false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179973443m/981008.jpg 177871 14 In her bewitching 30th novel, <I>I'll Take You There</I>, Joyce Carol Oates returns again to neurotic female post-adolescence. The unnamed narrator attends an upstate New York university in the early 1960s. In those times of tightly prescribed femininity, she joins a sorority in a bald attempt to become part of the sisterhood of normalcy. It doesn't work. She reads philosophy, she works for a living, she's asexual, she's an orphan, she's a Jew: "I was a freak in the midst of their stunning, stampeding, blazing female normality." Booted from the sorority, she falls hard for a thirtyish black philosophy student who seems to her to live on a higher plane than the rest of humanity. In the final section, she is called west to the deathbed of someone she thought was lost to her forever. Oates brings together some of her strongest trademark qualities: She writes her character's life as though it were a fairy tale. She sells her material, bringing dramatic tension to the very first page: "They would claim I destroyed Mrs. Thayer.... Yet others would claim that Mrs. Thayer destroyed me." And she writes with tender care about the intellectual life of her young protagonist. Some find Oates's obsession with nascent womanhood claustrophobic, but in this heroine she finds a vein of integrity and intellectual probity peculiar to those who are not quite adult. Most writers treat college life as comedy or romance. Oates, on the other hand, seriously explores an age when we are most terribly ourselves. She seems to find something deeply human and pleasingly dramatic in this time wedged between childhood and adulthood. <I>--Claire Dederer</I> 3158094 book 1991 I'll Take You There: A Novel total:434|5:56|4:143|3:167|2:45|1:23| 434 1466 616 51 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 0 1 false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu May 21 05:34:37 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 21 19:33:09 -0700 2009 more...]]> 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 1 2 false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Dec 22 09:06:29 -0800 2007 Sat Dec 22 09:07:02 -0800 2007
I recently read an interview with Joyce Carol Oates where she said this w...more...]]> 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 3 1 false Thu Aug 21 10:22:52 -0700 2008 Wed May 28 14:08:36 -0700 2008 Thu Aug 21 10:22:52 -0700 2008 more...]]> 945598 0007146442 9780007146444 2 2 3.38 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/945598.I_ll_Take_You_There 4 0 false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Nov 09 11:05:56 -0800 2007 Sun Nov 11 08:10:43 -0800 2007 more...]]> 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 4 0 false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Nov 01 16:34:38 -0700 2007 Thu Nov 01 16:49:18 -0700 2007 more...]]> 945598 0007146442 9780007146444 2 2 3.38 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/945598.I_ll_Take_You_There 4 0 false Thu Oct 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 17 14:51:09 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 30 14:35:25 -0700 2009 I must say the parts were a little too clean cut to me. It really felt like three novellas rather than one novel. It was my first Joyce Carol Oates' book and I can already...more...]]> 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 4 0 false Sun Feb 08 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 08 17:50:08 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 08 17:54:47 -0800 2009 more...]]> 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 3 0 false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Aug 27 20:39:21 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 27 10:36:00 -0700 2007
A first-person narrative, I'll Take You There's narrator is an intelligent, obsessive, needy, and slightly off-balance girl in her college years. With sometimes brutal self-awareness, the narrator seeks to defi...more...]]> 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 5 0 false Thu Aug 13 20:20:25 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 13 20:24:38 -0700 2009 more...]]> 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 4 0 true Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Nov 06 06:06:19 -0800 2007 Thu Jan 24 16:35:36 -0800 2008 more...]]> 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 5 0 false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2002 Sat Jul 11 20:38:51 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 11 20:39:51 -0700 2009 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 4 0 false Fri Apr 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 20 01:40:55 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 20 01:44:02 -0700 2009 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 2 0 false Tue Jul 15 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 15 20:41:03 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 15 20:41:27 -0700 2008 more...]]> 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 4 0 false Sun Jun 07 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 30 13:28:45 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 30 13:30:04 -0700 2009 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 5 0 false Sun Oct 04 11:46:22 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 04 11:47:10 -0700 2009 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 5 0 false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Wed Aug 19 16:59:25 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 19 17:00:15 -0700 2009 981008 0060501170 9780060501174 12 2 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179973443m/981008.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/981008.I_ll_Take_You_There 4 0 false Fri Oct 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 11:07:37 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 11:07:41 -0700 2009 714857 0573622485 9780573622489 12 1 3.38 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/714857.I_Stand_Before_You_Naked 4 0 false Tue Aug 07 07:10:08 -0700 2007 Tue Aug 07 07:17:57 -0700 2007
Anyone who ever watched drama auditions or did a stint on their high school speech team will recognize one monologue from this play: The Orange...more...]]> 177871 0060501189 9780060501181 403 46 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172455295m/177871.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177871.I_ll_Take_You_There_A_Novel 4 0 false Tue Jan 08 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Oct 27 09:14:03 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 27 09:14:28 -0700 2009 981008 0060501170 9780060501174 12 2 3.38 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179973443m/981008.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/981008.I_ll_Take_You_There 0 0 false Mon Sep 14 12:17:05 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 14 12:17:05 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=981008