Black Water in Around the World in 80 Books

Dec 08, 2013 Bogdan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: new-world

This novella, Black Water, is hard to categorize. But maybe categorizing was the last think Joyce Carol Oates had in mind when she wrote it. It is intriguing, as it is based on a real fact. Intriguing for me as it gives a voice to the victim from the famous, in US, Chappaquiddick incident. For me also it was interesting as I was always frightened by the death scenes of car passengers that are drowning. I don't know why, but I felt these kind of scenes from movies or books, when the character fig This novella, Black Water, is hard to categorize. But maybe categorizing was the last think Joyce Carol Oates had in mind when she wrote it. It is intriguing, as it is based on a real fact. Intriguing for me as it gives a voice to the victim from the famous, in US, Chappaquiddick incident. For me also it was interesting as I was always frightened by the death scenes of car passengers that are drowning. I don't know why, but I felt these kind of scenes from movies or books, when the character fights to escape and the doors don't open as the most intense morbid scenes. That it is the reason I did not bought a car that has all windows electric. If it happens to me, at least I can pull down manually the windows from the back of the car.

Now to the usual breakdown of characteristics that helps me to understand better each new lecture. First, the premise, which was a little obscure for me. I looked at what other reviewers had said about it and I searched on Wikipedia and I understand that the author wanted to make it as a warning for all those girls that are in a similar situation as Mary Jo/Kelly. For me, as a man, it was always unclear why some girls are feeling attracted by older men. I confess that this was a big frustration and I felt hard to understand their logic. This is why I also had troubles of understanding the psychology of Kelly. Obviously she was flattered by the senator attention, but it was obvious for anyone that all that he wanted was another adventure. I doubt she had the means to make him fall in love with her, as she confess. Due to this, I will give it a 3 for premise.

On the form element, I liked very much the way she structured the chapters. It starts out with very small chapters in order to avoid a huge info dump on the background of the character. Then, as the reader begins to be immersed into the story, more and more complex chapters are created. So, I will give it a 4 at form.

In terms of originality, as it is based on actual event, it only brings new the fictional approach on describing it. But Joyce Carol Oates does this very well by giving a fictional voice to the victim. Although not entirely fiction as it is inspired by real facts, I will still rate it with a 3.

The characters are perhaps the most criticized aspects of this novella, by most other readers here on GR. Many others have pointed out that the characters are stereotypical. I cannot contradict this opinion, but as it is only a novella and the space is limited, I could not expect them to change too much over time. I enjoyed the way it is constructed the biography for Kelly, but I also need to acknowledge that she is intentionally built to be stereotypical, thus not too realistic. I will rate with a 2 for characters.

Regarding the complexity and difficulty, I feel it was very simple. Of course it required documentation about actual incident, but basically the author just added a voice to the victim. I will rate it with a 2 for complexity and difficulty.

In terms of credibility, I will only consider that fact that she did not altered significantly the main details of the incident, which is verifiable, and the background story added to the victim, which is not verifiable. As I could checked the story details about how the accident happened are absolutely left unchanged. About the back-story, I had the feeling that Kelly is a well-rounded personae, with a past that motivated her actions. So I will rate it with a 5 for credibility.

The last criteria is edition. I admired the great cover with the painting "La Jeune Martyre" by Hippolyte Delaroche. The paper quality is also very good and being a novella, the font size is also pretty big. So, I will rate it for edition with a 5.

To summarize, I liked the dramatic suspense built by Joyce Carol Oates. I did not referred too much to the political aspects as I am not connected to US political and social life. All I can say is that if you analyze the root causes, naive girls that will fall for most elderly or famous guys will exists forever. Perhaps this is in the human genome and no matter how evolved our society will be, we may not be able to prevent it in the future. All in all, my final rating for the novel is 3.43, rounding it up to a 3 stars on Goodreads system.


+--------------------------+-----------------+
| Criteria | Rating |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Premise | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Form | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Originality | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Characters | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Difficulty/Complexity | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Credibility | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Edition | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Total | 3.43 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+

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Mar 31, 2022 Johanne rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2022-books

This was a haunting little novella. It tells the story of a young woman, trapped in a car as it slowly sinks into swampy black water. Kelly has been driven off the road by a nameless Senator after a drunken rush to try to catch a ferry back to the mainland on the 4th of July. Sound familiar? Chappaquiddick, anyone? It’s based on, but not strictly “about” that tragedy. In flashbacks, we learn about Kelly and how she wound up in that car, but we always return, again and again, to the car slowly fi ...more

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