Rating: 
Summary: Great Oates
Review: As I've said after reading one of her other books, it is a real travesty that Joyce Carol Oates, our most prolific serious contemporary author, has yet to be awarded a Nobel Prize in literature. Her understanding of human nature is unsurpassed. She appears to have a special interest in relationships between Caucasian women and African American men, as this is her third novel that takes up the subject (the others being, "Because It is Bitter ands Because it is My Heart"; and "I Lock the Door Upon Myself"). It is my opinion that this is the relationship frought with the most danger, the most potential negative baggage of any relationships among Americans (indeed, fear of it forms the entire basis of this nation's racial problem). Perhaps Oates agrees. I wonder if this character is, in some ways, modeled off of her, since she did also attend Syracuse University and was an honor graduate. Perhaps one day soon the literary poohbahs will rectify the manner in which they have overlooked this very important author in bestowing literature's highest honor. I certainly hope so.
Rating: 
Summary: terrible book from a terrible author
Review: I have read in a long time. Maybe I just don't get it but this book I couldn't get into. Too many quotes and philosophy. I destested the main character the WHOLE time. Def a book to not recommend. A true disappointment.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not the best
Review: I'll admit, that when I first read this book, the first of Oates that I read, I was immediately drawn into the main character, and her neurotic world. After reading a few more of Oates' novels, I can see why it is not one of her major works. Therefore, I give this novel 5 stars for believable and interesting characterization, but 3 stars for accessibility and plot relevance, averaging 4 stars. Although this is good, I would recommend reading, "Foxfire," also by Oates, instead.
Rating:
Summary: Arriving Where She Needs To Be
Review: I'll Take You There is a story divided into three sections concerning crucial stages of a girl's development and narrated in the first person by the girl, Anellia, herself. This is the same structure Joyce Carol Oates uses in her 1986 novel Marya: A Life though the stories of the two novels differ in some crucial elements. The first section, The Penitent, is primarily concerned with Anellia's torturous time spent in a sorority called Kappa Gamma Pi and her relationship with the foreboding and ultimately tragic English headmistress Mrs. Agnes Thayer. Her entrance into the sorority sparked by a timid desire to gain acceptance from her peers, gradually reveals the shallow nature of the sisters and the vacuous symbols of their elite collective. The second section, The Negro Lover, explores Anellia's complex relationship with brilliant and troubled Vernor Matheius. Her obsession with the philosophy student blooms into a tumultuous relationship based on passion that is stirred by feelings of alienation. Each of them are fiercely intelligent and trapped by a societal definition based on the exterior that they cannot escape. But unlike Vernor, Anellia embraces this identity distinction, her Jewish heritage, in order to exile herself from the repugnant normality she has discovered. The third and slightest section, The Way Out, finds Anellia extracted from the developmental struggle of university and unexpectedly driven to a reunion with her estranged father. As he is slowly dying, she develops a relationship with his caregiver and fiancee Hildie. The feelings of opportunities lost and emotions wasted are gradually excavated over their time together as they come to terms with losing a man who will always remain an aloof mystery.This novel is brewing with complex ideas all delicately arranged around an intricate plot. The sections of the novel could stand quite independently from each other. But together they draw an intriguing picture of Anellia's development and her discovery of the woman she wants to become. The frame she has set around her life is designed to mollify her qualms with existence but it is also a trap that limits the freedom of her individuality. The language she composes to liberate herself is also an unbearable burden. This is revealed in the telling line: "In fear I seemed to be plucking at, with childish fingers, a consolation of philosophy." Anellia's relationship with Vernor is akin to an artist gazing upon her muse, drawing inspiration and guidance to create an artwork, an identity for herself. Unhesitating in her confrontation of the troubles of racial relations as Oates always is, the denial of the language which defines Vernor's color provokes the collapse of any true connection between them. This, paired with Vernor's own inability to divert from the path he has limited himself to, makes their coupling wildly antagonistic and dangerous. It is significant that Oates has dedicated this novel to Gloria Vanderbilt, the visual artist, on who's work Oates has written: "It may be that Dream Boxes represent an elliptical, subversive reclaiming of identity by one who has, unlike most of us, been over-defined - 'over-determined' in psychoanalytical terms-by the exterior world." Anellia is also unique and this confession to an unknown companion is her psychological triptych. Engagingly emotional and philosophical, I'll Take You There is a deep study of a difficult climb to adulthood. Its artful composition produces a compelling novel. It is a skillful accomplishment that can be enjoyed by both the passionate thinking and the romantic reader.
Rating:
Summary: STRANGE, YET CAPTIVATING
Review: I'LL TAKE YOU THERE was my first exposure to Joyce Carol Oates so I had no idea what to expect when I initially opened the front cover. At first glance the unnamed protagonist struck a nerve with me. She seemed so...strange and bizarre. But as the plot unfolded I became more entranced by her and began to comprehend her motives and actions. She was no longer strange but indeed a real and complex human being. Lacking any type of supporting family network she ventures through life trying to make emotional connections with others that she never experienced before. Set in upstate New York in the early 1960's the protagonist tries her best to integrate into Syracuse University social life. Unfortunately the harder she tries the more isolated she becomes. Her sorority sisters and classmates view her as a loser and social outcast. Her self-esteem suffers. Taking refuge in her studies she becomes enthralled by philosophical inquires. While in class one day she becomes acquainted with an advanced graduate student who shares her passion for philosophy. Social mores dictate that they should not become friends, let alone lovers, since she is white and he is black. Determined that she has enough love for both of them she begins to follow him around campus and stand outside of his apartment building. In the midst of the Civil Rights movement both characters face the harsh realities of race relations that are determined to split them apart. I'LL TAKE YOU THERE is a captivating novel that seeps into one's subconscious even while not reading. Oates' unnamed protagonist is unique and captivating. I enjoyed reading this book and I found myself often looking forward to the next time I can pick it up again.
Rating: 
Summary: Not her best
Review: I've read maybe eight or so Joyce Carol Oates novels - but because she's almost scarily prolific, I've still barely made a dent in her oeuvre (where does she find the time to sleep?). This seems to me somewhat less inspired and less ambitious than some of her other novels, but she is such a skilled, experienced storyteller that you get the feeling she can reel off a relatively absorbing piece of fiction in a few lazy afternoons. "I'll Take You There" is a tightly circumscribed, claustraphobic novel, exploring the psychological journey - I really hate that empty blurb-ish phrase, but it's applicable here - of a gifted, vaguely disturbed young woman in the 1950s. The nameless narrator who occasionally goes by the name of "Anellia" is an deeply idiosyncratic yet sympathetic creation. In the hands of a lesser writer, much of her painful passage to womanhood could be a little cliche, but Oates is expert at walking the tight-rope between the odd and the ordinary, the familiar and the alien; we feel like we've met Oates' characters before, and yet we also know we haven't. As always with Oates, I find she is a brilliant but uneven stylist. Most of her books - the flawless "Foxfire" being the exception - have some long lifeless sections and some unbearably over-written passages, as well as stretches of truly exhilerating prose. ("Blonde" embodies this unevenness.) Like most readers, I don't read in order to hunt for jewelled phrases, but when you've struck upon one of Oates' truly hypnotic passages, you can't help but feel a little in awe, a little breathless - to borrow another blurby phrase - and you're momentarily filled with the conviction that she's a genius. "I'll Take You There" has such passages, and it's worth reading the whole book just to savour the fascinating middle section, in which Anellia enters into a bleak and consuming relationship with a black philosophy student who turns out to be far more damaged than she is. The first and last sections - in which Anellia enters a sorority and seeks to mend her relationship with her father - are good but never quite as riveting. While, as a coming of age novel, it seems natural that "I'll Take You There" has a limited trajectory, I can't help but feel that Oates has confined herself here and limited the extent of her own powers to some degree. As with so many of her novels, there's a great novel buried in here somewhere, but instead, she's merely written another good one. As always, her brilliance seems somehow dispersed across her books rather than concentrated in a single great novel. That said, what Oates must produce on a lazy afternoon is worth any number of other works by most of her contemporaries.
Rating:
Summary: Pure Oates
Review: This book is 100% pure Joyce Carol Oates. It features the Oatesian neurotic female lead who seems to flit aimlessly through life, finding trouble along the way due to her own ambivalent nature. This one reads swiftly. It isn't packed with long, slow-moving sentences or excess drama. It's split into three tight sections that could almost be read independently as novellas. Oates does it again!
Rating:
Summary: Of Love and Truth
Review: This is a book about love: The narrator tells us about her attempts to belong. She wants to belong to the sorority, be one of those smooth, lovable girls - but all too soon she realizes that this cannot be: she's different. Maybe this feeling of being different from the "normal" people around her attracts her to the graduate student Vernor, although she falls in love with his clever voice before she sees his African American face. Vernor hates himself; he is drawn to philosophy because it seems to be a spiritual realm untainted with self; so it is no wonder that he cannot accept the narrator's love. The narrator's family seems to be devoid of love. Her mother died shortly after the narrator was born, who finds herself accused of being the one to blame for her mother's death. Her father, brothers, grandparents are taciturn, elusive strangers; and yet... This powerful novel shows how you create yourself, trying to be who you want to be; at the same time it proves that there are basics - roots? - from which you cannot escape. Oates is a master at evoking physical and spiritual reality. The reader can smell the nightmare of the sorority house; the physical encounters with Vernor are so shocking because they are so real.
Maybe some readers' judgments are clouded by their expectations which come from reading other novels by Joyce Carol Oates. This is the first novel by her I have read, and I am deeply impressed by her mastery of the English language, by the beautiful rhythms and vivd descriptions which reminded me of Woolf and Mansfield.
Rating:
Summary: Taking Us There
Review: This is a most powerful novel about the angst and turmoil of the embroiled sixties and its fast-fading mores. The first person narrator attends Syracuse on an academic scholarship. She is without parents, poor, lonely, and searching. She is drawn desperately to a black philosophy student and follows him. He resists, then becomes her callous lover. Their relatiohship matches the era in its confused, dirty rawness. He has major problems with her whiteness and with his own ancestry because his ancestors were slave traders. Anellia invents an identity that she thinks Vernor will like - none of it real, hence doomed. She creates her own closure by traveling to be with her dying father many years after she thought him dead and brings his body home to be buried next to her long-dead mother in the church cemetery where no one in her family attended church. She says some day she may take us there. She already has.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I have ever read!
Review: This is the first book I have read of Joyce Carol Oates. Now, I want to read all of her books. Her language is so... beautiful. If you are a reader that likes "deep" books, you should definitely read this one. The story takes place in a University in upstate New York during the 60s. The narrator of the book is an 18-year-old girl, whose real name you never know through out the book, though she likes to call herself "Anellia" sometimes . There's three parts to the book. The first part is when she joins a sorority, full of rich, popular, pretty girls. But "Anellia" is poor and geeky, who looks like a 13-year-old even though she is 18. The second part of the book is when she falls in love with a black philosophy student, who is hesitant at first to let "Anellia", who is white, know and love him. The third part of the book, which I think is the best part of the book, is when she discovers that someone who she thought was dead is not. I loved this book. I think Joyce Carol Oates is gonna be my second favorite author.{John O'hara is my 1st.} It is great for adults, and teenagers who like adult books.{I am a teenager} It is the kind of book that you'll think about for a while after you finish reading it. But if you are a person who likes "trashy" books with lots of sex scenes and stuff, look somewhere else.
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