Rating: 
Summary: not her best
Review: As a fan of all things Joyce Carol Oates I was pretty dissapointed. I've read at least 75% of her books and this was the first time I didn't complete one. I put this book down because it was so repetitive and it didn't really go anywhere. The basic story is outline in the first couple pages and then slowly built up over the next hundred, but the charators never become real. I think that the idea behind the narrative was good. The story is told through the point of view of John Reddy Hart's classmates much like the Virgin Suicides, but if you're looking for a good Joyce Carol Oats read pick up Because its Bitter and Because its my Heart, or Invisible People if you can find it.
Rating:
Summary: A Real Stinker by Joyce Carol Oates
Review: First of all, let me say that I have loved everything I've everread by Joyce Carol Oates -- until now. John Reddy Hart... If I everhear that name again I think I'm going to... take a nap, which is whattrying to read this snoozer will make you want to do. I found myselflooking ahead time and time again to see how many more pages thechapter would last. "I'll finish this chapter before I put itdown," I'd promise myself. Seldom did I keep that promise,though. Save your money and read a cereal box instead. It's a lotmore engaging than this loaf of a book. How in the world did theyfind 3 pages of positive quotes from reviewers to include in theopening pages? I wish I still had the [money] I plunked down for thiswaste of paper.
Rating: 
Summary: This is good stuff
Review: I have the distinct advantage of not having read any other Oates works, and so Broke Heart Blues writes on a tabula rosa. I thought it allegorical, not "a stretch" like others. I found it wholly engaging, not "tedious" as some did. And far from trivial, I found it profound.The book parlays the contrast between female adolescent male hero-worship and middle-aged female angst into a wonderfully insightful and moving story. Oates evokes both the harmony and the discord of each of these life stages; one hears the cacaphony of emotions as they play out in each. She paints the tragedy (as well as the inevitability) of the co-existence of adult yearnings in teenagers and adolescent yearnings in adults. The mix is equally problematic, and often disasterous, for the members of each group. While devoting few words to sex per se, the book is mostly concerned with about precisely that, and its continuing power over the emotions, and often the actions, of young girls and boys, middle-aged parents, and even children and old men. Trouble is greatest when a character acts on chronologically out-of-synch emotions. At the center is the child-adult Heart, who grows into the adult-child Heart, and is thus is nearly always out of synch. He serves (literally and figuritively) as the lightening rod for the women characters' emotional and physical cravings in both adsolence and adulthood. He also functions as the focal point for the fanatsies (including the heterosexual ones) of the male characters. They lust after their female peers vicariously, deeply envious of their dream girls' devotion to the mythology of Heart. This hero-worship by both sexes is beautifully and evocatively symbolized by a certain tatoo on a main character's body, and by her boyfriend's public self-prostration in adoration of it. This book is good stuff, and shouldn't be missed by any thinking person in their forties or early fifties with even a dim remembrance of themselves in high school or college.
Rating:
Summary: A moving and epic novel about high school
Review: I read quite a few negative reviews about this book before buying, but I always enjoy JCO's books so I took a chance. And I wasn't disappointed. Broke Heart Blues is a sweeping, nostalgic and bittersweet look back at high school through the minds of an elite class of rich kids in a suburb of Buffalo. Willowsville is a town populated by the wealthy and finds itself turned upside down when John Reddy Heart and his glamorous mother, grandfather and younger siblings arrive. Since the moment he drives in town sitting on three Las Vegas phone books at 11 years old, this town will never be the same. There are legends, rumours, half-truths abounding about this kid until he is arrested for the murder of a well-known man in his mother's bedroom and then the John Reddy Heart mania truly begins. Each of them finds a little something different in John Reddy and this is an obsession that lasted throughout their adulthood as well. The first part of the book deals with the rumours and people's perceptions of the boy through various eyes. Its a lengthy and detailed narration using different voices that all worshipped him. The second part is about the real John Reddy Heart, a nice, quiet kid who had trouble expressing himself which gave rise to his mystery. It tells of his difficult life and shows just how wrong people can be about someone else. The real boy was far different than the kid idolized in town. He was really a shy kid trying to make sense of his out of control life and attempting to keep his family together. It also goes into his adulthood and the kind of man he became. The third deals with the thirtieth reunion and this is a bittersweet, funny yet very sad account of rich suburbanites who never left high school. It almost makes you sad for the popular crowd because they never left that mindset behind in this book. The end of this is tragic. These middle-aged kids at heart still trying to make sense of life throughout various disasters from heart attacks, cancer, divorce and children. At the end, you realize that no matter how much money you have or how old you are, there is a part of you that will forever remain in high school. This was one of the best parts of the book and sad too. This one is very detailed and not for everyone but I loved it. Its a great read and one that stays with you long after its finished. One of my favorite JCO books.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Bother
Review: I really tried to like this book, but it was a chore to read and left me cold. If you have trouble sleeping at night this is a sure cure !
Rating: 
Summary: A Distortion of an Affluent High School Memory
Review: I've enjoyed all of the books that I've read by author Joyce Carol Oates, except this one. She has portrayed the angst of adolescence so beautifully in previous novels. What happened? Oates introduces the reader to fascinating people: mysterious John Reddy Heart, his luminescent mother and eccentric grandfather, but fails to flesh-out the characters, to establish deep family ties. Curiously, Heart's little brother becomes a computer industry tycoon and his pathetic little sister becomes a "famous" nun. If they had grown up to be less prominent citizens would that have diminished the plot? The sensuality of being "young and restless" was ever-present as was the loss of that vitality 30 years later at the high-school reunion. In spite of the fact that the story was episodic, disjointed, I couldn't help but wonder what was the allure of John Reddy Heart (more saint than sinner). Alas, if only the story had been told from the "heart."
Rating: 
Summary: more good oates!
Review: In "Broke Heart Blues" Joyce Carol Oates once again proves she is one of the great stylists of American literature. Like "Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang" this novel is a meditation on american life at a specific time. The novel takes us through the 1950's to the present (though years are never named), focusing on a group of upper-middleclass suburbanites as they are reflected through their obsession with the novel's anti-hero, Johnny Reddy Heart. Through the eyes of the townspeople who surround him, Heart seems to be a James Dean-like rebel. Oates uses this set up to reveal the shortcomings of America's intoxication and obsession with fame. It works; it is not so much for the story of Heart that we read the first half of the novel, but for the fasinating portrait of contemporary american life revealed as we swim through the obsessions of the various teenagers, housewives, teachers and businessmen who construct what becomes the myth of Johnny Reddy Heart. The second half of the novel reveals the objective (dare I say "true"? in Oates' post-modern world true is a risky word) story of John Heart after his involvement in a fame and myth-making murder trial. We slowly find out what happened--as opposed to the whimsical, subjective impressions given in the first part of the novel. Gaps are filled in, and filled in in marvelous, fluid, at times perfect prose. This is a great read. It delivers almost everything Oates is know for at one point or another--compelling narrative, stylistic grace, lurid violence, sex, strong themes and brutal honesty. This is not the best Oates, but to say a book is not the best Oates is a compliment most writers would kill for. Highly recommended for all Oates fans and for the general reader of both "serious" and "popular" contemporary fiction.
Rating:
Summary: A more licentious 90210
Review: In a space of more than 300 pages, Oates managed to write a rather long-winded drama about a clutch of privileged high school students. The tedium of the flash forwards and backs along with the confusing gender change of the first person narrative does little to further the continuity of the unbelievable plot. While the book probes the mind of a supposed criminal while also addressing class antagonism in modern American, particularly among "blue-blood" families and their less noble neighbors, the dynamics of the modern dysfunctional family, and the tedium of teenage life, as evidenced by the obsession of the high school girls with John Reddy, I would not class it amongst her better works. This book clearly falls into the category of slow reading for devoted fans.
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Summary: We Know It's Williamsville
Review: Joyce Carol Oates creates a wonderful mix of characters in her story that takes place in Williamsville, N.Y. during the 60's. She calls the town Willowsville but keeps the other local names including Millersport Hwy. where I grew up. I found it easy to relate to the high school scene she describes. Maybe because I went to Williamsville High School during the 60's, but I think anyone who went to an affluent suburban high school will recognize the teenagers Oates describes. I kept wondering which is her character. A James Dean character, John Reddy Heart, comes to town and is the immediate and ongoing focus of much gossip and yearning from a distance. After reading the first part of the novel that primarily covers the girls' impressions of John Reddy Heart, it was interesting to switch to his perspective after he has left town. The novel ends with the 30th class reunion and it was a clever way to end the story. Oates creates fascinating characters. Maybe she didn't have to make them up.
Rating:
Summary: A Trip Through Their Minds
Review: When I was reading languages at college, I read lots of JCO. I liked her books then and I liked Broken Heart Blues. She's grown more accomplished, less eerily interesting but in a way has reached beyond any plateau at which her talents might have flagged. Before, she was a magic princess spinning tales, now she's a touchstone of American fiction. Really, I realized that I had missed her when I began reading Broken Heart Blues. Clearly, JCO shall be the inheritor of Gore Vidal's legacy. But there are other echoes in BHB. Marquez and Peter Carey to name but the two whose voices I most distinctly detected as they bounced around inside JCO's dream room. There are two errors in the paperback edition (one on p. 135, where the word 'us' is missing; the other is 'he's' instead of the correct 'he'd' but the page number wasn't noted). Next, I'm reading Iris Murdoch's 'Unicorn' which I purchased in second-hand. Before JCO, I read a novel by Margaret Drabble that I forgot the title of. C'mon Amazon! Let's get more 2nd-hand books circulating!
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