| Title | : | The Gravediggers Daughter |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0061236829 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780061236822 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 582 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2007 |
| Awards | : | Macavity Award Sue Feder Historical Mystery (2008), National Book Critics Circle Award Fiction (2007) |
The Gravediggers Daughter Reviews
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Anduve un tiempo, hace ya unos cuantos años, entusiasmado con esta autora tras leer Qué fue de los Mulvaney y, sobre todo, Niágara. Después, la admiración se aplacó muchísimo con la lectura de Ave del paraíso y la cosa apenas levantó el vuelo con esta que ahora comento.
Aunque la parte en la que cuenta la vida en la casa del sepulturero es muy buena, está a la altura de las dos novelas que cito arriba (aunque haya algún detalle un poco chocante), el resto de la historia decae de forma lamentable. -
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)
So what's the dark fear that lies in the inner heart of all erudite nerds? Namely this -- that no matter how educated, intelligent or well-read you are, there are always going to be a certain amount of very well-known authors you have never read at all, not even one single page of, and that at any moment this fact might be discovered by your fellow erudite nerds. Just take me, for example, who can count among completely unread authors such stalwarts as (deep breath, Jason, deep breath) Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, Augusten Burroughs, Dave Eggers, and dozens more embarrassing admissions. So needless to say that I was excited to recently come across the latest novel by Joyce Carol Oates at my local library, 2007's The Gravedigger's Daughter, because Oates is yet another of these classic "everyone has read at least one book by her" authors who I haven't read myself; and that's apparently a shame, according to my fellow book-loving geeks, given that Oates (a lit professor at Princeton) has been a multiple nominee over the years of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, PEN/Faulkner Award and Orange Prize, not to mention the actual winner of an NBA (in 1970), a Stoker Award and a dozen other accolades. And this is to say nothing of The Gravedigger's Daughter in particular, which made the New York Times' "10 Most Notable Books of the Year" list last year; and of course all of this is small potatoes compared to the greatest achievement of Oates' entire career so far, making it into the Revered And Blessed Oprah's Book Club Hallowed Be Her Name Amen.
So I checked it out and sat down a couple of weeks ago to read it; and then about a week later, found myself finally giving up on it for good around page 250 or so (or roughly halfway through), after two days of literally dreading the idea of even physically picking the book up again. So what happened? Well, to answer that, maybe it would be better for me to ask you a series of questions, questions I've been starting to wonder more and more about the longer CCLaP has been open. Ready?
--Why is it that almost all novels revered by the academic community principally feature characters who are constantly in a state of being slightly miserable? And not miserable as in "interesting" miserable, but miserable as in "that whiny professor in the corner of the room who ruins every godd-mn party they're invited to" miserable?
--Why is it that almost all award-winning novels go way out of their way, deliberately out of their way, to show off what pretty language that author knows, completely removing the reader from the natural pace and rhythm of the story itself? Why can no academically revered novel simply let the reader get lost in the actual story, which is the entire point of a novel even existing?*
--Why is it that academes are so fascinated by mediocre EveryPeople living in bland surroundings, who do nothing with their unremarkable lives and yet somehow still manage to make a whole series of terrible life decisions? Why do so many people in the academic community think that this makes for fascinating literature, and why do they think we should sympathize or even care about such oblivious, socially retarded chumps?
It's the great mystery of the arts, I'm beginning to understand, as CCLaP has me reading academically-revered award-winning novels on a regular basis for the first time in my life; that the exact novels most lauded by this community are the very ones least fitting the definition of an entertaining novel, the ones that instead most call attention to themselves as "precious works of art" more fit for years of overeducated analysis instead of simple pleasure. And in this I guess the so-called "mainstream literature" community is just like any community of genre fans as well, in that they are constantly in need of justifying their existence too, constantly in need of explaining why anyone should devote such time and energy doing delicate little analyses of barely readable books. It's disappointing to be sure, to realize that these revered prize lists are in actuality not a reliable way at all to simply find good books by good authors; it's a lesson about the arts I'm reminded of again by The Gravedigger's Daughter, a lesson I think I'll be paying more attention to in the future.
Out of 10: 4.8
*And since we're on the subject....Sheesh, Oates, will you please stop using exclamation marks! Over and over! In awkward places in your paragraphs! To make your point! Crazy you are driving me! Good literature this is not! Oh, and speaking of which, why like Yoda all your Jewish characters talk? Slightly offensive in a hazily defined way it is! UGH, this book drove me crazy. -
This was obviously a very beautiful book, coming from Joyce Carol Oates. It deals with Rebecca, the gravedigger's daughter, whose family moved to America just before the 2nd World War started. In many ways, this is a coming-of-age story because we get to hear about Rebecca's life from she's an infant till she's a grown woman. However, Oates' structure is beautifully puzzling as she starts the novel when Rebecca is in her twenties, on her way home from work.
This is a story about struggles and how you often repeat patterns in your life, no matter how destructive they may be. It's very clear from the beginning that Rebecca sees herself as 'The Gravedigger's Daughter' because she is living with a constant, terrifying fear of her father who was a monster.
Joyce Carol Oates writes beautifully about history and life, and some of her sentences are breath-taking. Meanwhile, I did miss some kind of resolution in the end, especially when it comes to specific characters that we hear nothing about. But other than that, this novel was stunning and it has peaked my interest to get to know Oates' works even better. -
This book would have had much higher marks from me if it would have ended differently.
This is my first Joyce Carol Oates read and was for a face to face bookclub. In general I'm not drawn to "women in jepordy" stories but I'm always willing to give something new a try.
I was drawn to the character Rebecca and wanted to see her life work out for the better. And ultimately things did get better for her. She finally did re-marry although she was permenently damaged from her first husband.
The worst thing about this book is, for me it didn't seem to go anywhere. It was simply a chronical of her life. I expected the husband to show up in some climatic scene but he just simply vanished - discovered dead years ago. No phantom here.
I'm also VERY confused by the way it ended. In San Francisco after her son plays in the piano concert...did he win? Did he continue with the piano? The letters in the epilogue seemed to indicate he did continue with the piano - but why did we end here? What was the ultimate conflict/resoution of this book? Am I just not "intelligent" enough to see some deeper meaning - did it pass over my head?
Finally I was even more confused by the series of letters at the end. What a strange segue. They were desperate, pleading, from both sides two woman with only a passing shared past but somehow linked in a way that for me defied logic.
The epilogue was so divergent from the rest of the book it was as if I went into a parallel dimension.
I keep thinking there must be more "there" .... "there" but I did not see it. I'll be interesting to hear what the coversation goes like at the bookclub meeting. -
Lo so, sono un po' volitivo e mi lascio prendere dall'entusiasmo facilmente: ora Joyce Carol Oates è diventata la mia scrittrice preferita a discapito della mia amata Ginzburg, ma dannazione è davvero una penna formidabile. Questo romanzo mi ha coinvolto dalla prima all'ultima pagina cambiando abilmente gli ambienti, i personaggi e perfino lo stile di scrittura con l'ultima (magnifica!) parte in forma "epistolare". Trovo sia meraviglioso il modo in cui la Oates conosca i suoi personaggi; non è una banalità, in quanto si può creare con leggerezza lasciando in evidenza solo due tre tratti caratteristici, ma i personaggi di questa scrittrice sembrano plasmati con la cera fin dentro le trombe di Eustachio, hanno una profondità tale che ti sembra di vederli e averli conosciuti, ti sembra che il loro passato non emerga piatto da appunti su un foglio di carta ma soffi turbinoso come un vortice di esperienze vere, dolorose, umane. C'è una empatia magica che fuoriesce da personaggi affatto positivi quali Jacob Schwart, Niles Tignor o il vecchio Gallagher; e allo stesso tempo c'è una incredibile forza psicologica emergente da Rebecca/Hazel, lo spessore di una persona autentica, la fierezza di una donna che si trova a combattere in un mondo che la vuole sotterrare. C'è da restare ammirati e grati per una simile potenza di prosa. Ora che ti ho trovata non ti mollo, Joyce Carol, ci puoi scommettere.
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I guess I liked this book, but reading it once is plenty for me. It was very well-written, but I just could not handle how ungodly depressing it was. Honestly, the main character can't seem to go ten pages without getting the shit kicked out of her (literally and figuratively) by all the Mean Bad Men in her life. First there's her father, who goes apeshit when his daughter dares to enter a spelling bee (I still don't get that); then there's her husband, who chooses beating the shit out of her as an acceptable courtship ritual; and then there's the guy she meets after leaving the husband, who never really did anything to her but creeped me out none the less.
This book is basically a manual on Why Life Sucks For Everyone, and the worst part is, it doesn't even have an ending. You know those books that just stop? That's what
The Gravedigger's Daughter does, and it is irritating.
Fun Fact: I read the majority of this book on a 9-hour plane ride, and by doing so discovered a fun challenge: trying to read a book about how evil and crazy men are while 27 Dresses plays on the video screen directly above your line of vision. Looking up from my book about spousal abuse and depression, I would watch Katherine Heigal prancing around onscreen with James Marsden and all I could think was, "You stupid bitch, get away from him while you still can! He will get jealous and paranoid and the next thing you know, he's kicking you in the face for asking where he was all night." -
Once again, I must diverge from the critics who loved this Joyce Carol Oates novel. Apparently I didn't learn my lesson with "We Were the Mulvaneys." I don't know where to start, so I'll just list the major problems: a bloated and disjointed narrative, overwrought prose, and a nonsensical epilogue. Good times...
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O poveste despre supravietuire si multa ambitie - in ciuda tuturor contextelor nefavorabile. Sunt atinse multe subiecte sensibile (rasism, violenta domestica, saracie, lipsa educatiei, alcoolism) si se pune accent si pe lejeritatea oamenilor de a pune etichete celor din jur.
Mi-a placut foarte mult stilul - dur, simplu, dar foarte intens; de asemenea, am apreciat pasajele de introspectie. Cu siguranta o sa incerc si alte romane de Joyce Carol Oates :).
"In lumea animalelor, cei slabi sunt degraba inlaturati. Asa ca tre' sa-ti ascunzi slabiciunea, Rebecca. Cu totii trebuie sa facem asta." -
Nu sunt încă hotărâtă dacă mi-a plăcut povestea, deși promitea la început, dar scrierea m-a convins. Este o scriere ciudată, care reia de multe ori faptele întâmplate din diverse unghiuri, punând accent pe sentimentele și trăirile personajului principal. Inițial, am empatizat profund cu eroina, am compătimit-o și i-am dorit să-și găsească într-un fel salvarea, dar m-a dezamăgit până la final. Mi s-a părut că, înaintând în vârstă, devine din ce în ce mai rece, mai închisă și mai detașată de viață, prea pretențioasă cu lumea și cumva prea plină de importanța conferită de noul nivel social. Nici măcar scrisorile de la final nu m-au convins, cărora nu le-am înțeles rostul. Povestea îi împarte viața în două jumătăți: prima parte tragică, plină de drame, de lipsuri, pierderi, dezamăgiri și amărăciune, și, a doua parte, aflată sub o stea mult prea norocoasă, în care-și găsește liniștea și care-i oferă un statut superior și foarte confortabil.
https://booknation.ro/recenzie-fiica-... -
A character's worst fear should be to appear in a Joyce Carol Oates novel. It's pretty well guaranteed his or her like is going to suck.
Still, though, I keep picking them up. And as decently written as they may be, I'm miserable right along with everyone else. There's never a glimmer of hope, a break from the compounding gloom. As a reader, the weight lands firmly on your shoulders for the length of the book. Join us for a walk of pain.
Gravedigger's Daughter is no exception. I felt for the protagonist, I did. I was proud to watch her pull past her shameful upbringing. Glad to see her throw off
the shackles of the abusive husband. Excited to observe her raise a piano prodigy.
But you know what? The whole time, I knew: None of it would make her thrive. Each advance was some new twisted purgatory, and there was no chance for a happy ending.
I was right. -
Raw and gritty and saucy and rich. And tremulous. And reflective. And melancholy. The prose of life, of American life. Of a woman, told by a woman. After this book I want to read everything Joyce Carol Oates has ever written.
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I've not read a great deal of Joyce Carol Oates' copious publication list, but the Gravedigger's Daughter seems to be at the more reserved, conventional end of her spectrum. It is the story of a lifetime, a classic American lifetime from blighted immigrant upbringing to eventual success, or success-through-children as is often the case. In the meantime, much contemplation of the perils of being a women, and of being a single mother, and of being a foreigner. Of perseverance and the loneliness of steadfast purpose, and the necessary but insurmountably isolating walls we build. Strange that other reviews complain that the prose is excessive, as I would actually say that with her more markedly modernist or gothic tendancies reigned in somewhat, Oates' deft, precise touch for the description of details both internal and external is her strongest asset. Her words are crisp and effective, and occasionally glittering, without ever slowing from a brisk and utterly readable presentation. Which is to say that this reads essentially like the literary bestseller that it was, I suppose. I have to admit that such heartfelt realist narratives aren't entirely to my taste these days, but I managed not to be bored for almost 600 pages, which says something. Slows a bit towards the end (inevitably, I was more interested in the protagonist's tumultous youth than ever more stable middle age) but even then, Oates chooses her scenes well to keep things moving along. Oh, and Oates can't possibly shake off her all her gothic predilections, either -- one seemingly inconsequential point resurafaces rather startlingly, tying things a little tighter than expected. And now time to go back to some bizarro sci-fi or something.
...
Lengthy past thoughts at the mid-point:
For christmas. This is something like Joyce Carol Oates' 53rd novel (not exaggerating, she's written at least one a year for the length of her productive career, plus buckets of stories). And I'll admit, though I loved her eerie 1976 5-voice stream-of-consciousness nocturne
Childwold (a totally random used bookshop selection whose design and first page seemed perfect), that I'm always a little unsure of picking up her others. Why? Because they can't all be good, can they? And I can't possibly dig through all of them in search of more Childwold-caliber material (it's barely on goodreads, and the reviews that there are are pretty middling). And I hear lots of conflicting things about her. Some people complain about her often dense prose and weirdo gothic modernism, some seem to steer clear based on the mass exposure and Oprah-book-clubbing of We Were the Mulvaneys which seems to suggest over-sentiment or something (what it probably actually suggests is overwhelming tragedy, sentimental or not). Some complain that her entire catalog is solid but increasingly redundant as you read more and more of it. So, tricky. So I'm actually pretty grateful for this well-placed gift, to slice through my indecision.
And so how is this? I'd worried that modern, more popular Oates might be a little more conservative in prose style, and compared to Childwold, it certainly is. But by normal bestseller standards, it's clear that Oates can really write. With sharp, finely-worked prose, with a decent sense of how to juggle chronology for juxtaposition and pacing, with conviction and convincing voice and convincing, lived sense of the inevitability of tragedy (and a little of that Faulknerian sense of familial doom). So it's pretty good. It captures well the sadness of being alive, the sadness of being an immigrant, The Sadness of Being a Girl (borrowing the phrase from an old Vietnamese psych rock song from this
comp), which is what I gather a lot of "serious" (i.e. non-gothic, non-pseudonym) Oates is essentially concerned with. But at 600 hundred pages, a lot of this seems inessential, too. Rebecca Schwart's story is perhaps sadly quintessential, and the prose is great line-for-line, but there's nothing here that burns to be spoken, exactly, or that burns to be spoken slowly, over hundreds of pages of carefully-wrought description. (The inessentialness of a long, dense career, maybe. The inessentialness of telling things in great detail just because you can. Or maybe I've been spoiled by compact, concise storytelling lately.) But this sill moves well under its own momentum. I guess I'll have to see where the second half takes me. -
A wonderful multi-layered novel of penetrating psychological insight and human understanding from a master.
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This is a book about identity, about coming to terms with your past and being who you are. About family, battered women and their husbands. About the immigrant experience.
Oates details the story of Rebecca Schwart's life from her earliest childhood and on. Rebecca is the third child of poor, immigrant Jewish parents who arrived in the States in the 30 and Rebecca was actually born in New York Harbor, making her a US citizen as the only one in the family.
The book starts with Rebecca thinking back on her parents - and we learn that her father came to a violent end, but not how - I was instantly hooked. Then the book follows Rebecca in her life as a wife to Niles Tignor and mother of little Niley (Niles Jr.) with flashes back to her childhood with a father being more and more mad and feeling like it was them against the others. He forbade Rebecca's mother to speak German and in that way stripped her of her ability to communicate and be an individual and he controlled everything in the house. In Germany, he was a teacher and a cultured man - in the States he works as the gravedigger doing manual labor and is not respected at all - he and his family are actually victims of some anti-semitic 'jokes', both real and imagined.
In Rebecca's current life, she is married and a mother - but her husband perhaps isn't all he claimed to be and Rebecca has to escape with Niley and she starts a new life - as Hazel Jones. She chooses that name because she meets a man one day who thinks she's Hazel Jones and she stars believing she could be.
The truth of that encounter is revealed towards the end of the book - in a way, only Oates can pull off.
But Hazel manages to - cunningly - create a new life and two new identities for her and her little boy, Zacharias who turns out to be a wonderful piano player - a skill he inherited from his maternal grandmother.
In the end, Rebecca comes full circle and face to face with her past.
As always, I love the way Oates writes. She seems so in control of her language and her story and characters and everything works together beautifully. Her way of letting a person's thoughts and imaginations being part of the text but written in cursive, makes the characters have so much depth and this was another wonderful book by her.
I always say - and write - that Oates write about the American dream gone bad. In this book, she doesn't. Rebecca actually achieve the American dream - she creates a great life for herself and her son. But she does so at a cost - no one knows who she actually is (except Niley/Zacharias who grows detached because of this shared, but hidden, knowledge) and she constantly wears a facade as the perfect woman, always smiling, always pleasing her man. She pays a huge price for this, her chosen way of life - and even though she had to go into hiding to get away from her abusive husband, the question remains whether the way she chose to do it was worth it in the end.
And she learns the wisdom of her father's advice: In animal life the weak are quickly disposed of. So you must hide your weakness, Rebecca. We must.. And she does. -
If there were six or seven stars to give them to this book, I would think that not enough! It has more than earned a place on my Favorites shelf. Now my favorite Oates novel out of the 20 or so (I lost count) of her books I’ve read.
And what is it about? A “Graveddigger’s Daughter”? Yes. But also memory, perspective, and history intersecting, specifically during and especially in the decades following World War II in a culture somehow drowning deep in and yet distant from the war's reality. It’s about the politics of gender and of relationships both in general and in specific situations. It’s about intersecting and contrasting perspectives but needs no heavy handed narrative device of “this is Hazel’s chapter, now Zack’s chapter, now Gallagher’s chapter.” And it prudently leaves in darkness the characters whose minds it couldn’t have penetrated and lets them puzzle and haunt us.
Oates doesn’t take on a single challenge this novel cannot meet. She never twists the plot, complicates a character, or even executes a sentence for the sake of showing us what she can do. She doesn’t need to. I came with high expectations because of praise and recommendations from friends. But I came, nevertheless, to a book by an author whose assets I thought I had appraised quite well. I’ve come away with new respect for what she can really do. What a priceless experience to be convinced me that one of my two favorite living authors is even better than I thought she was!
Despite my usual inclination to hold an editor’s pen in my mind and rewrite anything I thought I could improve, all I ever wanted to do was trade a comma for a semicolon, combine sentences, or perhaps strike out an adjective every 50 pages or so. And even then, a part of me screamed, “Don’t touch anything!” I kept wondering how long it took Oates to write this novel (which I intend to find out if I can) and how many times she read it herself to perfect it. Some readers have criticized Oates for “dashing off” or “churning out” book after book with, they contend, some disregard for quality. With all due respect for them but despite my usual reluctance to argue about such things, I’d aggressively question anyone who said Oates “churned out” or “dashed off” this incredible book. (Knowing Oates, however, I’ll bet that she did write it far more quickly than would seem possible to me. She’s done that with numerous books.)
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I’d recommend the novel highly to almost anyone and am certain that I’ll be reading it again someday, perhaps even more than once. I absolutely loved it! -
I'm still up in the air about whether I liked this book or not. I picked it up because I had heard of the author, but have never read anything by her before. It is the story of Rebecca, the daughter of German immigrants to America. The father was a Math teacher, but takes the only job that he can in America, digging graves. The family tries to assimilate to America, while at the same time maintaining their prejudices and believes about Americans.
The story is very violent as Rebecca deals with an abusive and mentally unstable father and depressive mother. When she finally escapes, she marries an abusive husband. She then goes on the run from him with their son and assumes yet another identity.
I found the book very negative, however I don't think the author meant it to be. I would read and think "What else? What else can happen to this woman?" But Rebecca never feels pity for herself. And in a way, I didn't care for her because we never learned about the emotion and the drive behind her life choices. She was intensely private, so much so that a lot of her was shielded from the reader.
Yet I thought the story was fascinating and even though there were many twists and turns, I was intrigued by all of them. -
This was my necessary breezy read after the last one. It's the second thing I've read by this author, who seems to be really well-appreciated by the world, but I am still ambivalent about her work. It is easy to get into but also easy to fall right back out of- I guess that's what I will say. She is very prolific, though- it could be that I'm just reading the wrong things. This one is about a woman who has a really hard childhood and young adulthood and gets a lot of abuse, and then she goes on and makes a life for herself by having this kind of double identity and smiling a lot and never trusting anybody. There are some interesting things about immigration, and maybe gender, the holocaust...
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So first of all I have to acknowledge that it took me a long time to get through this and that is no fault of the book. I have a lot going on right now and just don't have more than 15-20 minutes of fiction reading per day, most days.
I should also add that this is not a happy book, while it has a happy ending of sorts (Rebecca ends up safe and fairly well-off and her son is a successful musician, but she is lonely and never able to reveal her true self in important relationships). Oates is very powerful at illustrating the gore and fear in everyday life. She illuminates power differentials very well to emphasize all the many ways that people (usually women) living in fear kowtow to their "masters" by suppressing themselves.
Essentially Oates grasps the trauma of repeated abuse and the way it frames both thinking and behavior throughout one's life.
I, once again, always, don't have a lot of time this morning and so will end my review there with just some direct quotes below. I would not recommend this if you are looking for something light; but I would emphasize that this book feels true and important.
"Worse-come-to-worst was the expression. A married woman saves in secret, not in a bank, but somewhere in her house, for that day of reckoning worse-come-to-worst."
"the response to anything out-of-the-ordinary by local standards: a derisive laugh"
"To get things right. To get those things right that you could, amid so much that you could not."
"Rececca stared up at him, and saw how he hated her. She would wonder what Jacob Schwart saw, in her: what there was in her, a child of five, he so despised."
"Rebecca came to see that it was like a wound. Being a girl."
"As the hotel room was cleaned, as Rebecca moped, scrubbed, scoured, vacuumed, re-made the gbed, restored order to what had ben so ugly, she began to feel elated. As the harsh odor of cleanser repleased other odors in the bathroom and the mirror and white porcelain sink brightened, so her spirits revivied."
"You made your bed, now lie in it. It was the wisdom of peasants. It was a gritty wisdom of the soil. It was not to be questioned."
"How flattered a man is, that a woman should laugh at his jokes! How childlike in his soul, wishing to trust a woman. Because she is attractive, and young. Because she is alone."
"In animal life the weakest are quickly disposed of. That's religion: the only religion." -
Un libro de 700 páginas tiene como reto principal mantener la intriga en su historia y el lento pero consistente desarrollo en la vida de sus personajes. Es inevitable que la trama desfallezca por momentos, pero si la intriga perdura es muy probable que el lector no desista en su lectura.
Eso me pasó con La hija del sepulturero, novela con grandes momentos de crudeza, rabia y emoción y cuya protagonista navega por una serie de adversidades no solo desde niña, cuando vivía con sus padres y dos hermanos, una familia de alemanes exiliados en EEUU a causa de la llegada de Hitler al poder, sino a causa de su primer amor a los 16 años. -
When I reached for my first book by Joyce Carol Oates, The Gravedigger's Daughter, I must admit I was expecting a somewhat sugar-coated and sweetened novel about a poor little girl, daughter of refugees from pre-war Germany, who grows up being mocked and bullied by her peers. I was somewhat expecting a novel about pity and unfair treatment. Probably it was the book cover that added a lot in forming this wrong expectation of mine. And while in a sense, I did find pity and drama in this book, they were far from the sugar-coated and sweet, naive rendition I expected. This is a book with a lot of blood, guts, and madness in it.
The Gravedigger's Daughter is a novel about growing up in an unhealthy environment, in which everyone slowly looses their mind, sense of reality, or sense of right and wrong. Rebecca Schwart grows up being a part of German disfunctional family of refugees that treat the outer world as a constant threat, everyone else (them, the others) as constantly mocking and will-intentioned, while the family itself is the only place you are being kept safe. As long as you keep your mouth shut. German becomes a forbidden language even behind the closed doors of home, while English is a language still unknown and foreign. Background and history are never to be talked about and every memory of the old world is to be forgotten. The past has never happened and the future is something that "they, the others" have already taken. And while the family is trying to stay safe from "them, the others", it slowly grinds itself down into hatred, madness, and death. Growing up in such a dark and cold environment in a corner of a cemetary until a tragedy follows as the result of a horrific and destructive crime, Rebecca is being dragged out into the open world of "the others" where years later, walking home to her 3-year-old son she meets Hazel Jones. The idea of Hazel Jones.
In this novel we follow the struggle for survival of a young woman trying to keep her son safe, while constantly playing Tag with reality and sanity. This gripping novel takes us through the thoughts and actions of a woman very close to losing her mind so many times, while at other times being extremely sharp and clear-minded. A woman trying to build a safe future for herself and her son, while still dragging the shackles of her past with her. A past she is doing her best to hide from, but one that closely follows her everywhere.
I was so enthralled by this book that I could not stop reading it for days. But as much as I loved it, I must admit that the ending was a bit too vague for my personal taste. Joyce Carol Oates is a remarkable storyteller, her prose is swift and silky, the story unravels in a perfect pace and with great detail that is rarely superfluous or tedious, but towards the last 100-150 pages I felt a slight shift in its focus, a slight uncertainty in where it's all headed to. Even though I am not in love with the ending itself, however, I am still very fascinated with Oates writing and am already looking forward to reading my next book by her. -
The Gravediggers Daughter (2007)
• by Joyce Carol Oates
A tragedy. Jewish immigrants flee Nazi Germany and the daughter is haunted by the old world ways of her immutable parents.
The story begins in 1959 with 23-year-old Rebecca telling of her undying love for and marriage to Niles Tignor; a traveling salesman for the Black Horse Brewery; a man you do not say "No" to. Tignor is often away, days or weeks at a time and he's installed Rebecca in an old farmhouse near Chautauqua Falls, New York. Tignor is not providing enough to live on so Rebecca takes a job at the local factory. The neighbor Edna Meltzer babysits their son Niles Junior, "Niley," now almost 3 years old.
On this particular day, as she walks home, there's a man wearing a Panama Hat who's following her. He's Dr. Byron Hendricks and he's insistent in his belief that she's Hazel Jones. Years earlier Hazel or her mother did work for his father and maybe they were wronged. He says she's been remembered in his father's will. Later in the story we learn Byron is nuts and a serial killer who's been killing Hazel Jones look-alikes. After his death, 6 graves are found on his property. Rebecca fortunately runs away from him.
Rebecca also reminisces about her immigrant family who came to ruin. She says she's pleased her poison-word father will never see his grandson. She loved and hates her parents. The often cited idiom, "You've made your bed, now lie in it," is for a time Rebecca's fate.
In Germany Jacob was a respected teacher and intellectual. In 1936 he goes through great difficulty and expense to escape the country and board an ocean liner to bring him and his family to New York Harbor; he's changed their name to Schwart. His wife Anna goes into labor and Rebecca is born aboard ship--the first American in the family (May 1936). The only job Jacob can find is that of cemetery caretaker, a gravedigger in Upstate New York; in the town of Milburn.
Since time immemorial the Milburn area has had a tradition of tormenting whoever is Gravedigger ; in this case it's the Schwart family; Jacob and Anna and their three kids; Herschel, August "Gus" and Rebecca. They're provided a small cottage to live in, located on the cemetery property, a dank, stone hovel. From the start they faced harassment and name-calling; "Jew", "Nazi", or "Kraut" throughout the 13 years they live there.
When Herschel is 21 and still living at the cottage he takes revenge against the 3 town miscreants who desecrated the cemetery on Halloween; beating them to a pulp and carving a swastika into the forehead of one of the vandals. Now wanted, he flees to Canada. Gus at 19 has had enough of his father's increasingly abusive behavior; he packs and leaves. The labor intensive work of cutting grass without a power mower and digging graves with a shovel in root clogged soil has taken its toll on Jacob's body. He gets no cooperation from the town officials and is increasingly paranoid about the hostile Americans; his wife Anna is a nervous wreck.
It's 1949 and Rebecca is just 13. Her father is now nuts; he shoots a cemetery visitor, shoots his wife and lets Rebecca live; turning the shotgun on himself and splattering his daughter.
Rebecca is taken in by a former grammar school teacher, a Christian in the Presbyterian Church. She rejects Christianity, just as her parents seemed to reject Judaism; the family being completely irreligious (Rebecca doesn't seem aware of her Jewish heritage since her father denies it, as well as forbidding them to speak German).
Eventually she rooms with friends and works as a chambermaid. Tignor rescues her from an abusive guest in the hotel. He's attracted to her beauty and the enchanting Tignor charms her pants off. She's warned by many that Tignor is a "bad boy" with a short fuse, ex-wives and children, charm galore and a propensity for bedding teens. In 1954, at age 17 she marries him anyways; a man over twice her age.
In the story it seems (but isn't specifically stated) Tignor caused the miscarriage of their first child; punishment for gabbing about him. He seems to have lost the brewery job and is now engaged in the nefarious. When he drunkenly beats her and throws Niley against the wall Rebecca leaves him.
She changes her appearance, takes the name Hazel Jones, reinvents herself as sophisticated and renames her son Zacharias "Zach." On the run with her piano prodigy son she takes odd jobs and doesn't stay too long in one place. Eventually she's able to get official, but forged, documents establishing their new identities and she dates Chet (Chester Gallagher) an older musician from a wealthy family. After 8 years she learns Tignor is not after her; he died in Attica prison a few years earlier.
Her long lost brother Gus recognizes her, but she denies knowing him. He's a shabby wreck of a man, she now well-to-do. Later she relents and tries to find him, to no avail.
Zach grows up a successful concert pianist. His mom and stepdad Chet couldn't be prouder. The story skips to a couple of decades in the future (1998 to 1999) when Hazel (aka Rebecca) is 62, living in Florida and probably dying of cancer. From a recent memoir by professor Freyda Morgenstern she learns the fate of this long ago cousin. 57 years ago little Freyda and her family were suppose to join them at the cemetery cottage, but their ship was turned back and the family perished; all but Freyda. As Rebecca persistently writes to Freyda, the surly professor finally cherishes the correspondence and learning of Rebecca's ill health wants to come to her.
Well done with some superb writing. Parts of the story are quite powerful. 😢
Joyce Carol Oates, a most prolific author, born in 1938. She's written some 60 novels and dozens of short stories, short story collections, anthologies, non-fiction and more.
See Book Series In Order for her complete collection.
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Well written but depressing
This lengthy novel relays the sad story of Rebecca Schwart effectively a Jewish refugee whose family emigrates to America during the Second World War. The family struggle as immigrants due to their reduced circumstances and attitudes of the natives towards them. However, this doesn't quite explain the turmoil within or the resultant tragedy which has ramifications for the rest of Rebecca's life. A sham marriage at 17 to a gangster/womaniser results in a child that she must protect at all costs.
I can't say much more without giving away the plot but there is a huge amount in this novel which covers childhood to old age. The depressing aspect is the way Rebecca's unfortunate childhood plagues her and causes her to make bad choices throughout her life. She is a fearful and damaged person who never really finds her place in life and hurts those around her as a result.
There is a lot of bad language in this novel and some graphic sex scenes as well as shocking violence including violence towards children. Sensitive readers will struggle.
On a side note, I didn't get the epilogue and found it a very strange way to end the book. There is also a constant side-swiping at religion especially Christianity to the extent that Jesus appears to the main character throughout the book but in the end He is dismissed as a weak figure unable to assist. As a Christian, I find it odd when authors do this. Why include God/Jesus at all if all you are going to do is mock them. It's a clear reminder that we are all aware of the existence of God and that one day we will have to give account to Him for our lives. The Bible also makes it clear that God will not be mocked so I fear for authors who do this and seem not to be bothered about the consequence. -
This was a very hard book to read. It’s not that it is poorly written; it’s that the protagonist’s situation struck a raw note and was so painful for me to read about.
Rebecca Schwart’s life is all about fear. From the time she is a small child, fear rules her life. Daughter of immigrants who fled the Nazis, she lives in horrible poverty, her father being reduced from a high school math teacher in Germany to a cemetery caretaker in America. Understandably bitter by their reduced circumstances and the way they are treated by Americans, her father is authoritarian and abusive, taking his anger and defeat out on his family. Rebecca learns to be what her father wants her to be to keep things running smoothly. After tragedy turns her out on her own, she uses this talent of being what others want her to be to her advantage. It keeps her alive through brutal marriage; it enables her to run and start a new life.
Sadly, although Rebecca (now living under the name of Hazel Jones- even that name is a case of her becoming what someone else wants her to be) manages to make her way to a good life, she loses herself. She’s incredibly perceptive as to what people want, and very adept at giving them that. While she certainly has standards- she is firm as to what lines she will not cross- she does not present her real self to a single person. She is more mirror than human.
It’s what most every person in an abusive relationship learns to do; Rebecca just takes it much further than most do. After getting involved with her first husband, she has not pursued a single thing she really wanted to do other than raise her beloved and musically gifted son. In this novel of 580 pages, we never do find out what Rebecca wanted out of life other than to raise her son safely.
It’s a powerful book. I found it painfully long and slow, but could not stop reading, wondering if Rebecca could keep up the act and not make a misstep that would cause her house of cards to tumble down. If you want to see some of the psychological effects of being in an abusive, manipulative, relationship are, read this book. If you have been in that kind of relationship, you might find this book to be very triggering. -
I've read her short stories but this is my first novel. She can surely write. I love her style and while the story is quite graphic in its violence and abuse, it was not gratuitous, but necessary, handled well.
It was a story of survival, escape. One family escapes the holocaust only to confront isolation and prejudice in America, eventually leading a father to insanity and self-destruction. The journey of the surviving daughter reveals another from of persecution--the persecution of women/ a woman. Still, she manages to survive by using the male's vulnerability to sexual manipulation to her advantage. She also survives by giving up her identity in order to hide from her first abusive relationship. That she escaped persecution of Jews only to be forced to give up her identity to escape persecution from an abusive man is rather ironic. In fact, this irony comes back at the end of the novel. The irony of two types of persecutions. Two ways of escape.
The other family in the background (until the end) are Rebecca's cousins, who do not escape Germany. Rebecca's cousin, close in age to Rebecca, loses her family to the holocaust; however she survives. Unlike Rebecca, she embraces her identity, even writes a book about her tragedy, exaggerating in order to exploit.
The irony of this story of escape and survival is complex and fascinating. I love how Oates turns it around, shows the communication in the end as a way of revealing the similarities and differences of character, the similarities and differences of different types of persecution. An interesting and complex way of ending the story.
I enjoyed it. -
The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates.
This book/story was just not for me. I listened to the first 4 CD's and had to send it back. It was just overwhelmingly sad with no light at the end of the tunnel.
The author is an excellent writer portraying each character in depth and their relationships to each other. The Jewish family narrowly escaping Nazi Germany only to find antisemitism in the New York area alive and thriving. The father, a former school teacher and well educated, could only find work caring for grave in a cemetery where the family lived. The depression each member of the family experiences only grows to be the major part of their everyday lives. -
Another epic story from Oates, but I really lost interest in it halfway though.
It infuriates me how no one in Oates's novels ever says what they feel or actually mean (as least not the antagonists). When a character comes along that does express himself, he's often made to look ridiculous and embarrassing. I can't help but think that these stories would be half as long if people just spoke candidly. I know that's not exactly suspenseful, but it's excruciating to read about someone sidestepping honest questions and emotions for 600 pages or so. -
What a letdown.
I LOVE JCO and this is one of her more famous books. However, I was just NOT into this. My big issue with it is that when I would get into it, it would shift to another time period in this family's history. I lost interest by the second time Oates did this to a major scale. I never like it when I come out of a book not liking it (no matter what the book is). It PAINS me to be disappointed by a book. However, I want to be honest and not give 4 and 5 stars to everything. Didn't hate this, but didn't like it either.
I am giving this one a 2.5 out of 5 stars.
