Synopses & Reviews
Selected by as one of the most notable books of 1991, Joyce Carol Oates's is a memorable portrait of one of the "insulted and injured" of American society. Set in the underside of working-class Detroit of the '60s and '70s, this short, lyric novel sketches Kathleen Hennessy's violent childhood--shattered by a broken home, child-beating, and murder--and follows her into her early adult years as a hospital health-care worker. Overworked, underpaid, and quietly overzealous, Kathleen falls in love with a young doctor, whose exploitation of her sets the course of the remainder of her life, in which her passivity masks a deep fury and secret resolve to take revenge.
Synopsis
Selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the most notable books of 1991, Joyce Carol Oates's The Rise of Life on Earth is a memorable portrait of one of the insulted and injured of American society. Set in the underside of working-class Detroit of the '60s and '70s, this short, lyric novel sketches Kathleen Hennessy's violent childhood--shattered by a broken home, child-beating, and murder--and follows her into her early adult years as a hospital health-care worker. Overworked, underpaid, and quietly overzealous, Kathleen falls in love with a young doctor, whose exploitation of her sets the course of the remainder of her life, in which her passivity masks a deep fury and secret resolve to take revenge.
Synopsis
"Like most important writers--Joyce, Proust, Mann--she has an absolute identification with her material: the spirit of a society at a crucial point in its history."--Walter Clemens,
About the Author
Joyce Carol Oatesis one of our most important and well known writers'"and one of America"s foremost writers of the short story form. She publishes at least one new book every year: a story collection, Dear Husband, is appearing in March '09, and a novella, A Fair Maiden, in May "09. She is also a regular contributor of reviews and criticism for the New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is presently editing a volume of Shirley Jackson"s fiction for the Library of America. She also reads and lectures widely throughout the U. S., at universities and bookstores.