Review of A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates
(In 3 weeks I read seven books in preparation to write the Analysis of the Competition section for the book proposal for my co-authored nonfiction book Never Stop Dancing. The seven books are A Grief Observed, Two Kisses for Maddy, The Year of Magical Thinking, About Alice, A Widow's Memoir, Tuesdays with Morrie, and When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I'll write a review for each book. Death and grief are common, but we experience each uniquely.)
This was the first Joyce Carol Oates book I read, and it won't be my last. It's a long book (the longest by far of the seven I read, at 415 pages), but well worth the trip. Oates and her husband Ray Smith were married for 47 years--"forty-seven years and twenty-five days" as she likes to write, "together nearly every day and every night until the morning of February 11, 2008". All the confusion and despair and sorrow and pain she's experienced after his death is poured out onto the pages. Sometimes strewn. Many passages have a choppy, disorienting style, done to reflect her emotions and her thoughts in those moments she's recalling.
One of the powerful themes in the book, for me, was the way she brought to life the real emptiness she felt after her husband's death. Everyone knows "Joyce Carol Oates," and at times she'll even refer to that public persona ("JCO") and comment on how she feels dissociated from it, as if it's another person altogether. She's crafted a writer's life, basically her entire life, around that persona, and with and around her husband--and now with him gone it leaves the door open for exploration of what that meant and means. Those were the most startling and haunting passages for me. I kept seeing that image of her in "the nest," the place she's built up on their bed to stay in at night....
A very moving, very touching, and, sometimes, very disturbing read.
I really liked it
4/5 Goodreads
4/5 Amazon
This was the first Joyce Carol Oates book I read, and it won't be my last. It's a long book (the longest by far of the seven I read, at 415 pages), but well worth the trip. Oates and her husband Ray Smith were married for 47 years--"forty-seven years and twenty-five days" as she likes to write, "together nearly every day and every night until the morning of February 11, 2008". All the confusion and despair and sorrow and pain she's experienced after his death is poured out onto the pages. Sometimes strewn. Many passages have a choppy, disorienting style, done to reflect her emotions and her thoughts in those moments she's recalling.
One of the powerful themes in the book, for me, was the way she brought to life the real emptiness she felt after her husband's death. Everyone knows "Joyce Carol Oates," and at times she'll even refer to that public persona ("JCO") and comment on how she feels dissociated from it, as if it's another person altogether. She's crafted a writer's life, basically her entire life, around that persona, and with and around her husband--and now with him gone it leaves the door open for exploration of what that meant and means. Those were the most startling and haunting passages for me. I kept seeing that image of her in "the nest," the place she's built up on their bed to stay in at night....
A very moving, very touching, and, sometimes, very disturbing read.
I really liked it
4/5 Goodreads
4/5 Amazon
No comments have been added yet.
