Thanks to a fairly conventional thriller format, Oates' newest attempt to make feverish myth out of supposed American prototypes is far more manageable—if no more successful—than the rambling excesses of Bellefleur: it's a Washington, D.C. retelling of Aeschylus' Oresteia which tries, vaguely, to hook up the themes of personal betrayal and revenge with the politics of treason and terrorism. Maurice Halleck, Director of the (imaginary) Federal Commission for the Ministry of Justice, is dead in an apparent car-crash suicide following a bribery scandal (connected to investigations into the Allende affair). But Maurice's high-strung teenage daughter Kirsten is convinced that her father was murdered—for domestic and perhaps political reasons—by chic mother Isabel and her lover Nicholas Martens, Maurie's old pal and colleague at the Commission. So, fixed on a double revenge-killing, Kirsten/Electra hysterically demands active support from low-key older brother Owen—an undergraduate who (in a totally implausible sequence) rinds his half-hearted commitment to matricide becoming politicized into manic revolutionary bloodlust, via seduction by an elegant, homosexual gum of international terrorism. ("Our acts are to confirm justice. . . . They will not be acts of personal vengeance—we've gone beyond that.") And meanwhile Oates provides flashback background on the Maurie/isabel/Nick triangle: young Nick saving schoolmate Maurie's life on a canoeing trip; the philosophical split between pragmatist Nick (handsome, popular) and idealist Maurie (monkey-faced, a loner); the routine guilts of the adultery and subsequent deceit. But the relationships and motivations remain unlifelike and murky—as does the significance of the political corruption (Nick's) which becomes entangled with personal betrayal. And the limp attempt to weight the Kirsten/Owen conspiracy with revolutionary politics (Oates makes them descendants of John Brown, quasi-terrorist hero) is merely longwinded, with pages of terrorism rhetoric and data. Finally, then, there's only the melodrama of the revenge—Kirsten seduces and nearly kills Nick, Owen kills Isabel ("Bitch. Cunt. Murderer. Mother") and others, kamikaze-style—followed by the clearing of Maurie's name by a transformed, reclusive Nick. True, Oates' prose, though slack and repetitive, is generally readable this time around. And occasional glimmers of issues worth exploring ("What a person is in secret, he becomes—in politics") do surface. But once again it seems as if Oates catches a glimpse of a thematic construct, then throws words at it from all directions—with blurry, inflated, and uninvolving results.
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 1981
ISBN: 0517421852
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1981
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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