With Shuddering Fall: A Novel
3.5/5
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About this ebook
The first novel from New York Times-bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates, a thrilling, dark tale of family, revenge, and two souls intertwined by love and violence—now back in print for fans of America’s most prolific storyteller.
Written when Joyce Carol Oates was in her early twenties, and first published in 1964, With Shuddering Fall is her powerful debut novel, the first of five new Oates reprints from Ecco.
Following the turbulent story of two lovers who discover themselves mortal enemies, the author explores the struggle for dominance in erotic relationships that has become a predominant theme in her work, as well as the perils of patriarchal inheritance, and the ripple-effects of emotional loss in adolescence. The result is an unsentimental yet sympathetic rendering of a disastrous love affair in which hatred is nearly as powerful as love, and a yearning for destruction is an abiding and insatiable passion.
Discover what prompted the New York Times to compare this young writer’s debut to Shirley Jackson’s famous short story, “The Lottery.” Readers looking for a place to start in Joyce Carol Oates’s vast catalogue will be intrigued by the sheer narrative force of the young author, and her willingness to anatomize the darkest recesses of humanity in a search for redemption and resolution.
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
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Reviews for With Shuddering Fall
19 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I enjoy reading Joyce Carol Oats (except for We Were the Mulvaneys), so was thrilled to find this book. It is a bit over-written and "brooding"...she obviously became a better writer over time. But, it is still a great read.This is the story of Karen, a teen-aged girl and her lover, Shar, an older man (he's around 30). Theirs is more of an obsession than a traditional love affair, a theme Ms. Oates explores so well in her writing. We watch Karen and Shar with fascination -- sometimes appalled at them, sometimes sympathetic as they seen intent on mutual destruction. Very passionate writing...as we've come to expect from Joyce Carol Oates. She can really tell a story!