Customer Reviews

Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (Plume)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

In her long, wildly prolific career, Oates has turned out multiple masterpieces (Them, Wonderland, Bellefleur, You Must Remember This, We Were the Mulvaneys) and even more near-masterpieces (What I Lived For, American Appetites, Expensive People, Zombie, Son of the Morning, Black Water, Broke Heart Blues) making it difficult for the beginner to know where to jump in. I'd suggest this novel, a flawlessly written, absorbingly complex study of troubled youth and race relations in a period of American history (the 1960's) that Oates can write about with as much authority as the most insightful sociologist. Eschewing pat conclusions and sentimentality, she renders a heartbreaking tale of innocence lost and expectations unfulfilled with an electric energy that carries the reader head-first down a narrative path that is as moving as it is difficult. The characters here are utterly real and their struggles to maintain some sense of identity in the face of massive social upheavel is depicted with uncommon sensitivity and grace. Oates is a master of the realist novel, and this is her finest in that vein and, indeed, in any vein. Shamefully neglected by awards committess and by the general reading public upon its release, Because it is Bitter will no doubt emerge as a classic of 20th century fiction, a work that probes, with unflinching honesty and unsurpassed skill, the depths of the human heart.

This gripping, powerful novel is one of the best Joyce Carol Oates has written -- and that's saying a lot, since she has published about 30 novels, some of them as good as anything by an American in the last fifty years (and, to be honest, some of them as bad).

You can read the novel simply to become absorbed in the events and characters, or you can read it as a study of morality, of the implications of race and gender, of violence and American dreams. I've read it three times, and each time I have come away more impressed with Oates's achievement. This is a stunningly vivid work -- her command of English prose here is at a level reached with her earlier realistic novels, Wonderland and them. Give yourself over to the writing, and you will truly feel every page of this book.

A warning, though: It's not an uplifting story, despite an ostensibly happy ending. The characters suffer, and the world they inhabit is brutal and unforgiving. But the pain is not without meaning, and moments in this story reach heights of tragedy which few American writers have scaled.

Even if you've hated things you've by Joyce Carol Oates in the past, don't dismiss this novel. It will dig itself into your consciousness.

People often say that a book was so good they couldn't put it down ... well this was so good I had to put it down, so I could absorb it and think about it and savour it. Oates delves so deeply into her characters it's almost painful. They are wonderfully human and believable. The story -- about how a murder binds together two teens, a poor white girl and a star black male athlete -- evokes working class America, in this case industrial upstate New York. Enjoyable and emotional.

The time is the decade between the mid-1950's and the mid-1960's, and the place is Oates's familiar setting, her native upstate New York. In some ways this never loud but hard-hitting book continues many of the threads common in a multitude of Oates' previous works (a young girl, bookish, intelligent, much like Oates herself was as a teen, from a crumbling home where alcoholism and gambling are the wedge cracking the solidity of daily life; struggling poor family dealt unfair circumstances living in a dying blue collar town; social discord flaring to violence) and yet in many other ways, this is virgin territory for America's greatest living writer.

This novel concerns Iris Courtney, a pretty, white, intellectual girl whose future success or failure is basically in her own hands because she cannot count on assistance from either her drunken, once-beautiful mother, or her gullible gambling-addict father. Her one possible ally seems to be an uncle, an affable, secretly-tormented photographer estranged from Iris' father, Duke, secretly in love with Iris' mother, Persia. It also is the story of a black man of roughly Iris' age, named Verlyn Fairchild, who lives in the same town at the same time. On the surface these two would seem to have nothing in common and yet their lives intersect completely by chance one night when Verlyn risks his own life to rescue Iris from a brutal attempted rape at the hands of a thuggish, perhaps retarded teenage bully, feared son of a migratory clan of mountain people who have settled in the factory town. This act of courage creates a bond between two teenagers from different avenues of life, and from that point on, though Iris and Verlyn are seldom in scenes together, the lives of these two characters are continually compared and contrasted, creating a study of the opportunities 1950's life opens--or does not open--depending on little more than the race of the person in question.

Iris and Verlyn at the time of their meeting come from roughly the same income levels, from the same broken homes, from the same school system, and were born the same year. But we watch as the tragedy of limited opportunity drags Verlyn into an inescapable existence of poverty, while Iris, through a few lucky breaks and hard work, rises from her beginnings and becomes closely tied to a family of wealthy art collectors called the Savage's. Verlyn's one hope is basketball, a sport at which he excels. His nickname is "Iceman" referring to his coolness on court when handling the ball. His prowess as a player on the school team momentarily earns him celebrity, high praise, and temporary esteem. But when an on-court accident wrecks Verlyn's future hopes of scholarships and college, it seems every door closes on him, even while Iris's fortunes have turned immeasurably brighter. In the end, Iris becomes engaged to the son of the Savage's and Verlyn takes the only way that is there for him out of his bleak hometown: the US Army during the beginnings of the Vietnam War. There is a tiny foreshadowing of Verlyn's fate in the military at about the 1/3 point of this novel, long before we learn of his enlistment, and it is there so quickly and at the time so innocuously stated that it might well be missed. Suffice it to say the future resolves itself as expected in the cases of Iris and Verlyn, and there is little justice in it.

I'd put this among Oates' top ten novels, which might not sound like a high ranking until one considers just how many novels this prolific woman has published. In other words, it's easily among her upper-third.

I haven't read every Joyce Carol Oates novel, only a few of the 30 odd ones she has written. Based on what I have read, and especially this book, I feel it is a crime that Oates has yet to win literature's higest honor.

I read this book several years back and recently returned to it as part of a personal study of different literary styles. "Because It Is Bitter" is one of my five favorite novels. Oates's skill at putting herself in the shoes of virtually every type of character imaginable is simply astonishing. After reading this book I couldn't believe that she has also inhabited the head of an African American male like me. And she surely understands all of the ramifications of this nation's racial sickness.

Kudos to Oates, from one author (of nonfiction) to another, for this extremely brave and deeply moving book.

Even in the realm of Oates--one of our most fearless authors today--this is a brave and brash examination of race and sex. I loved this book because it is an unblinking look at a span of life and all the variables: sex, class, family, morality. If you've never read Oates, this is a great place to start, and if you are already a fan, this is a must-read.

The best book by America's best author- indeed my favorite book. As someone who has read a great many books about race relations in the United States, this is by far the best - Ms. Oates abilities in understanding human nature, capturing the human soul, and critiquing American culture are put to fine use. Moving and gripping.

This is a serious novel that peers into the cerebral workings of people in a time long gone by. If you're looking for loud, brash, or goofy-acting characters (as so many seem to lately) or action like that of a thriller, one-note crime novel (or movie), try something from People magazine's top-ten list.

This is art, and it is the author's view of a time and place, a culture in conflict. And, for Oates, that conflict resides in the recesses of the minds of individuals living in that time and place. Thank you, JCO, for revealing the hidden, the murky inner-world, too many writers ignore or fail to see.

Like so much of JCO's work, this is a novel about us.

As a foreigner interested in american litterature I test various authors relying on opportunities for discovery. With J.C Oates, and with this book in particular, this is a different story. This is a piece of litterary art, style, composition, connection to contemporary issues (male/female relationships, children parents, blacks / whites in the 50ies). If you want to further explore what being an author means, get hold of "The Assignation" from the same author. A collection of astounding text miniatures.

Yup, folks, it's all here.

I forget who it was that asked whether it was possible that The Great American Novel be written by a woman. I submit this as evidence.

Oates, who at her worst can be over-the-top, bombastic, and overly gothic for many tastes; is surely at her best here.

This remarkable novel tells a simple-enough story, one that has been told before and will be told again. But it is the way that it tells it - character details pitch-perfect, each description and meditation and psychological reaction drawing the reader further in - that makes it extraordinary. Because It Is Bitter... is set in 1954 in a racially and socially divided town-Hammond, NY, near where Oates lives-and follows the lives of a group of people connected in ways that they do not and cannot expect. It is divided into three parts: Body, Torsion, and Ceremony. The book opens with the murder of a semi-retarded local boy, "Little Red" Garlock. His family, the infamous Garlocks, are the "black sheep" of Hammond: rumors of physical and sexual abuse swirl around them, they are extremely racist, and they live in a garbage-ridden, filthy home in the bad part of town. As the police begin their investigation, they are approached by a young teen-aged girl, Iris Courtney, our main character, who tells them that the boy was killed by motorcyclists from out of town. We follow her home, and meet her parents and family. Persia Daiches Courtney, her mother, is a young beauty, alcoholic and nervous, but very practical-minded in certain ways. Her husband, Cornelius "Duke" Courtney, is a gambler and constantly risks the family's money on horse bets, occasionally winning but usually losing. Aunt Madelyn is a close friend of Persia's, not really an aunt but considered one. She is a bit racist, and owns a beauty salon. Duke's brother, Leslie, is a photographer and is quite sensitive to racial and other differences. He lives alone. We then flash back to the beginning of Iris' life, and follow her through her difficult girlhood, pained and violent adolescence, and ultimate pyrrhic victory over her hometown.

Oates has a psychological insight into characters a 51-year-old white woman would seem to have no business writing about. This is the book that I would take with me to a desert island forever. Yeah, it's that good.