What did I just read?I think it's safe to say that this is NOT my cup of tea. I did not get on well with this book at all.I'll be honest and say that this could very well be your cup of tea. I just didn't like the writing style.I couldn't grow any relationship with any of the characters - and without any relationship between me (the reader) and the characters, I found the book rather dull. When you don't (can't?) care for a character (or any at all) I find it very hard to engage with a book.Comb...

‘The Accursed” is the latest addition to Joyce Carol Oates’s boundless body of work, and it’s spectacular — a coalescence of history, horror and social satire that whirls around for almost 700 mesmerizing pages. Oates started the novel in 1984 but set it aside to steep in its own febrile juices for three decades. Now “The Accursed” arises in full bloom, boasting as much craft as witchcraft.The book comes to us framed as a work of amateur history, the pet project of M.W. van Dyck, a member of one...

The Accursed is trippy, in the best, most all-consuming sense of the word. I read it like an obsessed maniac--it's that much of a page-turner. That is to say, once you get into the unreliable narrator's pedantic/perverse voice. It took me about 60 pages to orient myself in his world and after that I hated to leave the world of the book for real life. The setting--Princeton, NJ, when Woodrow Wilson was president of the college, not the country--is very evocative and I totally bought into all the

Quite disappointed in this one. I've read a fair amount of Oates' short fiction, so when this was suggested as a book club selection, I was enthusiastically in favor. However, I enjoyed this book less than anything else of Oates' I've read thus far.Don't get me wrong - the book is crafted with consummate skill. If someone told me they absolutely loved it, I couldn't argue that their feelings were wrong, or that the work is undeserving. A convincing case could easily be made that this is an excel...

This book - a (pseudo) historical, supernatural, mystery horror story - is supposedly written by M.W. van Dyck, descendant of one of the most prominent families of Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton circa 1905Claiming to have access to newly decoded journals and other materials available only to himself van Dyck unspools the story of the "Crosswicks Curse" that took a horrific toll on some wealthy, influential Princeton families in 1905 and 1906. The first conspicuous manifestation of the curse oc...

While I managed to get through it there were many parts that reminded me of the lonely person all retail/public service people have dealt with. The one that rambles on about things that have no relevance to the current situation, to you, or to anything important. There were many parts like this where I found myself saying get on with it, huffing and wanting to stop reading, but continuing on in the hopes it would get better. It did not.The writing was beautiful but disconnected, wondering about,...

I’m a big fan of Joyce Carol Oates, so when I discovered she had a new book out, I was excited. I was even happier when I found that it was another volume in the gothic family saga series she started many years ago with ‘Bellefleur’, which is one of my favorite books. The 660 page length didn’t bother me; she’s an author who, at her best, can fill that many pages with brilliance. I greeted the book like it was a big box of candy. I’m afraid I was disappointed. There are a lot of good things in t...

This is not a modern 21st century novel. To read this book, you must put yourself mentally into the style of the book. If you read it this way, you will enjoy it. All the bad reviews are from people who couldn't do that. The book is the story of the mysterious supernatural events that took place in Princeton, New Jersey in 1905 and 1906, told from the point of view of one of the descendants of one of the families. He writes as if he were discovering all of this information through accounts, note...

Joyce Carol Oates!!! She is a force to be reckoned with. I haven't read her for several years but I grew up in Princeton, NJ. When I learned that her new novel was historical fiction set on and around the campus of the Ivy League University where she has been a professor of creative writing for over 30 years, I knew it was time to revisit both the author and the town.I first read JCO in the late 1980s. Languishing in Los Angeles, where I was involved in an attempt to "go straight" after years of...

A local historian narrates this eerie tale of events in Princeton, New Jersey in 1905. The sleepy university hamlet is peopled by great figures--Woodrow Wilson (university president), Grover Cleveland (ex US president), Upton Sinclair (young Socialist writer)--as well as by the brahmins of New Jersey (the Slades, the FitzRandolphs). They are all intertwined in this ghost story starting with the abduction of a young Slade daughter from the altar at her wedding. People sight ghosts of loved ones g...

As much as I adore Joyce Carol Oates, I'm finding this one hard going. This has happened to me before on a few of hers (My Heart Laid Bare, for instance - which turned out to be one of my all-time favorite novels in the end), so I'll keep going. The narrator's constant side-tracking into minutia is extremely distracting, and I really hope to get to the meat of this story soon, and stay there.UPDATE: Contains SPOILERS! Sadly, there was no real meat, and I feel like I deserve a medal for persisten...

Phew. What a slog this was. And how it pains me to give it only two stars, 'it was [barely] okay', as I am a huge fan of the supremely talented Joyce Carol Oates.Never afraid to experiment, The Accursed has been touted as her take on the horror genre, with Stephen King hailing it as "the first postmodern Gothic novel". Huh?Horror novel it ain't. All it is, basically, is a novel focusing on Princeton in the dim and distant past, and how it was a microcosm of the racism and general prejudice, espe...

This book is what is wrong with publishing. Forget the argument about traditional versus indie, because this was a traditionally published book that could not have seen an editor for more than fourteen seconds. I understand what Oates was trying to do, but it turned into one long, rambling mess. I slogged on, thinking it would HAVE to get better, because this is Joyce Carol Oates, after all. The book was on the cover of the NY Times book review, lauded by Stephen King. Aaaaaaaaand, it only got w...

Let me begin by saying I am a fan of Joyce Carol Oates. She is one of the great American authors. But this particular book was badly in need of an editor. Or perhaps the editor it had needed to have enough guts to tell one of America's great authors that she didn't have a plot, and needed to cut 350 pages.It rambles, it has too many characters that aren't well fleshed out and also aren't kept track of for the reader.Things happen, but there is no plot. It's difficult to even pin down what the bo...