Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. by Joyce Carol Oates

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. by Joyce Carol Oates

The bonds of family are tested in the wake of a profound tragedy, providing a look at the darker side of our society Night Sleep Death The Stars is a gripping examination of contemporary America through the prism of a family tragedy: when a powerful parent dies, each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways, and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all. Stark and penetrating, Joyce Carol Oates’s latest novel is a vivid exploration of race, psychological trauma, class warfare, grief, and eventual healing, as well as an intimate family novel in the tradition of the author’s bestselling We Were the Mulvaneys.

‘This family saga is a thoughtful and spellbinding examination of grief, class, race and inequality  that penetrates the darker psychological underbelly of contemporary American life, proving Oates to be at the top of her considerable game’
Mail on Sunday

‘Oates has become America’s preeminent fiction writer …There is great joy to be derived from the novel’s submerged patterns, its mind-boggling fecundity, its gallimaufry of devices (stream of consciousness, analytic omniscience, sentences both snaking and staccato), its combination of intricacy and lucidity’ New Yorker

‘An immersive, discursive chronicle of a family’s reconfiguration following the death of its patriarch … There is much to relish in NightSleep. Death. The Stars., from its nimble pace to exuberant set pieces. As a portrait of a family and a nation, it’s funny and tragic and sometimes bleak’
Observer

‘Though style and setting are very different, there are ways in which Oates recalls late Iris Murdoch novels. There is the same utter belief in what she is doing, the same extravagance and the same ability to persuade you to read on … It holds the attention, rings true and gives pleasure. The subject – how you accommodate to loss – is real and important, and the characters have a credibility that is rare in much fashionable fiction’ Scotsman

‘John Earle “Whitey” McClaren pulls his car to the side of the expressway outside his hometown of Hammond, New York, when he witnesses police officers using excessive force on a Black man. The cops turn their Tasers and steel-toed boots on Whitey, leaving him writhing on the ground. His death catapults Jessalyn, his wife of more than 40 years, and his five grown children into the heartbreak of grief in all its stages. While Oates purposefully plumbs the depths of each family member’s agonizing loss, her perceptive study of Jessalyn’s widowhood stands out as an impressive and impassioned portrait of this distressing life journey’ Booklist

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award and the PEN / Malamud Award, and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Her books include We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, Carthage, A Book of American Martyrs and Hazards of Time Travel. She is Professor of Humanities at Princeton University.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780008381073
ISBN 10	0008381070
Title	Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.
Author	Joyce Carol Oates
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	HarperCollins Publishers
Year published	2020-06-11
Number of pages	928
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable