Carthage Author: Joyce Carol Oates | Language: English | ISBN:
B00DB32TFC | Format: PDF
Carthage Description
A young girl's disappearance rocks a community and a family in this stirring examination of grief, faith, justice, and the atrocities of war from Joyce Carol Oates, "one of the great artistic forces of our time" (The Nation)
Zeno Mayfield's daughter has disappeared into the night, gone missing in the wilds of the Adirondacks. But when the community of Carthage joins a father's frantic search for the girl, they discover the unlikeliest of suspects—a decorated Iraq War veteran with close ties to the Mayfield family. As grisly evidence mounts against the troubled war hero, the family must wrestle with the possibility of having lost a daughter forever.
Carthage plunges us deep into the psyche of a wounded young corporal haunted by unspeakable acts of wartime aggression, while unraveling the story of a disaffected young girl whose exile from her family may have come long before her disappearance.
Dark and riveting, Carthage is a powerful addition to the Joyce Carol Oates canon, one that explores the human capacity for violence, love, and forgiveness, and asks if it's ever truly possible to come home again.
- File Size: 1074 KB
- Print Length: 501 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0062208128
- Publisher: Ecco (January 21, 2014)
- Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00DB32TFC
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,203 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #43
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense - #59
in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers > Crime - #61
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers > Crime
- #43
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense - #59
in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers > Crime - #61
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers > Crime
Chillingly, since childhood, Cressida had refused to smile in pictures for fear she would be smiling in her obituary. Cressida is one of the most fascinating characters I have read in recent history. I have loved her, hated her, and been indifferent through the course of this book. We meet her at 18, a quirky and exasperating girl who has pushed people away and sabotaged much of her life in confusion and anger. We are never sure who she is. Autism is a theory in the book and in the mind of the reader. Sometimes I felt I would be one who understood her, sometimes I felt as if I would have slapped her.
Cressida has disappeared, and in the course of this extraordinary novel, the author traces the minds and actions of her family and of her sister's one time fiancé and present chief suspect of homicide. The depictions of grief are so realistic and deft as to tear at the reader. The mosaic of characters is deft and beautiful.
I am tempted to deduct a star for the sometimes indulgent discussions of the damage on America in its wars and in its prisons. The case is well made however, "wars are monstrous, and made monsters of those who waged it. In time, civilians would become monstrous." Just so the prison system making keeper and prisoner both less human. Brett, the veteran and chief suspect, is depicted in excruciating revelation. Sometimes his inner tumult does drag a bit too long, but masterful nonetheless.
Joyce Carol Oates is often difficult to read. Emotions are raw, the landscape is bleak. All that said, her books are meticulously crafted, and this one is often lyrical. I invite you to encounter Cressida as a meeting well made.
By Amelia Gremelspacher
TOP 500 REVIEWER
“Always I dreaded the tabloid media most of all, heartless and pitiless and shrewd with the instincts of predator birds that will gather above they prey hovering in the air beating great black-feathered wings impatient to feed.”
Why do I continue to resist reading Joyce Carol Oates when she is such a great writer? True, her themes are gothic and grotesque, but her power of writing transcends such genre typecasting. //Carthage// is one of her finest – if not the finest – of her many (forty) novels. It is a powerful anti-war, anti-media and anti-love story. It is finely woven and unexpected; the suspense she weaves throughout the story is palpable. The reader will also care about all the characters; even her anti-hero is redeemed.||The story echoes the book, Lovely Bones; a young girl is missing. A wounded war veteran was last seen in her company and the plot does thicken.||Juliet Mayfield is engaged to the hometown hero. He is such a hero that he volunteers for the army and descends into the pit of hell. He returns much changed and maimed, but Juliet’s love does not falter. When her sister, Cressida disappears, Juliet and her family fear the worst. Even more horrible, Cressida was last seen with Juliet’s war damaged fiancée. This is an amazing book by a great writing talent. Like Stephen King and great novelists, there seems to be a million stories contained in the mind of Joyce Carol Oates. We are lucky enough to be the recipient of her printed prose.Oates seems to breathe stories into such substance that the reader enters her dreamlike universe and refuses to part with it until page 482. A great gift for any literature lover.
By Julia McMichael
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