About this title: Based on the family story of one of Oates's own students at the University of Detroit, "Them" chronicles the troubled life of Maureen Wendall, who begins to turn tricks at 16. Beaten by her stepfather, she retreats into catatonia. When she emerges she attends college, seduces a professor, and breaks up his marriage. Meanwhile, her brother Jules ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Fawcett
Date Published: 1970
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Nice soft cover, lightly read, light shelf wear to cover, light creases on spine, light aging, stk #2433q8. 478 p. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Fawcett Books
Date Published: 1969
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Creasing to spine. No Writing. No Highlighting. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. Wonderland Quartet (Hardcover). Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Fawcett
Date Published: 1984
ISBN-13:9780449206928ISBN:0449206920
Description: Acceptable. Overall below average used book. May have highlighting, underlining, notes, price sticker on cover, or be an ex-library book. read more
Description: Acceptable. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
This is a book in which every character, all the time, is confused. At first, I thought maybe Ms Oates was not quite so sympathetic an observer as she thinks she is and that she may just think that her poor characters are poor because they're dumb. But no! The non-poor characters are just as befuddled. I have no idea how they get through their days. These people are constantly surrounded by a world that mystifies them, and they seem unable to remember things like where they were earlier in the day, who they are talking to, or (hilariously) how to park a car (as we see Jules "manage" to park a car a dozen or more times, each time referred to with the verb "manage"). I have no idea how they get through the day. Can they remember to brush their teeth? Do they remember that they HAVE teeth?
This is the kind of book that has passages (my own, invented) like this: "She heard him saying something to her and strained to listen, listening through the hazy shapes she saw surrounding him. 'What were you doing today,' he was asking. 'I don't remember,' she said, dully. 'I don't remember anything.'"
If only a single damn character could remember anything he'd been doing the day before, or could just muster up the energy to grab a strong cup of coffee or a decent nap, we could have cut the whole book down to a short story."
"A southerner exiled in Ann Arbor, I read my first and only Joyce Carol Oates novel during that time and found this book spot on. I really liked it but was happy to finish it and leave the bleakness behind. This may be why I've never returned to the author, whose prolific output I admire."
"The only Oates novel that received critical acclaim. I enjoyed it-contains notable portrayals of working-class characters. It is, ala Oates, very dark . . . ."
"This book is like a nightmare you don't quite want to wake up from. It is so savage, so delirious, so claustrophobic, so full of craziness and bad decisions and desperation that it almost made me feel nuts just reading it. But it's also just really, really good, both as a piece of art and as a piece of life. Oates has this weird way of being so artificial and yet so real, too real. She understands that you have to go around the "realistic" to get to realism, and that's what makes her writing work for me. Anyway, this book is 100& pure mad genius."
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