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A review by salicat
A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates
4.0
At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I think Joyce Carol Oates had Little Red Riding Hood in mind when she wrote this. Fairy tale references are scattered throughout the book like breadcrumbs. We meet sixteen-year-old blond, tan-legged Katya (aka Cinderella or Snow White), who is working as a nanny for the rich Engelhardts on a New Jersey beach. She doesn't have an evil stepmother, but she does have a mother who prefers gambling and drinking to paying attention to her children. Enter Marcus Kidder (aka Prince Charming/Big Bad Wolf). Yes, I intended to put that slash there. But Kidder isn't the young raven-haired prince of Disney movies. He isn't young at all, or raven-haired- he is a sixty-eight year old man who's very attracted to Katya. And so our story begins with the push and pull page-turning suspense that Oates executes so well. Mr. Kidder wants Katya to model for him (he's an artist), and of course, as in any Oates story, or any story worth reading, for that matter, things get...complicated. On top of that we have her cousin Roy in the picture. He just got out of jail.
One thing I've always liked about Oates is her ability to blend in the character moods with nature imagery- clouds splitting the sky precedes a character's frown. Her sentences are spare, yet punch you with their poetry. And of course, there's her incredible talent for suspense.
Although Katya and Mr. Kidder are superbly developed, I felt like the rest of the characters were caricatures. The Engelhardts are greedy, suspicious, and spoiled- because that's just how rich people who have summer homes on the beach are, right? And I have yet to read an Oates story where a teenage/twenty-something male isn't pure evil- nothing more but a violent rapist/ex-prisoner with addiction problems. Such is the case with Roy. In fact, it's always been somewhat of a surprise to me that Oates' male characters have always been so two-dimensional, considering she's such a great writer.
As for the ending- I guess it worked, but I closed the book feeling kind of...dead. And sad. Not the sweet kind of sadness that succeeds a Hardy or Bronte novel, but a kind of icky sad. Also, there are certain mysteries in the novel that go unanswered- I couldn't figure out if that was intentional, or if Oates just didn't feel like dealing with those plot lines (in which case, why put them there?). Oh well. Still a recommend.
PS- For anyone familiar with Oates's short stories, this story seemed to be, in a lot of ways, a reworking of one of my favorite Oates stories called "The Model."
One thing I've always liked about Oates is her ability to blend in the character moods with nature imagery- clouds splitting the sky precedes a character's frown. Her sentences are spare, yet punch you with their poetry. And of course, there's her incredible talent for suspense.
Although Katya and Mr. Kidder are superbly developed, I felt like the rest of the characters were caricatures. The Engelhardts are greedy, suspicious, and spoiled- because that's just how rich people who have summer homes on the beach are, right? And I have yet to read an Oates story where a teenage/twenty-something male isn't pure evil- nothing more but a violent rapist/ex-prisoner with addiction problems. Such is the case with Roy. In fact, it's always been somewhat of a surprise to me that Oates' male characters have always been so two-dimensional, considering she's such a great writer.
As for the ending- I guess it worked, but I closed the book feeling kind of...dead. And sad. Not the sweet kind of sadness that succeeds a Hardy or Bronte novel, but a kind of icky sad. Also, there are certain mysteries in the novel that go unanswered- I couldn't figure out if that was intentional, or if Oates just didn't feel like dealing with those plot lines (in which case, why put them there?). Oh well. Still a recommend.
PS- For anyone familiar with Oates's short stories, this story seemed to be, in a lot of ways, a reworking of one of my favorite Oates stories called "The Model."