Synopses & Reviews
Joyce Carol Oates returns with a dark, romantic, and captivating tale, set in the Great Lakes region of upstate New York—the territory of her remarkably successful New York Times bestseller The Gravedigger's Daughter.
Set in the mythical small city of Sparta, New York, this searing, vividly rendered exploration of the mysterious conjunction of erotic romance and tragic violence in late-twentieth-century America returns to the emotional and geographical terrain of acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates's previous bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and The Gravedigger's Daughter.
When a young wife and mother named Zoe Kruller is found brutally murdered, the Sparta police target two primary suspects, her estranged husband, Delray Kruller, and her longtime lover, Eddy Diehl. In turn, the Krullers' son, Aaron, and Eddy Diehl's daughter, Krista, become obsessed with each other, each believing the other's father is guilty.
Told in halves in the very different voices of Krista and Aaron, Little Bird of Heaven is a classic Oates novel in which the lyricism of intense sexual love is intertwined with the anguish of loss, and tenderness is barely distinguishable from cruelty. By the novel's end, the fated lovers, meeting again as adults, are at last ready to exorcise the ghosts of the past and come to terms with their legacy of guilt, misplaced love, and redemptive yearning.
Review
“Well-told and ultimately powerful.” The Onion
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“Little Bird of Heaven starts with the urgency of thriller, then turns into something more existential as the years (and pages) go by...This is a tragedy on a classical scale...Oates has written a feminist novel with empathy for men, especially men without power, with no voice besides violence.” New York Times Book Review
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“Quintessential Joyce Carol Oates: an expertly crafted, lovingly detailed character-driven novel of loss and longing. ” Associated Press
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“An absorbing study of lust, trust, and an unsolved murder, Oatess gritty new mystery explores the attraction between the son of the victim and daughter of the accused.” Good Housekeeping
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“Readers are breathlessly along for the ride, never sure if Oates will let [her characters] reach redemption or have them fall prey to the hands of their violent, unforgiving upbringings.” New York Post
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“[This novel]...has an unnerving clarity about the power of sexual desire...it cleaves to the mind like a strong memory, and after youve read it, you may find yourself dreaming about the imaginary town of Sparta, and wondering what the people are doing now.” Chicago Sun-Times
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“In this narcotic, unnerving, brilliantly composed tale of the struggle for control over the bodys archaic urges, and the quest for morality in a catastrophically corrupted world, Oates creates magnetic characters of heightened awareness and staggering valor.” Booklist
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“[This novel] is classic Oates. Its depiction of violence, families falling from grace and social class disparities, as well as its location, recall her 1996 bestseller, WE WERE THE MULVANEYS. Fans of Oates will delight in this offering and newcomers to her work will receive a first-class introduction.” BookPage
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“Neither crime, nor punishment, the ultimate coupling in the novel serves as a triumph and a release on a scale and with the intensity weve come to expect from one of our countrys premier writers.” NPR's All Things Considered
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“A powerful novel...In Sparta she has created a fictional universe to stand beside Faulkners Yoknapatawpha County or Cheevers Shady Hill....Oates [is] our closest contemporary analogue to Hawthorne: lyrical, moral, unforgiving.” Washington Post
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“[This is] the novelist at her brooding best . . . a seamless, satisfying tale of small-town life where...the long-smoldering relationships among the residents can often be like ‘tangled roots, beneath the surface of the earth.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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“Oates 57th novel is a doozie....Its vintage Oates: tragic violence, outsize ambitions, dashed hopes, strained family bonds, manly-men roughing up sassy-yet-submissive women, and, of course, sex-crazed teenagers.” Elle
Synopsis
Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates is a riveting story of love violently lost and found in late 20th century America. In this novel, Oates returns to the Buffalo, New York, region to brilliantly explore the dangerous intersections of romance and eroticism, guilt and obsession, desire and murder.
Little Bird of Heaven, a soaring work by the
New York Times bestselling author and a nominee for the 2009 Man Booker Prize--one of the world's most prestigious literary awards--is as powerful and unforgettable as Joyce Carol Oates's previous acclaimed novels
The Gravedigger's Daughter and
We Were the Mulvaneys. Synopsis
Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates is a riveting story of love violently lost and found in late 20th century America. In this novel, Oates returns to the Buffalo, New York, region to brilliantly explore the dangerous intersections of romance and eroticism, guilt and obsession, desire and murder. Little Bird of Heaven, a soaring work by the New York Times bestselling author and a nominee for the 2009 Man Booker Prize—one of the worlds most prestigious literary awards—is as powerful and unforgettable as Joyce Carol Oatess previous acclaimed novels The Gravediggers Daughter and We Were the Mulvaneys.
About the Author
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneysand Blonde(a finalist for the National Book Award), and the New York Timesbestsellers The Falls(winner of the 2005 Prix Femina) and The Gravedigger's Daughter. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Prince-ton University and, since 1978, has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2009 she received the Medal of Honor in Literature from the National Arts Club. She is married to the neuroscientist Charles Gross and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.