Expensive People: A Novel [Paperback]

Joyce Carol Oates (Author)

Book Description

Series: Wonderland Quartet | Publication Date: September 5, 2005

Beautifully redesigned, Joyce Carol Oates's most popular earlier novel, which explores the psyche of a preadolescent killer, is now back in print, with an afterword by the author.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Cuts to the bone in its chilling effectiveness. -- Publishers Weekly

You cannot put this novel away after you have opened it. This is that kind of book—hypnotic, fascinating, and electrifying. -- The Detroit News

About the Author

Joyce Carol Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University. The bestselling author of the novels We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde, she has written numerous works of fiction as well as poetry, essays, criticism, and plays. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 246 pages
• Publisher: Ontario Review (September 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 086538116X
• ISBN-13: 978-0865381162
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,266,368 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

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A flawed but engaging early work by the prolific Oates, September 3, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Expensive People (Paperback)

Joyce Carol Oates must be one of the most prolific contemporary novelists of our time. Her taste for torrid themes, in particular the brutal and bizarre, are well known. "Expensive People", one of her early works, starts off with a bang. A more direct opening you'll not find. The scene is set. You're instantly captivated and as she reels you in, you succumb and immediately find yourself in Richard Everett's head as he unveils his life story to you...bit by bit. You know you're dealing with dysfunctionality as soon as you meet his parents. There's a seething madness underneath just waiting to get out. If the medium were film, you'll see them cast in grainy black and white. But it isn't. Sad to say, the book loses momentum midway and it becomes tedious. You keep waiting for something to happen and when it does, it's anticlimactic. In the words of Richard, life isn't fiction. Nor is it half as dramatic. Oates is a colourful and engaging writer. She's got craft but has a tendency to indulge herself and when she does, she loses focus. "Expensive People" isn't a conventional thriller. It's a social critique of American society at the turn of the 60s decade and about the falseness of respectable society on the brink of a social revolution that will forever shatter time tested norms. While flawed and not entirely satisfying, it's an impressive early work and Oates got much better by the time she wrote Black Water.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A highly enjoyable book, September 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Expensive People (Paperback)

JCO takes us deep into the mind of a child killer -- that is a killer who just happens to be a chid. It's a disturbing affair, with the style random and jumbled to give a bit of consistency to this troubled mind.

As an early adult recovering from a near similiar fate as the central character, Richard Elwood, I find it an accurate portrait of the descent into childhood madnesses. It is also a realistic picture of middle America in the 1960s.

JCO writing is superb and she really pulls you into the minds of her characters through Elwood's slow narrative.

A great book

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars surrealism of suburbia, April 11, 2000

By 

J Goldman (Crested Butte, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Expensive People (Paperback)

Joyce Carol Oates writes a Nostradamus-like prediction in "Expensive People". She delves deeply and sympathetically into the mind of a maddened child, and what events and conditions have played upon this child to reduce him to his psychotic state.

Her description of suburbia are chillingly real, in the surrealism that they potray about our middle-America life and the saftey net of support that is purported. In the wake of the events at Columbine high school in Littleton, CO, "Expensive People" is a must read for all of our society to better understand ourselves, and our disenchanted teenagers.