Interesting read, but a little drawn out

books:


	• The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel (P.S.) Joyce Carol Oates Harper Perennial, 2008 - 624 pages average customer review:based on 36 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

couldn't put it down

Yes, I know that's the worst sort of cliche, but it's also true. This is the first Oates novel I have ever read, and it was hard to put down. I can't give a book higher praise than that. Maybe not to everyone's taste, but if this is your cup of tea, it's terrific.

Too much detail

Joyce Carol Oates always seems to find the most disturbing themes, and this book was no different. It was interesting, and I liked the way it went back and forth between time. I found it really, really long. I'm in a book club, and several people didn't finish it. While I did stick it out, I can't say it was worth it. I think it could have been a lot more interesting if it was about half the length.

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Interesting read, but a little drawn out

This was my first exposure to Ms. Oates. I enjoyed the story for the most part. It was dark and the ending was good - an ending that let the reader figure out what happened. But I had to get used to her style. She would descibe an end result and then go back and give the details that resulted in that particular result. So I was a little confused at first. I found the last third of the book to be drawn out too much regarding the son's music "career" and the set up for Hazel's life. I am going to try another one of her books to see if this is her usual style. Overall, I recommend this book for a LONG read. :)

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A well written work

This was my first time reading a work by this author, Joyce Carol Oates. I had previously read reviews and that prompted me to purchase this work. The first half I found to be labourisly drawn out and I had trouble excepting the fact that here were an immigrant family with two well educated parents that refused to try and assimilate into the American culture. It seemed to me that the author tried to show that they had made so many sacrifices - not speaking their native language, living in terrible conditions etc - but yet it seems as if they insulated themselves from the town, and never really tried to get to know anyone else. The father seemed too extreme to me in that he was at one time a school teacher and in this new life he refused to help his children with their schooling. The mother, an accomplished pianist, unable to help her children due to ?postpartum depression. All of this set the scene for the second half of the book which was the most enjoyable for me. I appreciated how the author brings out the strong bonds of family. I was reminded of the Diana Ross song "I'm Livin in Shame". Overall I would recommend this book.

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A treatise on family identity

The central character of Joyce Carol Oates's 36th novel changes her identity several times in the course of the epic, conveniently changing portions of her brutal past to transform into a more pure, acceptable lady. In her heart, she remains the Gravedigger's Daughter, the American-born daughter of WWII-era Jewish immigrants Jacob and Anna Schwart. Jacob was humiliated by his stateside job as the local cemetery caretaker, which afforded his family a life of squalor from which Anna slowly withdrew into catatonic madness. As the family spiraled violently out of control in the racist small-town atmosphere of 1940's upstate New York, Rebecca Schwart was orphaned as a young teenager.

Forced to reinvent herself as a charity case, a ward of the state, Rebecca begins to suppress the violent secrets of her past and emerge as a reliable, hard-working girl with no family, but also with no ghosts in her past and no need for anyone's pity. As Rebecca works her way up in society, earning legitimacy through marriage and motherhood, she hears the echoes of her father's harsh words to her. "In animal life the weak are quickly disposed of. So you must hide your weakness, Rebecca." The Gravedigger's Daughter is a novel about identity, and the lengths to which we will go to suppress our past to gain the acceptance of others. Rebecca ascends into a life of privilege, but not without looking over her shoulder for past demons.

Rebecca is guarded throughout the novel--to outsiders, to herself, and to the reader--proving herself an unreliable narrator, but the reader who is frustrated by this must remember that Rebecca is unreliable to herself, deluding herself to survive in an impossibly bleak world. The most compelling portions of this dense novel, which is told in three parts, center on the resilience of Rebecca in her quest for legitimacy and acceptance. The gravedigger's daughter first transforms her identity after the childhood loss of her family and later flees from an abusive, murderous husband to live under the assumed name of Hazel Jones. Unfortunately, Oates wrote her story not about these two metamorphoses, but in three portions, so the book opens with an overwrought, dreary exposition about the struggle of an immigrant family working in low-skilled jobs in a new country.

The plight of the immigrant family is close to Oates's heart--the author worked for over a decade on this novel to honor her family heritage. As an adult, Oates discovered that her own grandmother was Jewish (a secret that was buried in the 1890's to assimilate into the United States). Oates knew her grandmother, but no one in the family knew of her religious heritage or the last name she had abandoned upon arriving in the United States. In an interview with Edmund White, Oates revealed, "My grandmother had experiences very similar to Rebecca's experience with her father. In actual life the man who was my great-grandfather was a gravedigger. He did not kill his wife; he did injure her, though. And he did threaten his daughter, and he did commit suicide with a shotgun. That's all true." Oates reveals how exactly her grandmother's experience inspired the life of Rebecca Schwart/Hazel Jones by insisting, "[She] was unfailing. She never was the girl whose father had almost killed her and blew his head off with a shotgun... She was never the woman whose husband had abused her and then left her. She never would have wanted to play those cards."

The Gravedigger's Daughter is an expansive portrait of American life from one of our most agile living storytellers. Oates may lose a reader or two with her opening ruminations on poverty and family structure for inland immigrants, but those who read on will be rewarded with a challenging drama of fortune and identity in America. In the end, you may love or hate this book, but it is hard not to admire it.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1936, the Schwarts immigrate to a small town in upstate New York. Here the father—a former high school teacher—is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. When local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty give rise to an unthinkable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca heads out into America. Embarking upon an extraordinary odyssey of erotic risk and ingenious self-invention, she seeks renewal, redemption, and peace—on the road to a bittersweet and distinctly “American” triumph.

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