Rating: 
Summary: Shiksa shonda
Review: A nice liberal half-Jewish intellectual living in the posh area of Rochester, New York (I didn't think Rochester had a posh area) afflicted with a mysterious illness (sounds like multiple sclerosis but we're told at one point it isn't) takes on an abused delinquent twenty year old dumb blonde from Centralia, Pennsylvania (where the underground fires burn) as his personal assistant.
Since this is Joyce Carol Oates you know before you buy it that you're going to get magnificient, thought-provoking, well-plotted prose. You also know that you're going to meet some bad people,that you will be shown how much evil lurks in the minds of men, that nice guys will finish last, and it's going to be a tad depressing. The trade-off is worth it.
I'd recommend it for a long flight in tourist class, or maybe a visit to Rochester, rather than bed or beach.
Rating:
Summary: The Dangers of Our Unspoken Reality
Review: After September 11, 2001 many authors felt it necessary to respond in some way. But how? Joyce Carol Oates has chosen to write a novel, not about that historical event specifically, but about the nature of hate and evil. She chooses to concentrate this exploration in the intimate environment of a celebrated, reclusive writer named Joshua Seigl. He has reached a point in his life where he realises that he can no longer block the world out and needs human company. Searching for an assistant to help him organize his enormous body of work and attend to the menial chores of his large house, he encounters a drifter who calls herself Alma. Her body is covered in what may be scars, birthmarks or tattoos. Alma uses these mysterious marks on her body to fashion a personality for herself which can confront the uglier aspects of the world that her more sensitive self cannot combat. After hiring her there follows a working relationship in the intimate space of Seigl's house that unearths hidden aspects of both their identities. The unspoken antithesis that exists between them is built through months of a seemingly harmonious working relationship. Yet the hatred that exists between them is brought physically to the forefront by the exaggerated attitudes of Alma's dangerous, anti-Semitic lover Dmitri and Seigl's mentally unbalanced, passionately upper class sister Jet. Inevitably, the central characters own prejudices must come to the forefront where a tacit understanding is formed amidst tragic events. The ultimate question this novel raises is: what place does art have in illuminating the past and dispensing with hatred? The answer is not as simple as it appears because fiction does not deal in truth. One can't help feeling that Oates herself is attempting to work out her own feelings over the matter in a heated argument toward the end of the novel where Joshua defends his writing: "'Alma, I think of myself as writing stories for others. In place of others who are dead, or mute. Who can't speak for themselves.'" This argument for the exhumation of buried events and people is the same that Oates has used in interviews to explain why she has written some novels such as Black Water and Blonde that reinvent historical situations. Alma's rebuttal is that he pretends to know these things, but doesn't actually know. However, one could argue that the point of fictional writing isn't to get at the "truth" but to convey an "idea" and in these "ideas" we discover the reality that has been hidden. The Tattooed Girl isn't a political novel in any obvious allegorical manner. It does, however, haunt your thoughts in the way it illuminates the divisions (economical, social, racial and religious) between people to such a startlingly intense degree. It is an incredibly important book that ought to be read now.
Rating: 
Summary: Subtle and enjoyable
Review: As a rule I tend to avoid books that list their title and then have a colon and the words "A novel" afterwards. If the target readers aren't going to be able to figure out it is a novel without help from the title, I figure that it can't be all that good. I made the rare exception with this book, because I enjoyed "We Were the Mulvaneys" by Oates and this looked like it might be decent. The central characters in the book are Joshua Siegel and Alma Busch, the tattooed girl from the title. Joshua is a well educated, famous writer and is an heir to millions. He is reclusive and somewhat absent-minded, but is well liked in the community. Alma Busch is from a lower class background and has been severely abused by the men in her life. The crude tattoos that cover her body are the result of an abusive incident somewhere in her past that is never quite detailed. The plot is fairly straightforward. Joshua Siegel hires the tattooed girl as his personal assistant, and becomes increasingly dependent upon her due to a debilitating neurological disorder. Alma secretly despises her employer, steals small items from his house and puts things in his food. Eventually, they grow closer to one another. The tattooed girl and Joshua live in the same house but inhabit two different worlds. Both are ignorant of each other's lives. Joshua thinks that the tattoos are birthmarks, and hasn't the slightest comprehension of the tattooed girl's history or her private life. On the other hand, the tattooed girl is only semi-literate and has been taught a vicious and ignorant anti-semitism by her boyfriend. Although Joshua is very attracted to the tattooed girl, differences in class and background make it impossible for him to contemplate a relationship with her. On the hand, Alma sees the abusive manner in which others treat her as their way of recognizing her. For her, Joshua's absentminded kindness is a form of weakness, and a sign of how he views her as less than a person. Both characters are prone to act without really understanding why they act. For a brief period, Joshua's neurological disorder goes into remission and he enters a manic, euphoric state. The remission ends, and after a bad visit with his doctor, he tells the tattooed girl that he is disgusted with her chewing gum, not recognizing that he is venting because of his frustation over his physical state. One evening, Alma crushes a glass and puts it in the casserole she is serving. Then she spills it on Joshua and afterwards eats part of it herself. "The Tattooed Girl" contains a subtle discourse on the holocaust. Joshua is famous for a book he wrote on the concentration camps, and the tattoos on his employee are linked to the numbers stitched into the skin of the victims of Auschwitz and Dachau. Joshua may be the child of a concentration camp survivor, but the book suggests that the tattooed girl is more the proper heir to that legacy. I really enjoyed this book. The ending is a little weak and both characters are a bit stereotyped, but this is the first work by Oates that I have been able to finish since "We Were the Mulvaneys".
Rating: 
Summary: tattooed girl
Review: Awful awful book...yes it is beautifully written as all of her books are, but do we really need to meet all these horrible characters, with dreadful lives and mean streaks? It might be reality but at least we could have been given one character to empathize with...for me there was not a single one... Read her other books, not this one.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Probe Into the Emotions of Hatred
Review: First off, a brief summary of the story: A wealthy heir/author who is rather eccentric decides that he needs an assistant. The author hires a young woman who has been abused and has almost no self-esteem. Her newest boyfriend is a white supremacist who often waits on the eccentric author at a local cafe. He hates the author who found fame by writing about the Holocaust. He then spreads his hatred to his new lover, who is the author's assistant. I'll avoid mentioning the rest of the plot and will not reveal the quirky ending. The true appeal of this story is the way Oates' enters the mind of her two main characters. The author and his assistant end up sharing a significant portion of their lives together and never connect. Along the way, their relationship is marred by the stain of religious hatred. The hatred is more subtle than the usual anti-Semetic, white supremacist vitriol. Most interestingly, it is captured by Ms. Oates in her examination of their thoughts and emotions. Some people have criticized Oates for this in the past which seems ludricous because she's written this way for years. You'll get your plot eventually and the story will move on, but only until you experience every change in emotion and confusing thought that comes to the mind of each major character. At times it's unsettling but that's the nature of this story. In the end, you are likely to be somewhat disturbed by the story and the ending, but if it has made you think about certain truths of life, than it was worth your time to read it.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Probe Into the Emotions of Hatred
Review: First off, a brief summary of the story: A wealthy heir/author who is rather eccentric decides that he needs an assistant. The author hires a young woman who has been abused and has almost no self-esteem. Her newest boyfriend is a white supremacist who often waits on the eccentric author at a local cafe. He hates the author who found fame by writing about the Holocaust. He then spreads his hatred to his new lover, who is the author's assistant. I'll avoid mentioning the rest of the plot and will not reveal the quirky ending. The true appeal of this story is the way Oates' enters the mind of her two main characters. The author and his assistant end up sharing a significant portion of their lives together and never connect. Along the way, their relationship is marred by the stain of religious hatred. The hatred is more subtle than the usual anti-Semetic, white supremacist vitriol. Most interestingly, it is captured by Ms. Oates in her examination of their thoughts and emotions. Some people have criticized Oates for this in the past which seems ludricous because she's written this way for years. You'll get your plot eventually and the story will move on, but only until you experience every change in emotion and confusing thought that comes to the mind of each major character. At times it's unsettling but that's the nature of this story. In the end, you are likely to be somewhat disturbed by the story and the ending, but if it has made you think about certain truths of life, than it was worth your time to read it.
Rating:
Summary: "May you never let anyone give you a reason to hate"
Review: I began reading this book after purchasing it earlier in the week at a local Jewish book fair to finish it last night after retreating to my closet following the Sabbath meal to be engrossed in the book for hours. I couldn't put it down. I finally went to sleep at about two in the morning.
Through the relationship between the young, though unhealthy, author Jacob Seigl and his assistant Alma, Joyce Carol Oates explores the seeds, effects, and overcoming of hatred. Seigl, the son of a Jewish father and the grandson of Holocaust victims, is most well known for his fictional account based upon his father's family's experiences, The Shadows. Due to declining health and the inability to manage his work on his own, he sets out to hire an assistant. After rejecting countless highly educated and competent applicants with impeccable backgrounds in English, literature, languages, and writing, he decides upon a woman he meets in a bookstore, the non-educated quiet Alma, "the tattooed girl", a young woman who has suffered great evils perpetuated upon her. Little does Seigl know that this young woman is vehemently anti-Semitic, in thanks to her upbringing and her lover Dmitri. Alma hates him passionately and without compromise, notwithstanding that no man or employer has ever treated her with such kindness, respect, and dignity as Seigl has.
I'm sorry to say, I was deeply disappointed by the story's tragic ending, a totally unexpected --and unnecessary-- event which occurs within the last three pages. But while novels are fictional accounts of events which never transpired, they can (the good ones at least) possess human truths that are real and eternal. The Tattooed Girl is such a book. It made me think of a note one of my professors gave me, which read in part, "May you never let anyone give you a reason to hate," with a quote from Victor Frankl, "The salvation of man is love and through love." (Of course, hatred can serve an important function when it comes to hating evil in order to abolish it, provided there is no other way.)
Although I was upset with the ending, I do recommend this disturbing and important book.
Rating:
Summary: Dark, thought provoking, beautiful... Classic Oates!
Review: I have read all of Joyce Carol Oates's short-story collections and hadn't given one of her novels a whirl until now. The Tattooed Girl confirms my belief that Oates is one of the best writers of our time. The Tattooed Girl tells the story of a late-thirties Jewish writer and the strange girl he hires to be his assistant. He is taken by her gaunt, heavily tattooed appearance and lack of self-esteem. As he writes a historical novel based on his grandparents' struggles during the Holocaust, he is unaware of the anti-Semitic things that occur right from under his nose, things that are brought on by his assistant's racist boyfriend. There are various disturbing twists throughout the novel.
I couldn't put this book down. The writing is so beautiful and full of prose that it kept me turning the pages. The story is something I'd come to expect from Oates. Some of the dark and disarming passages would make excellent book discussions. This isn't just a story about hate, it is also a story centered on the layers of the characters' personalities and the inner workings of the soul. Oates delves once again on domestic abuse here, but she always adds a whole unique perspective to the aforementioned subject matter. I love how the author compared the things that go on in Seigl's novel with the things that occur to him in the real world. Some of those scenes moved me. Once again, Joyce Carol Oates has illustrated the reason why I love her writing so much. She is a true and rare talent and I look forward to reading all of her novels.
Rating:
Summary: big ideas
Review: I think unfortunately...that this book had a great premise, but failed to deliver a cohesively written work. Too many large words filled space which was unneccessary and character plots were ridiculous. the book ended where it may have begun....very disappointing
Rating:
Summary: Oates and Roth
Review: I've seen reviews which suggest the "hero" of Oates novel, which is dedicated to Philip Roth, is based on PR himself. I was reminded of Roth's novel The Human Stain. These two books seemed to me a sort of Point Counterpoint. Has anyone else seen a connection? [. . .]
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