A thirteen-year-old girl moves with her mother to her aunt's house, where she becomes involved in an affair with her aloof, twenty-five-year-old cousin, a seminary student, a liaison that leaves her victimized and confused. Reprint. K. PW. "
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
A novella by the endlessly prolific Joyce Carol Oates, "First Love" is at once an exploration of the darkness that sometimes suffices for family life (familiar Oates territory) and a Christian allegory for the modern age of incest, child abuse, and bondage and discipline. The heroine is a not-quite adolescent girl named Josie who suffers physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her demonic cousin, a divinity student named Jared, and psychological abuse at the hands of her neglectful mother. Jared's work includes binding, gagging and other unsavory acts in which blood plays an important role. The mother works her damage through means that are less spectacular but somehow manage to be far more sinister. The big question--is Jared snake or savior?
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Oates's compelling gothic tale, set in Upstate New York apparently in the late 1950s or early '60s, is an intense, perfervid study of child sexual abuse, religious hypocrisy and family breakdown. Eleven-year-old Josie and her ruthlessly self-centered mother, Delia, spend a summer at the weather-worn house of Josie's angry, forbidding great-aunt Esther Burkhardt, whose son, Jared Sr., a Presbyterian minister, died mysteriously years ago after his church burned down. Delia is distant and volatile, often physically abusive; she has just left her husband for mysterious reasons. Esther's gaunt, solitary, compulsively clean grandson, Jared Jr., a bookish 25-year-old seminary student, repeatedly preys on Josie, sexually violating her, taunting her in a low, hypnotic voice. He cuts her stomach with a broken clamshell, forces her to lick her own blood to seal their bond as cousins, shows her porno photos of tortured, naked girls and terrifies her into silence with his threats. Guilt-ridden, emotionally numb Josie becomes a class clown and troublemaker who obsessively digs her nails into her own flesh, symbolically punishing herself. With her usual skill, Oates creates a claustrophobic atmosphere of festering evil. Through hints, forebodings and mythic symbols, her slim but hypnotic tale speaks volumes about the pain and helplessness of sexually abused children too frightened to speak out to uncomprehending adults. The power of this beautifully produced book is augmented by Moser's eerie woodcuts, which crystallize the aura of menace.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
First Love is a searing book that brings abuse to light.,
By
This review is from: First Love (Hardcover)
In this novella, JCO, has added yet another masterpiece to her already voluminous collection. In a blue/middle collar environment, innocence is lost by a man who, in the future, would become a man of the cloth. It is a story that mirrors so much of what is visible in the news today of people who think that they are above the law. JCO shows the irony of the molester who is studying to be holy and virtuous in the eyes of God, but acts and committs in the name of unthinkable, selfish evil, which seems representative of much of humanity. A gritty, raw painfully truthful book!
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you want to terrorize yourself here's a book to do it,
By Sandra Zickefoose (Katonah, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: First Love (Paperback)
This is a short book. You can read it in a single sitting. But I warn you--it will get you. It is a horrifying story. Oates is good at this stuff so beware--prepare yourself to ask: Why did I read that and put myself through such an experience? Real horror has little to do with monsters and everything to do with what resides in our own hearts and in the way our society molds us, and Ms. Oates knows how to make us squirm as she lays it all out.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love can be a bitter cruelty of life,
By
This review is from: First Love (Hardcover)
Life is cruel. Loneliness adds to such cruelty, and makes one a victim of it. This is the story of the bewildered 11-year-old Josie whose life is shattered one summer, and in response becomes the victim of other lonely people."Fear is good, fear is normal. Fear will save your life." Oates begins her story with this warning on the first page, and ends with it just four paragraphs from the end. It is the story of a family that fell apart, and the harm that falls upon the innocent. The background is that Josie's mother left her husband and moved to another state, where her mother was soon engrossed in a frantic hunt to escape loneliness. She forgot about Josie, alone and isolated and lonely in a new town with no friends, and with the healthy curiosity of a young girl. A 25-year-old divinity student slips into her life and offers the attention to fill her loneliness, yet he has his own bitter demons. It is a story of sadism and domination, with Josie falling completely under the spell of the 25-year-old Jared. He strips all of her clothes off, inflicts cuts on her breasts, dominates and degrades her with taunts of "filthy little -- filthy, filth -- girl," ties her down with cloth strips to dominate her and leaves her "in terror, animal terror, beads of sweat breaking out like flame on your body." She accepts such pain because Josie wants, "Love. Love. Love Jared, don't hurt me." Everyone wants to be wanted, and if this is the only "wanting" that Josie can find, she'll take it. Her mother is emotionally absent, she's bullied at her new school, and that is why Josie turns to any substitute who gives her the attention she craves. Her mother finally defines the problem as her own inability to love anyone, ". . . . . . . I've been so unhappy, I've been so undefined. Every man I've ever wanted, when I have him I cease to want him -- it's a curse." Some people are like that. Give them love, and their own sense of inadequacy drives them to hurt others who offer the most. Oates presents the story as a snapshot of life; no moral judgments, no great lessons, no redemption. It's simply a slice of life. Most stories have a "plot," but we don't think of finely crafted photographs as having "a plot." It's often said a picture is worth a thousand words; in this case, Oates turns a few thousand words in a powerful picture.
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