Religious hysteria provides the focus for one of Oates' least powerful, most monotonic and glutinous explorations of the fevered mind. Nathanael Vickery is a child born of violence, son of a teen-age rape victim, raised by a Jesus-loves-me grandmother and an atheist doctor grandfather in the Forties near the Chautauqua Mountains. Grandma Opal croons about this special, God-touched baby, "He knows all there is to know," and sure enough, by the time Nathanael can walk and talk, he's seeing visions and getting personal whispered endorsements from Jesus: "The inhabitants of the world cannot touch you. . . . For you are of the same substance as I—you are not like other men." A splashy career in evangelism is inevitable for this child prodigy with his "rare powers of preaching and healing and prophesy," but Nathanael's cynical grandpa (soon dead of a stroke) is the least of the pubescent preacher's problems: he is prone to Pride—Jesus forces him to get humble by chewing on a live chicken—and, above all, Lust, in the person of Leonie Beloff, daughter of Rev. Beloff the Radio & TV Evangelist. Nathanael succumbs to this Lust, sort of, so he must be punished—on a live Good Friday telecast, he gouges his eye with a paring knife (as in "if thine eye offend thee," etc.). Strangely enough, this crazy gesture merely boosts Nathanael's Pentecostal ministry, and in the Sixties he's the Master of the Seekers for Christ and just about convinced that he is Jesus himself (a problem, because "If I am Christ, then who will save me?"). But in 1974 comes a final vision/breakdown, leaving Nathanael the quasi-schizophrenic whose voice we hear praying off and on through this book—a work which heats up every now and then with Oates' infectious relish for dark thoughts and deeds, but which leans on her most unlovely trademarks—sloppily wrought-up language, fuzzily pretentious thematics—at unflattering length.
Pub Date: July 28, 1978
ISBN: 0575026715
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Vanguard
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1978
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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