Childwold [Hardcover]

Joyce Carol Oates (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Littlehampton Book Services Ltd (October 13, 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0575023481
• ISBN-13: 978-0575023482
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,400,927 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of more than 70 books, including novels, short story collections, poetry volumes, plays, essays, and criticism, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. Among her many honors are the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the National Book Award. Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I love JCO, but this was too difficult, January 24, 2004

By 

Manola Sommerfeld (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: CHILDWOLD (Mass Market Paperback)

This is not the kind of book you should read when you're tired. It was difficult to follow. There were many characters, and sometimes they were the narrators, sometimes a narrator dealt with them, with little transition or indication. The whole novel is divided into a myriad of vignettes, at times way apart from one another. Also, maybe because i was so frustrated with it, the end is confusing and other than the veiled allusions of catastrophe, i couldn't make too much sense of it.

4.0 out of 5 stars Above average Gothic-style novel with social themes., April 3, 2010

By 

Ted Byrd - See all my reviews

This review is from: CHILDWOLD (Mass Market Paperback)

There are two specific aspects of 'Childwold' which some readers might consider to be serious drawbacks. One is the narrative method. The story of the novel is told in a series of short segments of stream-of-consciousness either of recollection of past events or of impressions of immediate experience. The length of these segments varies from one to a few pages and the identity of the character whose thoughts we are privy to usually changes with each segment.

Thus, the reader is subjected to multiple stories, multiple personalities and multiple points of view as the book progresses. If this is not confusing enough, one of the characters appears to be living in the past, two seem to be suffering from severe delusional states, and one is an adolescent girl with very subjective views of the world. I'm not sure of the total number of characters revealed through their thoughts, but would say there are two main ones, three minor ones, and perhaps a couple more that only appeared once or rarely.

The book presents itself somewhat like a jigsaw puzzle of many pieces. If the challenge is accepted in this spirit, then the persistent reader will gradually get an ever clearer picture of the history and personalities of the various characters and begin to see how the individual stories are related to each other as well as to the overall thrust of the book.

The mention of the overall thrust of the book leads me to the other reason some might feel a lack of interest. The book was published in 1976 and, once the story begins to come into focus through it's multiple viewpoints, is seen to be very topical for the time in which it appeared. In other words, some might feel it deals with yesterday's news.

It seems to me Ms. Oates has tried to draw us in to her story by getting us to play detectives and piece the strands together like Sherlock Holmes until we have come to know the characters, and ,with some prodding on her part, to empathize or identify with some, and feel horror and rejection of others. What we come to is a realization that the book is dealing with a time of transition for society. We see degeneration and decay as an ever-present backdrop for the poor family living in an old farmhouse in the remote countryside. Specifically, the old patriarchal, rural form of life is no longer viable. Society is moving into the era of more urbanization, more single moms, and more assertiveness from females to make their choices based on self-fulfillment rather than societal convention.

This was the time of vets returning from the Vietnam War. One of the characters illustrates the horrific psychic aftermath of the experience of being seriously wounded in that war, and has become a grotesque parody of the aggressive behavior which leads to war in the first place. In fact, male aggression is also an ever present theme, and Ms, Oates is telling us through the mechanism of the story that this behavior is obsolete and unacceptable. The main male character who shuns violence is torn by psychic conflict and will be betrayed into violence by provocation.

Indeed, the males in this book do not generally fare too well. Their transgressions have been defined, but no viable means of re-adapting is portrayed. The females, on the other hand, though not faultless, are shown to be survivors who find ways to adapt and hang on through trying and precarious circumstances, and seem generally successful at meeting the challenges of life. One might say there is a strong feminist element behind these developments.

These are the underlying themes as I see them. They are not presented that baldly in the book but are underneath the surface elements of the story. On the surface we have a somewhat Gothic tale of a large family living in a huge decaying farmhouse surrounded by a countryside infused with a tinge of eeriness and danger, and quickly reverting back to the wild.

There is some very good writing in this book. I was particularly impressed with the descriptions of the countryside, terrain, plant and animal life, and seasonal variety. I would think the author had personal experience of such a place, or else did very thorough research. I found the depiction of the different personalities with their separate concerns to be convincing and interesting. The story kept me engaged with it's layered complexity and suggested some points worth pondering.