Novel
them
Joyce Carol Oates · 1969
Synopsis
Summer 1937. Loretta, sixteen, brings home a boy she met in the street; her brother shoots him in her bed, and the policeman called to the scene, Howard Wendall, becomes her husband. For thirty years, in Detroit and its surroundings, we follow her children: Jules, driver for a shady businessman, in love with the man's niece, Nadine; Maureen, who tries to escape her circumstances through study, then through an affair with her teacher, a married man.
Context
The book is the third in a sequence of four novels on American social classes. Its author prefaced it with a note presenting it as drawn from the recollections of a former student of her evening classes at the University of Detroit, whose letters the book reproduces; she later admitted that this student was a composite character. She was then living in Detroit, a few streets from the riots of 1967.
Who it is for
A long novel that follows a family over three decades; the violence is constant. Translated by Francis Ledoux, translation revised in 2007.
Prizes and reception
National Book Award 1970, the only one received by its author, who was shortlisted six times for the prize between 1968 and 2000.
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