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Solstice
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Solstice
Back in print, one of the most engrossing of Joyce Carol Oates's earlier novels explores a relationship between two women. Originally published in 1985, Solstice is the gripping story of Monica Jensen and Sheila Trask, two young women who are complete opposites yet irresistibly attracted to each other. Blonde, shy, recently divorced Monica is a school teacher; dark, noctur...more
Hardcover, 243 pages
Published
January 16th 1990
by Random House Value Publishing
(first published 1985)
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I finished Joyce Carol Oates’ Solstice last night. A dear friend mailed it to me last month, with a note saying that it “gave me weird dreams, and I hope you like it.”
In true JCO fashion, it was an intense, mildly confusing, slightly angering tale. Two women who become friends for reasons that are never really explored develop a sort of codependent relationship that leaves them both bitter and angry a majority of the time. The sickness and art of Sheila is thrilling for the bored schoolteacher M...more
In true JCO fashion, it was an intense, mildly confusing, slightly angering tale. Two women who become friends for reasons that are never really explored develop a sort of codependent relationship that leaves them both bitter and angry a majority of the time. The sickness and art of Sheila is thrilling for the bored schoolteacher M...more
I first read this book in 1986 and have read it twice more since then. Joyce Carol Oates is the first contemporary American author I remember impressing me enough to linger with me long after I'd read her work. "Solstice," like other works by Joyce Carol Oates, does not paint a pretty picture. Great fiction is often about complex, sad, scary, bitter relationships. Happy relationships are better left to the Harlequins of this world. Sometimes when you're in a weird, complex mood you want weird, c...more
This is the fourth JCO book I've read, and it's the fourth JCO book I've read which has a rape in it.
There are things I like about her work and things I don't like. She does a powerful job of translating psychic pain into literal pain. When her characters feel sorrow, they fall into dramatic, disgusting illnesses. When her characters feel degraded or afraid, they are subjected to rapes and assaults and nightmares. When you finish a Joyce Carol Oates book, you have been given ample opportunity t...more
There are things I like about her work and things I don't like. She does a powerful job of translating psychic pain into literal pain. When her characters feel sorrow, they fall into dramatic, disgusting illnesses. When her characters feel degraded or afraid, they are subjected to rapes and assaults and nightmares. When you finish a Joyce Carol Oates book, you have been given ample opportunity t...more
I still haven't read a novel by Joyce Carol Oates that I really love. Hmm, maybe it's b/c I just choose them randomly from the shelves of the library based on their titles or cover art, not on any recommendations. Which one should I read? Any suggestions out there? Anyway, in case you want to know about this one, it is a story of 2 women in this small town in Pennsylvania who have this intense kind of screwed-up friendship in which there is a really weird power dynamic. One of them is semi-famou...more
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Solstice is a look into co-dependence, obsession and ultimately insanity. Shelia and Monica are two women who start as friends, and fall more and more into each others' orbit- spending time together perhaps more than is healthy. Eventually, it’s clear that these two women are not normal, and that something has to give.
Oates does a good job of portraying this downward spiral of mutual obsession. I felt a great deal of tension for the first bit of the book, because Oates does a wonderful job of w...more
Oates does a good job of portraying this downward spiral of mutual obsession. I felt a great deal of tension for the first bit of the book, because Oates does a wonderful job of w...more
As the information on the cover suggest, SOLSTICE literally has three meanings: a furthest point, a turning point, or a point of culmination. I guess I expected the relationship of the two women who become friends (who are from time to time estranged) to come to a turning point -- much like I have understood the word in connection to the turning of the seasons in the Midwest -- for better or for worse. But that is not what happens: rather the artist and the teacher alternately love one another a...more
This novel concerns the development of a relation between two women (not sexual).
The book jacket gives the Webster's definition of solstice as "as furthest point, turning point, or point of culmination". I think that in this book it could also be a comment on one woman's belief that she is the saner woman of the friendship - much like an observer of the sun after solstice thinks the sun has started moving in the other direction.
On the page before the Contents, Oates printed Emily Dickinson's po...more
The book jacket gives the Webster's definition of solstice as "as furthest point, turning point, or point of culmination". I think that in this book it could also be a comment on one woman's belief that she is the saner woman of the friendship - much like an observer of the sun after solstice thinks the sun has started moving in the other direction.
On the page before the Contents, Oates printed Emily Dickinson's po...more
Powerfully written. Joyce Carol Oates has a fantastic writing style--I can't quite place it, but it is so fluid and organic. And she captures the painful, awkward eagerness of Monica's thoughts so well. Meanwhile Sheila is one of those hypnotically distinctive characters, cruel and beautifully selfish, that I found myself caught between loving and hating. No small surprise that Monica feels the same way.
It's a short and well-written book that I enjoyed very much. But still--disturbingly obsessiv...more
It's a short and well-written book that I enjoyed very much. But still--disturbingly obsessiv...more
This well-written but difficult to follow story of obsession involves a simple plot about the acrid complexities of attraction and the sweet aspects of repulsion. While the characters and settings in the book are realistic, the plot smacks of the gothic, and reminds one of the obsessive characters in Poe. There are themes of academia, art, lesbianism and rape, which all make a very interesting story, but it is told in a purposely disjointed fashion, making it hard to navigate at times. The secon...more
This was an interesting book that I picked up for free and devoured. The style is really incredible and very palpable. The characters seemed so real and because of this and the great the story was engaging but ultimately I didn't feel it really went anywhere. However, I was not unpleased I read it and will say there is something about it that has lingered on in my consciousness after having read it although I am not quite sure what...
One of the saddest novels I have ever read. I kept waiting for something revelatory to happen, but the novel just ended in stark sadness. Sadness without a lesson. Sadness without hope. Sadness without explanation. Throughout the book, I kept craving more from Monica, but the distant third-person narrator keeps us at a distance, one that makes the sadness at the end seem that much more devastating. If not for the beautiful, haunting writing, which sprung me through this book, I'm not sure how I...more
I like fiction that explores relationships between women, and so this one hit the literary spot for me. In some ways a very intense and dark, brooding story, and it didn't tie up all the loose ends for me, but then, often the best stories don't. JCO certainly drew me in, and even though I didn't really like her characters, I couldn't put it down.
Joyce Carol Oates must have truly experienced this type of relationship in her life to capture the essence of it so completely. As one who has "been there and done that" this novel helped me to understand that "letting go" is the most healthy response for both people involved or you literally will be friends "til one of us dies."
What an odd book this was. Interesting, and yet so hard to decipher. It's a very dark treatment of friendship and its perils, but what's the point? Or is there a point? A lot of the action goes on in Monica's mind or in her internal reactions to external events, rather than having a plot dealing with a lot of external occurrences.
It doesn't speak highly of men but why would it? It had me questioning whether this is the affect I have on my friends or if this is the ultimate affect someone will have on me. Mostly Ms. Oates failed at depicting mania and non-fiction is a much better source.
Too weird. Creepy relationship between two women--an artist and a teacher and all their secrets, although I love Joyce Carol Oates; read Black Water or We Were the Mulvaneys or Because it is Bitter and Because it is my Heart
I got real interested in the writings of joyce carol oates after reading this book. She really knows how to explore private lives of ordinary people.The story itself was kind of weird, but I like her writing style.
Powerful and provocative, Solstice is about friendship, obsession, and the way love and hate are often two sides of the same coin.
This was my beach reading, but am still not sure what the book was really about...It was well written, but it really didn't go anywhere...There definitely was a lesbian subtext, but not explored and the horrific rape scene that was just written about in passing...the characters emotions were very complex.
JCO can do no wrong for me. The premise of this book is odd, but plays out in a fascinating way. 2 women and their unlikely friendship. JCO delves into the dark reality of befriending a famous person and desires and problems that come with it.
Pageturner fer sher. A roiling whirlwind of feminine obsessive, emotional behavior. Believable and enthralling.
A hypnotizing, flowing, pulsing dream/nightmare of obsession, beauty and self-destruction.
Overall this book was terrible because it ultimately goes nowhere add to it that ending doesn't make much sense and I can't say I'd ever like to run into another such book from Oates.
thought provoking....negative and positive exchange of energy and friendship
"The printed line, after all, is so orderly and chaste, so chronologically determined - that is, the reader is obliged to read line by line, page by page, in sequence; very unlike the visual image, which assaults the eye out of nowhere, in a manner of speaking, with no preparation, and no power over the viewer to demand from him more than a moment's casual contemplation."
A fascinating study of intense friendship between a mercurial, eccentric artist and her at first glance more conventional school teacher friend. The women are well drawn, complex and believable characters, and the book is wonderfully written with a dark, almost gothic sensibility and an edge of menace here and there. The only fault - the end seems to happen too fast, there's a bit of a turn around and it doesn't seem clear why it happened. I felt a bit puzzled by the last couple of chapters. A r...more
Disturbing, yet couldn't put it down...
I have absolutely no idea what this book was about.
Although Joyce Carol Oates writes beautifully, most of the time I found "Solstice" dull and confusing with little plot progression. Yet, the complexity of the characters was mesmerizing enough to make me want to keep reading. Monica's struggle to immerse herself in activities in hopes of finding meaning in her life was familiar enough to be disturbing. It ended in the midst of what appeared to me to be the main climax and left me feeling dejected.
Solstice is the dramatic, enigmatic story of Monica Jensen and Sheila Trask, two young women who are complete opposites yet irresistably attracted to each other. Blond, shy, recently divorced Monica is a school teacher; dark, nocturnal, sophisticated Sheila is a painter of stature, driven by the needs of her art. Over the months, their friendship deepens, first to love and then to a near-fatal obsession.
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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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