![]() The only happy man is the dead guy, Adam Berendt, a sculptor escaping a mysterious past.Įveryone's story is told from their own point of view. Loved how all the characters wear their middle age-these awful, suffering people and their awful children. Oates has a savage, scalpel-sharp understanding of these people and yet at the same time can empathize with their struggles-a wonderful brew. Middle Age examines the Updike territory- the interlocking lives of often awful middle-aged, privileged denizens in the small historic town of Salthill-on-Hudson, and how many of them are thrown into crisis by the death of a beloved neighbor (and dream-lover of many of the local wives). This is a lightweight compared with books like Blonde or We Were the Mulvaneys, an "entertainment"-as Graham Greene used to say of his ravishing but lesser books-it's a comic novel on the level of Bonfire of the Vanities but less cruel. She is the current heavyweight champion of the American social novel, our Balzac. Like many of Joyce Carol Oates' "lesser" books, this was so much stronger than the average book out there-the writing is so supple and precise, and the characterizations are so apt you laugh out loud. ![]()
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