Only with the title story—the 1887 journal of a psychic researcher whose most skeptical colleague fatally embraces spiritualism—does "Night-Side" suggest the occult; elsewhere it signifies the dark side of earthly lives: the quicksandy borders of madness, the fear of death, the pressure-cooker of loneliness, secret sexualities, hostilities, fantasies. In all but a few of these tales, Oates communes with a single distressed mind, invariably isolated, facing a crisis, self-dramatizing: the mask-wearers for whom the voices around them are a distant buzzing in the ear. A homosexual ad-man (others have closets, he has "The Dungeon") hysterically records his horror of discovery, his ambivalent longings for sympathetic Eleanora, his relish/disgust for the "Forbidden." A neglected daughter is reclaimed by her politician father and worries (wishes?) that an assassin (imagined? real? herself?) lurks nearby. A "Fatal Woman" muses on her God-given "power over men"—an illusion about to crack. A young, sudden widow is forced by a slightly more merry one to verbalize her left-over feelings and emerge from the protective shell of mourning. NearIy a third Of these tortured souls are doctors—death-defiers and mind-healers—who present the world with a smile of calm omniscience and, inside, are trembling with confusion, benumbed with panic, or harboring delusions. At her best when forcing us to join her up close (first person or an equivalent), Oates' weakest efforts—a houseful of crazies, a father who treats his mad daughter as a genius—stand back too far and leave a clinical aroma. And when she touches, briefly, on religion or philosophy, the tenuous control-by-tension collapses. This may be a monotonous collection; only "The Translation" (an American in untranslatable love behind the Iron Curtain) establishes a distinct rhythm of its own. And the writing often seems even more unlovely, slopping over into melo- or soap drama, than it needs to be. But most of these tales lure you in, feeding you their secrets stingily, and occasionally forcing a gasp or a sigh of real empathy for minds in disarray.
Pub Date: Oct. 7, 1977
ISBN: 0449242064
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Vanguard
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1977
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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