Middle Age: A Romance Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Middle Age: A Romance? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Middle Age: A Romance. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Middle Age: A Romance ReviewAlmost immediately, at the very beginning of Joyce Carol Oates, "Middle Age, A Romance," you come upon her dedication which reads: "To my Princeton friends, who are nowhere in these pages." Oates is, of course a professor of Humanities at Princeton University.More importantly, this dedication serves as Oates notice to her readers that the characters in "Middle Age" are a breed, a type, of a world... apart from herself and her friends. She is setting up a barrier between herself and her characters. As a general rule, in most cases this would not be a good sign for the reading to come. But because Oates has proven to be masterfull at best and interesting at least we take the dedication with a grain of salt and read on. "Middle Age" is Oates ode to middle age among a tightly-knit group of mostly wealthy residents of Salthill-on-Hudson in upstate New York. The catalyst for the various stories is one Adam Berendt whose death prompts a flood of tears and concern among the women and men of Salthill that propells the novel through it's various chapters. Add to this the fact that Berendt appears to be without family, has always been mysterious about his background and the source of his income, that the men seem as attracted to him as do the women and that he has not had sex with any of his many admirers, and you have the beginnings of a fascinating novel. Oates, though seemingly detached from her flood of characters is nonetheless very sympathetic towards them and as a result we are also. The style of "Middle Age" is a departure for Oates: very much unlike the furtive, paranoid, sexually explicit "Man Crazy" or the technicolor, movie-like "We Were the Mulvaneys." In "Middle Age" Oates is removed yet ultimately attracted to her characters: longing for their lifestyle yet damning of their foibles. It is ultimately not a great novel in the sense that "Mulvaneys," "Because it is Bitter and Because it is my Heart" or "What I Lived for" are for example. But a good Joyce Carol Oates novel is worlds above most author's best and because of this a must read for anyone serious about contemporary fiction.Middle Age: A Romance Overview

Want to learn more information about Middle Age: A Romance?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now