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A Widow's Story
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Unlike anything Joyce Carol Oates has written before, A Widow’s Story is the universally acclaimed author's poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of Raymond Smith, her husband of forty-six years, and its wrenching, surprising aftermath. A recent recipient of National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, Oates, whose novels (Blonde, Th
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I requested a galley of Joyce Carol Oates' "A Widow's Story, a Memoir", because, as an author who was also some years ago widowed, I thought it might speak to me, and it certainly has, in more ways than I could ever have imagined.
There are a lot of grief books, a number written by widows, but none tells the raw truth of grief and loss like this one, how close to insanity grief feels--is, perhaps--and for a very long time too; how savage, precarious, shattering and lazy grief is, until, at some t ...more
There are a lot of grief books, a number written by widows, but none tells the raw truth of grief and loss like this one, how close to insanity grief feels--is, perhaps--and for a very long time too; how savage, precarious, shattering and lazy grief is, until, at some t ...more
Oates' writing style, so readable that she makes the slightest most ordinary event of profound interest. Not just a tale of the experience of grief. It is more revealing about JCO and what she is like as a person. After reading "them," I couldn't help feeling like "Who could write like this?" and "What is this person like in real life?" I guess I thought she must be this confident woman who is such a great writer, I wasn't expecting her to have such low self-esteem, such self-loathing. She even
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I must admit, I do take a bit of an issue of a book like this being rated and ranked, because it is a tale of pain as Joyce Carol Oates comes to terms with her grief, finding herself now alone, without her lifeline. How can one rate and review the pain of another and how another grieved? Particularly, or maybe especially, if one has not suffered a terrible loss themselves? Despite whether people feel she was being mean-spirited, disjointed, or maybe even a little cold, people react to loss diffe
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Joyce Carol Oates ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Ca... ) wrote this book after the sudden and unexpected death of her husband, Raymond Smith in 2008 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_... ). They had been married 47 years, she was 70 and he was 78. As other writers that I have read, the author uses her writing as a way to deal with the shock of death. She writes very skillfully and with great mastery. If you have ever known a widow, then you will recognize the crushing grief combined w
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This is the story of how novelist Joyce Carol Oates lost her husband unexpectedly to a secondary infection he acquired while in the hospital. She was 70 (?), he was 77.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I read the first half quite quickly; it was highly emotional, and highly engaging. Around the half-way point though, it was simply exhausting and redundant, even melodramatic. It may sound caustic and unfeeling, but her voice is SO highly charged that it began to sound as though she ...more
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I read the first half quite quickly; it was highly emotional, and highly engaging. Around the half-way point though, it was simply exhausting and redundant, even melodramatic. It may sound caustic and unfeeling, but her voice is SO highly charged that it began to sound as though she ...more
Difficult to rate; as a 'grief-memoir' the book is raw and very emotional. But oh my, it also reveals a person that I started to dislike quite a bit...
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Read in one sitting. I was struck more as a writer than as a widower, something I daily dread becoming, by this idea: a primary repetitive act of any novelist is to invent, word by word, sentence by sentence. Failing the power to invent, a novelist may turn to what she can recall and massage that until she has what will stand in for what she wanted invented. One of the most striking characteristics of Ms. Oates work is that she invents so often, so well, and so clearly. Looking over how much she
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Since this is a memoir it is difficult to separate the author from the quality of her writing. Perhaps this is a well written book. But as a person I could find nothing about her to respect. I do believe her loss was the greatest pain she ever suffered but I do not believe her pain supercedes all other pain anyone else has suffered by being widowed, divorced or beling alone. I found her to be weak, oh so needy, a name-dropper, completely self-absorbed, disdainful, mean-spirited and rude.
For me ...more
For me ...more
This books stands alone in searing memoirs. Not only for widows but for anyone that has lost someone who simply cannot be replaced. The most mundane things are simply too difficult to bear and oftentimes well meaning friends make the journey that much harder. The moments that registered for me were the contemplation of an eternal sleep aided by doctors who tend to treat grieving women as raving banshees to be medicated. Then, of course, the endless bargaining with whatever is out there and in co
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I’ve never cared much for her widely lauded, copious fiction, and I care even less for the frail and foolish person Joyce Smith (pen name Joyce Carol Oates) portrays herself to be in this memoir. When her elderly husband, Raymond Smith, dies suddenly of pneumonia, JCO is left utterly unmoored and writes frequently of feeling suicidal, unloved, and without meaning now that her beloved is gone. While she talks a good game about stockpiling pills and lying in bed wishing to sleep and never wake up,
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I could not finish this book. It's another of those books written by someone anointed by the literary establishment who appears to have no sense of humor, no empathy, and no sense of how spoiled and conceited they sound. Oates recounts her husband's unexpected death in a tone that pushes the reader away when they would most like to connect.
One of the perils of being a darling of the literary establishment appears to be that there are vultures there eager to profit from every word that drips off ...more
One of the perils of being a darling of the literary establishment appears to be that there are vultures there eager to profit from every word that drips off ...more
A Widow's Story
Joyce Carol Oates
I am feeling a bit hesitant to write a Review (with a capital R) of this recently published book by Joyce Carol Oates for I am not qualified to critique her writing, only my heart and mind's reaction to the story she has told. With that caveat, I will share my impressions with you.
I purchased this book because, while I am not a widow, I am interested in how people adjust to life-altering situations; how they feel and what choices they make moving forward. Relation ...more
Joyce Carol Oates
I am feeling a bit hesitant to write a Review (with a capital R) of this recently published book by Joyce Carol Oates for I am not qualified to critique her writing, only my heart and mind's reaction to the story she has told. With that caveat, I will share my impressions with you.
I purchased this book because, while I am not a widow, I am interested in how people adjust to life-altering situations; how they feel and what choices they make moving forward. Relation ...more
Nov 25, 2010
Susan (aka Just My Op)
rated it
it was ok
Shelves:
personal_memoir_biography,
arc-edition
If you are a widow or someone else who has suffered a loss and are seeking comfort, run, run as fast as you can, away from this book. There is little, if any, comfort to be found here.
Joyce Smith, known to most of us as Joyce Carol Oates, had been married to her husband for 47 years when he died after a short illness. She was, of course, devastated, and I truly am sorry for her sorrow. Still, I really didn't like this book.
Initially, I was annoyed by all the unnecessary exclamation points and it ...more
Joyce Smith, known to most of us as Joyce Carol Oates, had been married to her husband for 47 years when he died after a short illness. She was, of course, devastated, and I truly am sorry for her sorrow. Still, I really didn't like this book.
Initially, I was annoyed by all the unnecessary exclamation points and it ...more
This is quite a complicated book to review as it deals with one woman's emotional journey from when she first thinks about how she and her husband could have died until the point when her husband does die and her fear becomes a reality.
The strongest part of "A Widow's Story" are the emotional connections that we all have when we lose someone we love. While I haven't lost my romantic partner to death (knock on wood and thank goodness) I have lost quite a few people who have helped shape me into ...more
The strongest part of "A Widow's Story" are the emotional connections that we all have when we lose someone we love. While I haven't lost my romantic partner to death (knock on wood and thank goodness) I have lost quite a few people who have helped shape me into ...more
Joyce Carol Oates has written a deeply felt memoir, `A Widow's Story', following the sudden death of Raymond Smith, her husband of 48 years. He enters the hospital for pneumonia and "A secondary infection had caused cardiopulmonary arrest, and he was gone. It was just utterly unbelievable. I feel so completely alone. Though surrounded by the most wonderful friends". Because the prognosis for Ray was good when Joyce left the hospital, she went home to sleep and was not there when he died. She get
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First, I must say that I find JCO's fiction to be too disturbing to read. After reading one of her novels in which a group of teenagers kidnap a random person off the street and proceed to torture him, I figured that there are better ways to spend my time.
However, "A Widow's Story" is the kind of book, a memoir about grief, that I usually devour. My 9 year old daughter died suddenly in 2006, so I usually like to learn from ways that others have dealt with life's big losses.
In this case, I mostl ...more
However, "A Widow's Story" is the kind of book, a memoir about grief, that I usually devour. My 9 year old daughter died suddenly in 2006, so I usually like to learn from ways that others have dealt with life's big losses.
In this case, I mostl ...more
The title of this book describes exactly what it is. Joyce Carol Oates takes the reader on a journey through the intimate pain of losing her husband after decades of marriage. Unafraid as a writer, Oates allows us genuine glimpses into her struggle to live through the days of her husband's illness, death, and the following year of her life. I feel like this was a "right place, right time" book for me. I was genuinely surprised by how completely it captured my attention and inhabited my heart. I
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I read glowing literary reviews of this book, so when I finally got around to reading it, I expected to enjoy it, as much as one can enjoy a book about such a sad subject. I was disappointed. Listen, JCO has my utmost sympathy for her terrible loss. One of my worst nightmares is losing my husband. My annoyance with the book is not with her grief, because of course, anyone would be terribly grieved in their heart after such a loss. My annoyance is with her belly-button gazing, her sympathy reject
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The somewhat jumbled structure of this book accurately depicts the conflicting emotions one feels after a loss, such as Oates experienced when her husband Ray unexpectedly died after a siege of pneumonia. There is a great deal of repetition, but that’s how grief is, unrelenting. At times, A Widow’s Story seems like a prolonged howl—Oates opens herself to the reader, but the experience is almost painful. It is surprising to learn that Oates was a girl who went from her father’s house to her husba
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After reading the 400+ pages of "A Widow's Story" written by Joyce Smith, aka Joyce Carol Oats (JCO), I have no idea whether JCO intended to write a book to honor the memory of her husband, Ray; to talk about her life as a widow; or to recount her various successes. While JCO does a beautiful job, at times, discussing the aftermath of her life after Ray's death, the unclear focus of the book detracts from the story. I have difficulty recommending this book unless one wants to learn more about JC
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"I can wade Grief/Whole pools of it" wrote Emily Dickinson, and Joyce Carol Oates does a considerable amount of wading in her deeply felt memoir, "A Widow's Story," written in the three years following her husband, Raymond Smith's, death in February, 2008. Although her remarriage just a bit over a year later certainly brings a happy ending to this grief chronicle, it is nowhere mentioned in the book. The Times reviewer Janet Maslin made this notion a central focus of her review, and though it is
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For 48 years and 25 days, Joyce Carol Oates thought of herself not as the author Joyce Carol Oates, but as Joyce Smith, wife of Raymond Smith, professor and editor of The Ontario Review. That thinking, that life, is abruptly shattered in the middle of a February night in 2008 when she receives a call from the hospital where she had taken her pneumonia-stricken husband a few days earlier, summoning her to get there quicky because her husband was still alive.
When she got there, he wasn't.
The guilt ...more
When she got there, he wasn't.
The guilt ...more
When I first saw the advertisement for this memoir in the New York Times Book Review, I knew that I had to read it. Several weeks later when I found it on the new book shelf in my local library, I knew that it would be a challenge for me to read because I am still going through the grieving process. When I scanned the first few pages of the memoir and discovered that Ms. Oates' husband had died within 11 days of my own in 2008, I knew the book would speak to me.
And it has. I have been challenged ...more
And it has. I have been challenged ...more
This book devastates. Not only because of the subject matter, widowhood, but because Joyce Carol Oates' exquisite writing digs deep into the horrors of unexpected loss, a tangle of painful feelings and severe aloneness. When her husband dies unexpectedly, Oates is plagued by an otherworldly sense of grief. She alternately struggles and flirts with thoughts of suicide. Insomnia nearly destroys her, and she wrestles with fear of addiction to sleeping pills and antidepressants.
Not recommended for ...more
Not recommended for ...more
I tend to not enjoy reading memoirs, which Joyce Carol Oates describes in this poignant book as at once the most seductive and dangerous of genres. At their worst, they come across as whiny (look at poor me and the vicissitudes I've overcome...) and at best, self-congratulatory. But then every so often one comes along, like Ann Patchett's memoir of a friendship in "Truth and Beauty", and this book by Oates about surviving the death of her husband.
At some point, most of us will survive the loss o ...more
At some point, most of us will survive the loss o ...more
This is quite a complicated book to review as it deals with one woman's emotional journey from when she first thinks about how she and her husband could have died until the point when her husband does die and her fear becomes a reality.
The strongest part of "A Widow's Story" are the emotional connections that we all have when we lose someone we love. While I haven't lost my romantic partner to death (knock on wood and thank goodness) I have lost quite a few people who have helped shape me into ...more
The strongest part of "A Widow's Story" are the emotional connections that we all have when we lose someone we love. While I haven't lost my romantic partner to death (knock on wood and thank goodness) I have lost quite a few people who have helped shape me into ...more
I am fond of Oates fiction for the most part but this is the first nonfiction work of hers I have read. It was rated as one of the top ten books of 2011 by the LA Times, and I was interested in it because it is a memoir. In this book, she tells how she managed to deal with the sudden death of her beloved husband. I hardly feel qualified to criticize an author who is so talented, diverse, and prolific as she. It also feels cruel to criticize a memoir so heartfelt and painfully rendered as this on
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Two things about this book 1) I'm 250 pages in and throwing in the towel 2) I think this book has made stop liking Joyce Carol Oates.
I would not recommend this book to anyone just for the pure fact that it is about a wife losing her husband (of something like 40 years) to an unexpected death. However, if you are like me and like reading memoirs about this topic I would recommend the first 1/3 of this book. After that it is slow and loses your interest.
But to enjoy this book you also really nee ...more
I would not recommend this book to anyone just for the pure fact that it is about a wife losing her husband (of something like 40 years) to an unexpected death. However, if you are like me and like reading memoirs about this topic I would recommend the first 1/3 of this book. After that it is slow and loses your interest.
But to enjoy this book you also really nee ...more
odd, jarring sound of referring to "the widow" in the 3rd person
painful, awkward memoir; sometimes so powerful, sometimes so annoying. Like life itself-and death. And grief.
I will write a review-some day. It is a difficult book to integrate into oneself & evokes such jagged and conflicting reactions that I'm not sure when I'll be able to calmly "evaluate" it.
Sorry I read it? Grateful I did. ...more
painful, awkward memoir; sometimes so powerful, sometimes so annoying. Like life itself-and death. And grief.
I will write a review-some day. It is a difficult book to integrate into oneself & evokes such jagged and conflicting reactions that I'm not sure when I'll be able to calmly "evaluate" it.
Sorry I read it? Grateful I did. ...more
Joyce Carol Oates’s husband died rather suddenly, and this is her way of processing that tragedy as an artist, as a woman, and as a person. It’s not a particularly happy book, not even the ending. It’s a blind searching that’s really not meant to improve anyone else’s situation, give advice, or look beautiful and profound; it’s just an exploration, a way of trying, and mostly failing, to understand.
And for that reason, it happens to be a little beautiful and tragic and profound, because that is ...more
And for that reason, it happens to be a little beautiful and tragic and profound, because that is ...more
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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
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