Because We Are Poor, Must We Be Vicious?

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	• Them (Modern Library) Joyce Carol Oates Modern Library, 2006 - 576 pages average customer review:based on 23 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

wonderful

I read this book many years ago and the memory of it is still with me. It is one of my top 10 favorite books of all time.

This book is at a constant climax!

This book was somewhat of a struggle for me, though I am a giant Joyce Carol Oates fan. I thought it wasn't possible, but "Them" is more of a brooding, dark, and realistic novel than Oates has pulled off anywhere else in her career. Here is a lot of characters that are in constant danger of falling to pieces, of escaping one another, of realizing their limits as individuals and as a family unit. If you are not a reader who can take a kick in the stomach, don't read this book. However, if you are willing to realize there is a hard edge to life which goes unrecognized each day, pick this book up as soon as you can - Oates creates a world fatalism and human conditions that are at once terrifying, yet beautiful: it is hard to look away. I was held breathless and scared until the last word dropped like a boulder.

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Disturbing, yet enthralling

In this novel the characters seemed to be desperately trying to escape from each other, but unable to escape the past they share together. Joyce Carol Oates descriptions of the characters lives are vivid and oftentimes disgusting. The characters rarely seem to be able to make the right choices and are often victims of circumstance. Still, I was constantly intrigued during the novel. This novel is an excellent view of the sixties. Another wonderful novel by Oates is "Because It Is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart," whih is set in approximately the same time period. "Because it is Bitter..." adds the aspect of race relations and has a more solid ending than "Them."

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Couldn't put it down

Probably my favorite of Oates books, and I am a HUGE fan. Starts off kinda slow, but I found myself staying up until all hours of the night because I didn't want to stop reading it. Clearly, Oates writes like no other. Her portrayal of the characters are all too real, with a disturbing edge to them. But that's what makes them fascinating. I was captivated by Jules. Reading her books make me wonder about her sometimes. She can be so wonderfully, deliciously.....disturbed.

Because We Are Poor, Must We Be Vicious?

Joyce Carol Oates is a novelist of the first order. Her novel of postwar Detroit (really of postwar America), Them, is her best. Nothing she has written, before or since (even including her newest, the fictionalized biography of Marilyn Monroe) brings the reader the emotional power, or the superb prose of Oates' immortal classic. Readers who read Them when it was first published years ago deserve to study the new Modern Library edition. Readers unfamiliar with the best of Oates should run, not walk, to their bookstores or their personal computers and order this classic. It is as simple as that. Them is a masterpiece.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5

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