17, 2008
Tina
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Aug 04, 2011
Alisa
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The first half of this novel was so angry, practically dripping with Jacob Schwart's spittle-rage and Tignor's controlling misogyny! The unpleasant feeling of reading about all this anger, together with the deft anxiety-inducing plot, made me read fast, fast, fast, barely skimming some sections. It is a tribute to the author's ability that I kept reading at all. A less well-written book I certainly would've put down. But Rebecca's unique survival story, one in which she crafts a new identity
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Mar 08, 2009
Julie
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Joyce Carol Oates is really an amazing writer, however, I don’t necessarily love her dark themed writing. This book is the saga of Rebecca Shwart, a daughter of Jewish immigrants to America whose lives don’t correspond so nicely with the American dream. After losing both brothers (they ran away) and parents (her father shot her mother), she marries to find happiness but instead finds abuse and loneliness. She and her son escape the abusive relationship and eventually find a sort of happiness but
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Dec 27, 2008
Debbie
rated it:
I've read her short stories but this is my first novel. She can surely write. I love her style and while the story is quite graphic in its violence and abuse, it was not gratuitous, but necessary, handled well.
It was a story of survival, escape. One family escapes the holocaust only to confront isolation and prejudice in America, eventually leading a father to insanity and self-destruction. The journey of the surviving daughter reveals another from of persecution--the persecution of More...
It was a story of survival, escape. One family escapes the holocaust only to confront isolation and prejudice in America, eventually leading a father to insanity and self-destruction. The journey of the surviving daughter reveals another from of persecution--the persecution of More...
Dec 16, 2011
Meredith
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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May 18, 2011
G
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When I pick up a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, I want to feel I’m in the hands of a writer who really knows what she’s doing. Oates has published so many books, I’ve lost count of just how many, though I’m pretty certain this is her thirty-sixth novel. But even though I want to trust this author to take me on an interesting and unforgettable literary journey, there’s always been something about Oates’ work that won’t let me get truly involved. Some of her books, like Soltice, just leave me cold
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Mar 27, 2011
Geetha
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Joyce Carol Oates’s “The GraveDigger’s Daughter” is a powerful story. It is not a pleasant book to read given that the main theme of the book is male violence. But then life is not always pleasant, is it? To me however, the main theme of the story is survival. The human instinct for survival is strong and a mother’s instinct to fight for the survival of her child is even stronger. One of the main elements required to successfully survive horrendous life experiences is the ability and willingness
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Jan 25, 2011
Darryl
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** “The Gravedigger’s Daughter” by Joyce Carol Oates. Ms Oates is a prolific, popular, and critically acclaimed author. She also teaches humanities at Princeton University. Maybe those credentials raise expectations too much. This novel is at best only mildly interesting. The heroin, Rachel Schwarts, was born as her parents’ ship, taking them in their 1936 escape from the Nazis to the United States, lands in New York. The father, who had been a math teacher in Germany, takes the only job h
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Dec 14, 2010
Bruce
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This novel is narrated by the main character, Rebecca, in the third person, primarily using free indirect discourse. Oates’ style is to make liberal use of sentence fragments, and these seem consistent with the FID approach. The initial section of the first of three parts of the book reveals Rebecca as a young woman of about 23, working in a sweatshop factory to support herself and her three-year-old son. Her husband, Niles Trignor, is often away from home at unknown locations for days and we
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Nov 28, 2010
Jenny
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http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/20...
Grave affair
Oates' compelling novel digs up somber themes buried in past
Jenny Shank, Special to The Rocky
Published June 15, 2007 at midnight
The Gravedigger's Daughter is Joyce Carol Oates' 36th novel (not including the 11 she's written under pseudonyms), but according to a press release, she has been at work on this book for 12 years. The harrowing story, the publisher notes, is "based on her own family's his More...
Grave affair
Oates' compelling novel digs up somber themes buried in past
Jenny Shank, Special to The Rocky
Published June 15, 2007 at midnight
The Gravedigger's Daughter is Joyce Carol Oates' 36th novel (not including the 11 she's written under pseudonyms), but according to a press release, she has been at work on this book for 12 years. The harrowing story, the publisher notes, is "based on her own family's his More...
Feb 10, 2010
Annie
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Jan 20, 2010
Harry
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For me The Grave Diggers Daughter is almost entirely a book of dichotomies; of contrast and harsh juxtapositions and so, indeed, is my opinion of it.
In plot terms it is the progression of one girl's life from blighted beginnings to a drastically altered adulthood, but in more philosophical terms the debate as to whether life is a game of chance or whether we carve our own destiny.
We follow Rebecca Schwart, born in New York Harbour, the daughter of Jewish WWII refugees. The fa More...
In plot terms it is the progression of one girl's life from blighted beginnings to a drastically altered adulthood, but in more philosophical terms the debate as to whether life is a game of chance or whether we carve our own destiny.
We follow Rebecca Schwart, born in New York Harbour, the daughter of Jewish WWII refugees. The fa More...
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Jun 12, 2009
Kani
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A tale of America at a difficult time in our history. This story is told without all the pieces, just like an adult's memory of a difficult childhood where the memories are pieces to a bigger puzzle. You only know what you know once others who knew are dead and gone and it's too late to ask. Some never had a chance to ask. This is a difficult and sad story that made me angry at my fellow citizens and at prejudice in my own heart when I see people who scare me or intimidate me or are "we
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May 29, 2009
Nancy
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The Gravedigger's Daughter is a long, dark book and the tragic story of a German/Jewish immigrant family. The father, once a teacher in Germany, becomes a gravedigger after he immigrates to the United States in the face of Hitler's Nazis.
With greatly reduced circumstances and in disillusionment, the father kills the mother and then himself. His daughter escapes and later marries a man who beats her and her child. To save herself and her child, she takes everything she can and runs with More...
With greatly reduced circumstances and in disillusionment, the father kills the mother and then himself. His daughter escapes and later marries a man who beats her and her child. To save herself and her child, she takes everything she can and runs with More...
Jul 16, 2009
Joy H.
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Dec 01, 2008
Darla
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A blurb on the cover mentions a heroine right out of "Hardy, Wharton and Dreiser" - I'll give them Hardy for the sheer bleakness of the story, Dreiser for the parallel of the fallen woman (with a nod to Hardy's Tess, too) but really can't see the Wharton link - there's little social commentary/criticism and Rebecca Schwart is no Lily Bart. Otherwise, a decent read, not one of Oates' best. Fairly long - over 500 pages.
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Aug 01, 2011
Heidi
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Oli todella lähellä, etten antanut tälle kirjalle täysiä pisteitä. En kerta kaikkiaan löytänyt tästä yhtään heikkoa hetkeä. Yleensä parhaissakin kirjoissa on kohtia, kun poljetaan tyhjää, mutta Hautausmaan tytär kulki kuin juna.
Olin alkuun hiukan nihkeä lukemaan. Päähenkilö vaikutti hyvin karkealta ja jopa epämiellyttävältä. Vaan kun tulin imaistuksi tarinaan, en enää muuta halunnutkaan, kuin lukea lisää. Oates ei sortunut ylidramatisointiin, ei saarnaukseen, ei tyhjänjauhantaan. Kir More...
Olin alkuun hiukan nihkeä lukemaan. Päähenkilö vaikutti hyvin karkealta ja jopa epämiellyttävältä. Vaan kun tulin imaistuksi tarinaan, en enää muuta halunnutkaan, kuin lukea lisää. Oates ei sortunut ylidramatisointiin, ei saarnaukseen, ei tyhjänjauhantaan. Kir More...
Jun 06, 2011
Susan
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Joyce Carol Oates continues to amaze me with the sheer volume of her work and the depth she develops in her characters. Rebecca/Hazel, the main character in this work set from the late 1930s to the late 1990s in the U.S., is based on Oates’ grandmother. Knowing that made the story an even more compelling one for me from the opening scene in 1959 New York State.
Some have criticized Oates for her naturalistic approach to this story, but I found her development of Rebecca/Hazel’s charact More...
Some have criticized Oates for her naturalistic approach to this story, but I found her development of Rebecca/Hazel’s charact More...
Jan 26, 2011
Laysee
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I’ve read few novels, such as The Gravedigger’s Daughter, that demand that a prodigious amount of emotional energy be suspended and sustained over a length of time. In her vivid and mesmerizing prose, Oates wrote with a fury like one possessed about the abject misery and eventual triumph of her heroine, Rebecca Schwarts, daughter of a disenchanted immigrant gravedigger. The reader is dragged along as Rebecca fled and sought to obliterate an excruciatingly painful past (raging father, abusive “sp
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