First Love

Rating:
Summary: All Eyes Blink, all memory erased. . .
Review: I bought this book for a friend, and after she read it--I stole it for a few days. Very enjoyable. The religious symbols and allusions are amazingly disturbing, yet allows one to see how a child--perhaps even an adult--could be confused with religion and love, together. It's a definite must-read. It's first and second-person point of view play a role in the novel's eeriness. A dark, twisted, mind-boggling novel. Snakes, swamp, sexual abuse and how "easy" one can suppress bad memories--all written so beautiful it's disturbing, yet enjoyable.

Rating:
Summary: Finely crafted story of terror, full of sybolism
Review: I just wrote a paper on this story for a literature class, so my brain is full of this book right now.

There are a few angles from which to look at this story. It is indeed a story of horrifying abuse, but it also says a lot about religion. The seminary student is the most twisted character in the book, symbolized by a black snake....he represents Satan. If you enjoy reading a story that leaves you with things to think about, this is a good one. No words are wasted; everything means something, whether it is to the story or the underlying symbolic messages.

Truly it is an easy book to get through. It is short and easy to understand. It is interesting to see Josie deal with her abuse in her own way and eventually excersise the power to stop it. Nothing that happens is predictable and the attachment Josie has for Jared is actually a very realistic aspect of abuse. I could write a better review but I have been writing too much about this book lately...just read it if you enjoy literature at its finest. It is a rather dark story but that is the way life is, isn't it?

Rating:
Summary: painful
Review: In this novella, JCO, has added yet another masterpiece to her already voluminous collection. In a blue/middle collar environment, innocence is lost by a man who, in the future, would become a man of the cloth. It is a story that mirrors so much of what is visible in the news today of people who think that they are above the law. JCO shows the irony of the molester who is studying to be holy and virtuous in the eyes of God, but acts and committs in the name of unthinkable, selfish evil, which seems representative of much of humanity. A gritty, raw painfully truthful book!

Rating:
Summary: Love can be a bitter cruelty of life
Review: Life is cruel. Loneliness adds to such cruelty, and makes one a victim of it. This is the story of the bewildered 11-year-old Josie whose life is shattered one summer, and in response becomes the victim of other lonely people.

"Fear is good, fear is normal. Fear will save your life." Oates begins her story with this warning on the first page, and ends with it just four paragraphs from the end. It is the story of a family that fell apart, and the harm that falls upon the innocent.

The background is that Josie's mother left her husband and moved to another state, where her mother was soon engrossed in a frantic hunt to escape loneliness. She forgot about Josie, alone and isolated and lonely in a new town with no friends, and with the healthy curiosity of a young girl. A 25-year-old divinity student slips into her life and offers the attention to fill her loneliness, yet he has his own bitter demons.

It is a story of sadism and domination, with Josie falling completely under the spell of the 25-year-old Jared. He strips all of her clothes off, inflicts cuts on her breasts, dominates and degrades her with taunts of "filthy little -- filthy, filth -- girl," ties her down with cloth strips to dominate her and leaves her "in terror, animal terror, beads of sweat breaking out like flame on your body."

She accepts such pain because Josie wants, "Love. Love. Love Jared, don't hurt me." Everyone wants to be wanted, and if this is the only "wanting" that Josie can find, she'll take it. Her mother is emotionally absent, she's bullied at her new school, and that is why Josie turns to any substitute who gives her the attention she craves.

Her mother finally defines the problem as her own inability to love anyone, ". . . . . . . I've been so unhappy, I've been so undefined. Every man I've ever wanted, when I have him I cease to want him -- it's a curse." Some people are like that. Give them love, and their own sense of inadequacy drives them to hurt others who offer the most.

Oates presents the story as a snapshot of life; no moral judgments, no great lessons, no redemption. It's simply a slice of life. Most stories have a "plot," but we don't think of finely crafted photographs as having "a plot." It's often said a picture is worth a thousand words; in this case, Oates turns a few thousand words in a powerful picture.

If you want answers for the cruelties of life, it's not here. If you enjoy a superb portrait of a gripping slice of life, this is a wonderful book.

Rating:
Summary: Love can be a bitter cruelty of life
Review: Life is cruel. Loneliness adds to such cruelty, and makes one a victim of it. This is the story of the bewildered 11-year-old Josie whose life is shattered one summer, and in response becomes the victim of other lonely people.

"Fear is good, fear is normal. Fear will save your life." Oates begins her story with this warning on the first page, and ends with it just four paragraphs from the end. It is the story of a family that fell apart, and the harm that falls upon the innocent.

The background is that Josie's mother left her husband and moved to another state, where her mother was soon engrossed in a frantic hunt to escape loneliness. She forgot about Josie, alone and isolated and lonely in a new town with no friends, and with the healthy curiosity of a young girl. A 25-year-old divinity student slips into her life and offers the attention to fill her loneliness, yet he has his own bitter demons.

It is a story of sadism and domination, with Josie falling completely under the spell of the 25-year-old Jared. He strips all of her clothes off, inflicts cuts on her breasts, dominates and degrades her with taunts of "filthy little -- filthy, filth -- girl," ties her down with cloth strips to dominate her and leaves her "in terror, animal terror, beads of sweat breaking out like flame on your body."

She accepts such pain because Josie wants, "Love. Love. Love Jared, don't hurt me." Everyone wants to be wanted, and if this is the only "wanting" that Josie can find, she'll take it. Her mother is emotionally absent, she's bullied at her new school, and that is why Josie turns to any substitute who gives her the attention she craves.

Her mother finally defines the problem as her own inability to love anyone, ". . . . . . . I've been so unhappy, I've been so undefined. Every man I've ever wanted, when I have him I cease to want him -- it's a curse." Some people are like that. Give them love, and their own sense of inadequacy drives them to hurt others who offer the most.

Oates presents the story as a snapshot of life; no moral judgments, no great lessons, no redemption. It's simply a slice of life. Most stories have a "plot," but we don't think of finely crafted photographs as having "a plot." It's often said a picture is worth a thousand words; in this case, Oates turns a few thousand words in a powerful picture.

If you want answers for the cruelties of life, it's not here. If you enjoy a superb portrait of a gripping slice of life, this is a wonderful book.

Rating:
Summary: All Eyes Blink, all memory erased. . .
Review: This is a short book. You can read it in a single sitting. But I warn you--it will get you. It is a horrifying story. Oates is good at this stuff so beware--prepare yourself to ask: Why did I read that and put myself through such an experience? Real horror has little to do with monsters and everything to do with what resides in our own hearts and in the way our society molds us, and Ms. Oates knows how to make us squirm as she lays it all out.

Rating:
Summary: If you want to terrorize yourself here's a book to do it
Review: This is a short book. You can read it in a single sitting. But I warn you--it will get you. It is a horrifying story. Oates is good at this stuff so beware--prepare yourself to ask: Why did I read that and put myself through such an experience? Real horror has little to do with monsters and everything to do with what resides in our own hearts and in the way our society molds us, and Ms. Oates knows how to make us squirm as she lays it all out.