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A review by mollyringle
A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates
4.0
This was my second reading of this novel; my review from the first reading, almost 20 years ago, is copied at the end of this one.
This book is insane and weird and difficult to get through, and I kind of love it. Or at least, I love that it exists and that Joyce Carol Oates took the time to create such a crazy thing.
It's huge and dense and full of meticulously chosen late-1800s-style-prose, and you would think it would take 20 years just to write and that whoever wrote it probably couldn't have had time to write much else in life, but we're talking about JCO here, who is an amazing force of nature when it comes to prolificness. So yeah, this is just ONE of her 70 or so books. My hat's off to you, JCO.
And what is this novel even about? Hard to describe. A parody of the late 1800s in America? Well, yes, but it also goes so deep into that time period, and into each character, that it becomes legitimate literature at the same time. It's serious / not serious. I was finding it similar to, say, [b:Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell|14201|Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell|Susanna Clarke|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1357027589s/14201.jpg|3921305] that way: written in antiquated style with tongue in cheek, and with similarly bizarre supernatural occurrences, but at the same time fully in earnest about the plot and characters. So if you liked JS&MN's style, consider this one.
I was also thinking this novel might be a thought experiment, in which Oates more or less posits the question, "What if all that crazy stuff people believed in the late 1800s was literally true?" What if the Spiritualists really were in league with dangerous spirits? What if someone really could invent a time machine? What if a young woman wandering off on her own, though still within view of her family, really was in danger of being seized by some stranger who might appear out of nowhere (say, in a hot air balloon)? What if young women were honestly so innocent about the facts of life that they had genuinely no idea what would happen to them on the wedding night? What if a woman who starts dressing and acting like a man actually physically became a man?
Because, yes, all those things happen in this book, and more. Crazy. But I kind of love it.
My review from first reading in 1998, for posterity:
The cover looked like a melodramatic grocery-store romance novel--it had a woman with billowing black hair and a breathtaken expression, wearing an extravagant 19th-century dress--and the back read, "One beauteous autumn day in 1879, a sinister black balloon swooped from the skies and abducted Miss Deirdre Zinn as her four sisters gaped, mute and terror-struck. For their family nothing was ever the same again..." If I hadn't known it was a parody, I would have been terribly alarmed and probably would have put it back on the shelves. But, having been notified of the fact, I laughed, and decided I had to read it. "Like a long Edward Gorey cartoon, or like Little Women as told by Stephen King," said one review in the front. Yes. It was just my sort of thing. Altogether, Ms. Oates captures the spirit of the times quite well, deftly mixing mentions of Edison and Walt Whitman and Poe into her characters' social lives, and including an intimate personal appearance by Mark Twain. Furthermore, as this book is highly amusing and deeply interesting, and barely at all disturbing, it shows that Joyce Carol Oates is an even more versatile author than I realized. Fans of Victorian literature will be delighted at this new take on the subject.
This book is insane and weird and difficult to get through, and I kind of love it. Or at least, I love that it exists and that Joyce Carol Oates took the time to create such a crazy thing.
It's huge and dense and full of meticulously chosen late-1800s-style-prose, and you would think it would take 20 years just to write and that whoever wrote it probably couldn't have had time to write much else in life, but we're talking about JCO here, who is an amazing force of nature when it comes to prolificness. So yeah, this is just ONE of her 70 or so books. My hat's off to you, JCO.
And what is this novel even about? Hard to describe. A parody of the late 1800s in America? Well, yes, but it also goes so deep into that time period, and into each character, that it becomes legitimate literature at the same time. It's serious / not serious. I was finding it similar to, say, [b:Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell|14201|Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell|Susanna Clarke|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1357027589s/14201.jpg|3921305] that way: written in antiquated style with tongue in cheek, and with similarly bizarre supernatural occurrences, but at the same time fully in earnest about the plot and characters. So if you liked JS&MN's style, consider this one.
I was also thinking this novel might be a thought experiment, in which Oates more or less posits the question, "What if all that crazy stuff people believed in the late 1800s was literally true?" What if the Spiritualists really were in league with dangerous spirits? What if someone really could invent a time machine? What if a young woman wandering off on her own, though still within view of her family, really was in danger of being seized by some stranger who might appear out of nowhere (say, in a hot air balloon)? What if young women were honestly so innocent about the facts of life that they had genuinely no idea what would happen to them on the wedding night? What if a woman who starts dressing and acting like a man actually physically became a man?
Because, yes, all those things happen in this book, and more. Crazy. But I kind of love it.
My review from first reading in 1998, for posterity:
The cover looked like a melodramatic grocery-store romance novel--it had a woman with billowing black hair and a breathtaken expression, wearing an extravagant 19th-century dress--and the back read, "One beauteous autumn day in 1879, a sinister black balloon swooped from the skies and abducted Miss Deirdre Zinn as her four sisters gaped, mute and terror-struck. For their family nothing was ever the same again..." If I hadn't known it was a parody, I would have been terribly alarmed and probably would have put it back on the shelves. But, having been notified of the fact, I laughed, and decided I had to read it. "Like a long Edward Gorey cartoon, or like Little Women as told by Stephen King," said one review in the front. Yes. It was just my sort of thing. Altogether, Ms. Oates captures the spirit of the times quite well, deftly mixing mentions of Edison and Walt Whitman and Poe into her characters' social lives, and including an intimate personal appearance by Mark Twain. Furthermore, as this book is highly amusing and deeply interesting, and barely at all disturbing, it shows that Joyce Carol Oates is an even more versatile author than I realized. Fans of Victorian literature will be delighted at this new take on the subject.