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 steadfast purpose, and the necessary but insurmountably isolating walls we build. Strange that other reviews complain that the prose is excessive, as I would actually say that with her more markedly modernist or gothic tendancies reigned in somewhat, Oates' deft, precise touch for the description of details both internal and external is her strongest asset. Her words are crisp and effective, and occasionally glittering, without ever slowing from a brisk and utterly readable presentation. Which is to say that this reads essentially like the literary bestseller that it was, I suppose. I have to admit that such heartfelt realist narratives aren't entirely to my taste these days, but I managed not to be bored for almost 600 pages, which says something. Slows a bit towards the end (inevitably, I was more interested in the protagonist's tumultous youth than ever more stable middle age) but even then, Oates chooses her scenes well to keep things moving along. Oh, and Oates can't possibly shake off her all her gothic predilections, either -- one seemingly inconsequential point resurafaces rather startlingly, tying things a little tighter than expected. And now time to go back to some bizarro sci-fi or something.

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Lengthy past thoughts at the mid-point:

For christmas. This is something like Joyce Carol Oates' 53rd novel (not exaggerating, she's written at least one a year for the length of her productive career, plus buckets of stories). And I'll admit, though I loved her eerie 1976 5-voice stream-of-consciousness nocturne Childwold (a totally random used bookshop selection whose design and first page seemed perfect), that I'm always a little unsure of picking up her others. Why? Because they can't all be good, can they? And I can't possibly dig through all of them in search of more Childwold-caliber material (it's barely on goodreads, and the reviews that there are are pretty middling). And I hear lots of conflicting things about her. Some people complain about her often dense prose and weirdo gothic modernism, some seem to steer clear based on the mass exposure and Oprah-book-clubbing of We Were the Mulvaneys which seems to suggest over-sentiment or something (what it probably actually suggests is overwhelming tragedy, sentimental or not). Some complain that her entire catalog is solid but increasingly redundant as you read more and more of it. So, tricky. So I'm actually pretty grateful for this well-placed gift, to slice through my indecision.

And so how is this? I'd worried that modern, more popular Oates might be a little more conservative in prose style, and compared to Childwold, it certainly is. But by normal bestseller standards, it's clear that Oates can really write. With sharp, finely-worked prose, with a decent sense of how to juggle chronology for juxtaposition and pacing, with conviction and convincing voice and convincing, lived sense of the inevitability of tragedy (and a little of that Faulknerian sense of familial doom). So it's pretty good. It captures well the sadness of being alive, the sadness of being an immigrant, The Sadness of Being a Girl (borrowing the phrase from an old Vietnamese psych rock song from this comp), which is what I gather a lot of "serious" (i.e. non-gothic, non-pseudonym) Oates is essentially concerned with. But at 600 hundred pages, a lot of this seems inessential, too. Rebecca Schwart's story is perhaps sadly quintessential, and the prose is great line-for-line, but there's nothing here that burns to be spoken, exactly, or that burns to be spoken slowly, over hundreds of pages of carefully-wrought description. (The inessentialness of a long, dense career, maybe. The inessentialness of telling things in great detail just because you can. Or maybe I've been spoiled by compact, concise storytelling lately.) But this sill moves well under its own momentum. I guess I'll have to see where the second half takes me.