I'll Take You There

August 26, 2002
Most of us transcend the solipsism of loneliness by involvement in family, school or work. "Anellia," the narrator of Oates's 30th novel (who never reveals her real name), is denied the comfort of a family, finds education to be a frustrating journey through various hostile worlds and finally becomes that most solitary of creatures, a writer. The time is the early '60s. Anellia is the last child of Ida and Eric. After Ida's death (for which Anellia is blamed by her three brothers), Eric leaves his daughter to be raised by his cold German Lutheran parents in the upstate New York town of Strykersville. Anellia wins a scholarship to Syracuse University around 1960. She becomes for a period a Kappa Gamma Pi. The conventionally girlish Kappas are a decidedly different breed from Anellia: she is intellectual, shy, careless of her looks and hygiene, poor. Eventually the Kappas and Anellia come to a violent parting of the ways. Next, Anellia has a depressingly anhedonic affair with a black philosophy graduate student, Vernor Matheius. Vernor is trying to hold himself aloof from the civil rights struggle making the evening news, yet necessarily becomes drawn in. In the final section, Anellia, living in Vermont and working on her first book, goes to Utah to be with her father on his deathbed. Oates's fans will be pleased by the usual care with which she goes about constructing the psychology of Anellia and Vernor, but may find Anellia too narrow and stifling a spirit, limiting the larger gestures and bravura flashes of gothicism at which Oates excels.

September 15, 2002
Oates's prose is nothing if not consistent, offering a steady ebb and flow of emotion vs. action in any given situation. With that said, her newest effort, written on the heels of her first YA book (Big Mouth & Ugly Girl), feels a bit formulaic. The story is about a nameless girl, pathetic and greasy, who has obsessive tendencies, especially when it comes to interacting with other people. For the first 100 or so pages, Oates does nothing but characterization, building the back story of this girl so that her actions in the following sections make sense. A noble goal yet also an unnecessary one, as instead of fleshing out both plot and characters, her extreme focus on the latter leaves the reader bored. Even the love story between this girl and an African American grad student seems boring, a far cry from the intense sexual energy present in Oates's other works. The author's obsession with both upstate New York in the 1950s and young, pathetic 19 to 20 year olds is getting repetitive. Not an essential purchase, although there will be a high demand. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/02.]-Rachel Collins, "Library Journal"

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2002
It's the early 1960s, and a nameless young woman grows up as she contends with unrequited love and a figure from her past.

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.