Customer Reviews

I'll Take You There: A Novel

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I'll Take You There is a story divided into three sections concerning crucial stages of a girl's development and narrated in the first person by the girl, Anellia, herself. This is the same structure Joyce Carol Oates uses in her 1986 novel Marya: A Life though the stories of the two novels differ in some crucial elements. The first section, The Penitent, is primarily concerned with Anellia's torturous time spent in a sorority called Kappa Gamma Pi and her relationship with the foreboding and ultimately tragic English headmistress Mrs. Agnes Thayer. Her entrance into the sorority sparked by a timid desire to gain acceptance from her peers, gradually reveals the shallow nature of the sisters and the vacuous symbols of their elite collective. The second section, The Negro Lover, explores Anellia's complex relationship with brilliant and troubled Vernor Matheius. Her obsession with the philosophy student blooms into a tumultuous relationship based on passion that is stirred by feelings of alienation. Each of them are fiercely intelligent and trapped by a societal definition based on the exterior that they cannot escape. But unlike Vernor, Anellia embraces this identity distinction, her Jewish heritage, in order to exile herself from the repugnant normality she has discovered. The third and slightest section, The Way Out, finds Anellia extracted from the developmental struggle of university and unexpectedly driven to a reunion with her estranged father. As he is slowly dying, she develops a relationship with his caregiver and fiancee Hildie. The feelings of opportunities lost and emotions wasted are gradually excavated over their time together as they come to terms with losing a man who will always remain an aloof mystery.

This novel is brewing with complex ideas all delicately arranged around an intricate plot. The sections of the novel could stand quite independently from each other. But together they draw an intriguing picture of Anellia's development and her discovery of the woman she wants to become. The frame she has set around her life is designed to mollify her qualms with existence but it is also a trap that limits the freedom of her individuality. The language she composes to liberate herself is also an unbearable burden. This is revealed in the telling line: "In fear I seemed to be plucking at, with childish fingers, a consolation of philosophy." Anellia's relationship with Vernor is akin to an artist gazing upon her muse, drawing inspiration and guidance to create an artwork, an identity for herself. Unhesitating in her confrontation of the troubles of racial relations as Oates always is, the denial of the language which defines Vernor's color provokes the collapse of any true connection between them. This, paired with Vernor's own inability to divert from the path he has limited himself to, makes their coupling wildly antagonistic and dangerous.

It is significant that Oates has dedicated this novel to Gloria Vanderbilt, the visual artist, on who's work Oates has written: "It may be that Dream Boxes represent an elliptical, subversive reclaiming of identity by one who has, unlike most of us, been over-defined - `over-determined' in psychoanalytical terms-by the exterior world." Anellia is also unique and this confession to an unknown companion is her psychological triptych. Engagingly emotional and philosophical, I'll Take You There is a deep study of a difficult climb to adulthood. Its artful composition produces a compelling novel. It is a skillful accomplishment that can be enjoyed by both the passionate thinking and the romantic reader.

I have to start off this review by admitting that I love Joyce Carol Oates. There is something wonderful, entrancing about the rhythm of her prose that is again present in I'll Take You There. Her writing is always so wonderfully evocative and almost hypnotic. Her characters, in particular the nameless narrator if I'll Take You There, are all trapped in something they cannot see, but which Oates lets us see all too well. In I'll Take You There, the narrator, a young college woman in the early 60s is desperately trying to fit it and although at times she succeeds, that success is only external. Internally, for some reason she perceives herself as a loser, a misfit. She tries first to fit in with a sorority and when that doesn't work out, she undertakes a relationship with a African American graduate student about ten years her senior. Neither of these "relationships" are right for the narrator for reasons she sees, but for some reason ignores. She is a complex and at times frustrating protagonist, yet Oates keeps you reading. I enjoyed this book very much, but I will say that if you are not an Oates fan, this novel will not change your mind. Oates fans, on the other hand, should enjoy this one completely.

I've read maybe eight or so Joyce Carol Oates novels - but because she's almost scarily prolific, I've still barely made a dent in her oeuvre (where does she find the time to sleep?). This seems to me somewhat less inspired and less ambitious than some of her other novels, but she is such a skilled, experienced storyteller that you get the feeling she can reel off a relatively absorbing piece of fiction in a few lazy afternoons.

"I'll Take You There" is a tightly circumscribed, claustraphobic novel, exploring the psychological journey - I really hate that empty blurb-ish phrase, but it's applicable here - of a gifted, vaguely disturbed young woman in the 1950s. The nameless narrator who occasionally goes by the name of "Anellia" is an deeply idiosyncratic yet sympathetic creation. In the hands of a lesser writer, much of her painful passage to womanhood could be a little cliche, but Oates is expert at walking the tight-rope between the odd and the ordinary, the familiar and the alien; we feel like we've met Oates' characters before, and yet we also know we haven't.

As always with Oates, I find she is a brilliant but uneven stylist. Most of her books - the flawless "Foxfire" being the exception - have some long lifeless sections and some unbearably over-written passages, as well as stretches of truly exhilerating prose. ("Blonde" embodies this unevenness.) Like most readers, I don't read in order to hunt for jewelled phrases, but when you've struck upon one of Oates' truly hypnotic passages, you can't help but feel a little in awe, a little breathless - to borrow another blurby phrase - and you're momentarily filled with the conviction that she's a genius. "I'll Take You There" has such passages, and it's worth reading the whole book just to savour the fascinating middle section, in which Anellia enters into a bleak and consuming relationship with a black philosophy student who turns out to be far more damaged than she is. The first and last sections - in which Anellia enters a sorority and seeks to mend her relationship with her father - are good but never quite as riveting.

While, as a coming of age novel, it seems natural that "I'll Take You There" has a limited trajectory, I can't help but feel that Oates has confined herself here and limited the extent of her own powers to some degree. As with so many of her novels, there's a great novel buried in here somewhere, but instead, she's merely written another good one. As always, her brilliance seems somehow dispersed across her books rather than concentrated in a single great novel.

That said, what Oates must produce on a lazy afternoon is worth any number of other works by most of her contemporaries.

In the mid 1970's, The Staple Singers had a hit song with "I'll Take You There." The latest Joyce Carol Oates novel shares that title. But whereas, Mavis Staple sings of enlightenment through religion and finding a passage to God and redemption, a "Stairway to Heaven" as it were, Oates sets her novel in a scholarly,philosophical milieu: in a place and among those who have a definite take on we humans and our place in the cosmos. A place that is decidedly non religious. Philosophers like Spinoza, Pascal and Locke are by nature the questioners as well as the suppliers of answers. This is the nature of Philosophical thought. And even though it may sound like Oates has written a treatise on Philosophy, she has not for with "I'll Take You There" Oates is back in her old stomping grounds of Obsession, unrequited love and passion unrewarded and unrecognized. As Anellia, our lead character says: "I was possessed by the wayward passion of one to whom passion is unknown; denied, and thwarted..."
Anellia (this is what she calls herself and her real name is never revealed), is a an extremely bright and unsophisticated young woman who secures a scholarship to a college in "Upstate New York," and proceeds to throw herself headfirst into college life. Anellia is remarkably ill equipped emotionally and socially to be away from her family much less a member of a sorority,but when she is asked to join Kappa Gamma Pi she jumps at the chance to be part of a "family" and to have sisters who she hopes will fill a void in her life ("...I yearned for sisters: I reasoned that I'd had the others: mother, father, brothers, grandparents...sisters! I would be happy forever, I think."). Anellia fakes it for as long as she can but sorority life is not for her: "My Kappa self did not brood, was never melancholy...she had clear skin, shining eyes, a glossy pageboy and lipsticked lips. She was no one I knew personally, but an inspired composite of a dozen Kappa girls..."
As with most of Oates' characters in many of her novels, Anellia is obsessed with food: "...it was the caterers cartons that caught my eye, the aftermath of Saturday night parties, leftover canapés, caviar jars where always caviar remained...sometimes I devoured these food where I stood, sometimes I stuffed them into my duffel bag to carry away...sometimes, stricken with remorse or fear of food poisoning, I threw everything away. I saw no contradiction with my ideal and my animal self. As Spinoza said, "We yearn to persist in our being."' In another instance, Anellia says:"...my mouth watered with saliva like rushing churning ants."
In the second section of the novel, "The Negro Lover," Anellia finds love and romance with one Vernor Matheius a PhD candidate in Philosophy:"...I'd fallen in love with a man's mere voice; not a radiant idea as I'd imagined but a physical condition, like grief."
As with most things for Anellia, love does not prove to be a panacea as she spends weeks stalking Vernor before he notices and speaks to her. Vernor is "the color of damp earth...a coppery maroon...skin that I imagined would be hot to the touch." At first Vernor will have nothing to do with Anellia, but later relents; feels a sort of compassion for Anellia and they begin an affair of sorts. "I can love you. I am the one who can love you. Who am I except the one whose sole identity is that she can love you?"
As Anellia had fashioned a sophisticated "personality" to be accepted for awhile in the sorority so she makes herself into someone Vernor can love: "Stark and simple and beautiful as gleaming white bones picked clean of all flesh, Now you know. Yet I lived in dread of the one day I would fall utterly and irrevocably into pieces and would lack the strength, the will, the purpose, the faith to reassemble myself another time."
The last section of the novel, "The Way Out" deals with Anellia coming to terms with her father's impending death. As much as the first two sections were red with the fire and explosiveness of emotions, "The Way Out" is blue and green with the fragrance of remorse and acceptance. Set in Utah, Oates makes much of the open spaces, the romantic and exotic place names:"...Green river, San Rafael Valley, Death Hollow..." For Oates the West is a place where one can re-imagine oneself and start anew. And likewise, Anellia finds a kind of peace and resolution to at least some of her problems and we are allowed to feel, not only compassion for her but also a good amount of pride for she is ultimately a survivor and not merely a victim.
"I'll Take You There" is Oates at the top of her very formidable form. The writing is plump and round and gorgeous, bursting with compassion and wit and beautifully evoking a world slightly askew, resolutely strange but ultimately an intriguing place to visit.

This is a book about love: The narrator tells us about her attempts to belong. She wants to belong to the sorority, be one of those smooth, lovable girls - but all too soon she realizes that this cannot be: she's different. Maybe this feeling of being different from the "normal" people around her attracts her to the graduate student Vernor, although she falls in love with his clever voice before she sees his African American face. Vernor hates himself; he is drawn to philosophy because it seems to be a spiritual realm untainted with self; so it is no wonder that he cannot accept the narrator's love. The narrator's family seems to be devoid of love. Her mother died shortly after the narrator was born, who finds herself accused of being the one to blame for her mother's death. Her father, brothers, grandparents are taciturn, elusive strangers; and yet... This powerful novel shows how you create yourself, trying to be who you want to be; at the same time it proves that there are basics - roots? - from which you cannot escape.

Oates is a master at evoking physical and spiritual reality. The reader can smell the nightmare of the sorority house; the physical encounters with Vernor are so shocking because they are so real.
Maybe some readers' judgments are clouded by their expectations which come from reading other novels by Joyce Carol Oates. This is the first novel by her I have read, and I am deeply impressed by her mastery of the English language, by the beautiful rhythms and vivd descriptions which reminded me of Woolf and Mansfield.

This is the first book I have read of Joyce Carol Oates. Now, I want to read all of her books. Her language is so... beautiful. If you are a reader that likes "deep" books, you should definitely read this one.

The story takes place in a University in upstate New York during the 60s. The narrator of the book is an 18-year-old girl, whose real name you never know through out the book, though she likes to call herself "Anellia" sometimes . There's three parts to the book. The first part is when she joins a sorority, full of rich, popular, pretty girls. But "Anellia" is poor and geeky, who looks like a 13-year-old even though she is 18. The second part of the book is when she falls in love with a black philosophy student, who is hesitant at first to let "Anellia", who is white, know and love him. The third part of the book, which I think is the best part of the book, is when she discovers that someone who she thought was dead is not.

I loved this book. I think Joyce Carol Oates is gonna be my second favorite author.{John O'hara is my 1st.} It is great for adults, and teenagers who like adult books.{I am a teenager} It is the kind of book that you'll think about for a while after you finish reading it. But if you are a person who likes "trashy" books with lots of sex scenes and stuff, look somewhere else.

As I've said after reading one of her other books, it is a real travesty that Joyce Carol Oates, our most prolific serious contemporary author, has yet to be awarded a Nobel Prize in literature. Her understanding of human nature is unsurpassed. She appears to have a special interest in relationships between Caucasian women and African American men, as this is her third novel that takes up the subject (the others being, "Because It is Bitter ands Because it is My Heart"; and "I Lock the Door Upon Myself"). It is my opinion that this is the relationship frought with the most danger, the most potential negative baggage of any relationships among Americans (indeed, fear of it forms the entire basis of this nation's racial problem). Perhaps Oates agrees. I wonder if this character is, in some ways, modeled off of her, since she did also attend Syracuse University and was an honor graduate. Perhaps one day soon the literary poohbahs will rectify the manner in which they have overlooked this very important author in bestowing literature's highest honor. I certainly hope so.

This is a most powerful novel about the angst and turmoil of the embroiled sixties and its fast-fading mores. The first person narrator attends Syracuse on an academic scholarship. She is without parents, poor, lonely, and searching. She is drawn desperately to a black philosophy student and follows him. He resists, then becomes her callous lover. Their relatiohship matches the era in its confused, dirty rawness. He has major problems with her whiteness and with his own ancestry because his ancestors were slave traders. Anellia invents an identity that she thinks Vernor will like - none of it real, hence doomed. She creates her own closure by traveling to be with her dying father many years after she thought him dead and brings his body home to be buried next to her long-dead mother in the church cemetery where no one in her family attended church. She says some day she may take us there. She already has.

In Joyce Carol Oates' book, she returns to a very familiar setting. In 1963, a college campus in Syracuse, N.Y. This biographical reference leaves us little doubt as to where she refers. Yet, the personal familiarity with the college and the region, allow her to talk about it in a way that conveys the specific characteristics that she needs to, in order to make her point, without the need to be verbose about the setting.

Not only is the book equisitely written, but it takes on a special character which never before has appeared in a Joyce Carol Oates novel. In "I'll Take You There" Joyce has dedicated a special degree of attention to her prose. The sentences flow as though they were water, effortlessly moving downhill into the reader's mind. One sentence conflating to the next, without the slightest feeling of disjointedness. While Oates takes poetic license in that all her sentences are not grammatically correctly formed sentences, this perhaps shows the influence and her love of the work of Donald Barthelme, who used glimpes, phrases, to create pictures for the reader. But even more than that, the language is almost approaching the character of James Joyce, where the difference between prose and poetry is hard to distinguish.

Often accused in the past of whipping out new novels without the proper care and attention to classic literary detail, there are none that can say that about this book. Here, with the backdrop of philosophy, religion, economics, race and gender, Joyce weaves a story that is so compelling and so real in character, that it is difficult to stop reading it once started. In short, I would be compelled to "Be Taken" where she wishes to lead me.

In conclusion, there is not any serious reader of classic literature, who should pass up the opportunity to read this book. Failure to do so, would be a lose of the enjoyment of real literary finesse.

Joyce Carol Oates is undoubtedly one of the most prolific writers in the canons of Western and American belles-lettres. Her novels, short stories, poems, plays, literary articles, scholarly pieces and nonfiction essays are lofty contributions to the worlds of literature and popular culture.

The breadth and scope of her work is astounding. To read Joyce Carol Oates is to read a commentary on society and to look at the conscience of the world, through the eyes of those who create and inhabit it. Through her writing she ennobles the art of fiction, the splendor of poetry, the exhilaration of theater, while at the same time, she brings a heightened level of insight and fullness to her nonfiction.

Oates's newest novel, I'LL TAKE YOU THERE, is set in upstate New York, familiar terrain for her fiction. The story centers on Anellia (not her real name), the first person narrator, who longs to escape her sad and tawdry home life. After her mother dies and her father leaves, she is abandoned to her overly stern grandparents. She is miserable, sheltered, and despite her great intellect, is ignorant of the everyday "games people play" to get along and to get what they want. She has grown up knowing only that she is blamed for her mother's death, which has made her the target of hatred and cruelty at the hands of her brothers and grandmother. She carries these scars valiantly, but doesn't understand their impact on her personality.

When she speaks of herself she describes a wraithlike figure, shivering with cold even in the brightest sunshine. As a little girl she learned to live in her head and shape herself into a chameleon-like character --- she adopts roles she thinks will make people accept her. She is an eccentric youngster who often fantasizes about not being part of the real world, of living a life of the mind. Nevertheless, despite these idiosyncrasies, she manages to win a New York State Regents scholarship to Syracuse University.

At last, Anellia thinks, she's on her way to a new, richer life. She heads off to college with the best of intentions --- all she wants is to become one of the coeds, stimulate her intellect, and put the past behind her. But not long after her arrival on campus, in a moment of insight, Anellia says, [back home] ... "I had never imagined a true library: a university library in whose stacks I might wander mesmerized for years ... yet I saw myself at Syracuse as alone and beleaguered and fighting for my life ... I was in a perpetual state of agitation."

Soon she finds herself flustered and flattered to be asked to join a popular sorority. And here is where the story shifts slightly, a tilt that allows the narrative's pervasive shadows to become a little darker, a little more defined. For reasons Anellia cannot at first ascertain, she is not comfortable or happy as a member of Kappa Gamma Pi. Then, in a shocking moment of clarity, she discovers that her "sisters," with whom she really has nothing in common, are using her as a conduit to better their grades, and in the end, they betray her. These vapid and vicious girls set her up as a patsy, which causes her loss of innocence and dims the sparkle of her earlier expectations. When Anellia leaves the "Kappas," she has no choice but to move on; but with no money, no friends, and no place to go, her prospects are bleak.

One of the most interesting devices the author uses in I'LL TAKE YOU THERE is both interior monologue and real-time observations. This gives us a fuller picture of Anellia's dilemmas and clues to her confoundedness. She remarks, "The study of philosophy is the study of the human mind" ... and also one of the leitmotifs threaded throughout the whole of I'LL TAKE YOU THERE. Oates quotes all of the philosophers from Socrates to Sartre, which imbues the book with a heady concentration on the human condition. Readers may find these asides a bit distracting at first, but as the plot roars on, it becomes clear that the notion of studying the human mind is, according to our narrator, "... to be baffled utterly."

It is with this mindset that Anellia becomes obsessed with a troubled, but brilliant, black graduate student she meets in an Ethics class. "...That voice ... like a musical instrument ... was both respectful and insolent ... searching and earnest ..." in its defense of its owner's ideas; and, without a glance backward or second thought, the young Anellia decides she has fallen in love with this man.

Their perverse affair is hopelessly doomed, but Anellia's single-mindedness pushes the situation to a place where she accepts the punishment she thinks she deserves for falling in love. When this painful fiasco is over, a phone call from one of her brothers brings news of a relative once thought dead, which puts in place the events that change Anellia's life forever.

All of these seemingly disparate threads do come together in a cohesive, beautifully written novel. Readers will find that I'LL TAKE YOU THERE is a story of a life reflected in shades of gray. A character study that provokes questions about how individuals manage to live their lives; where and how can any person stable or unstable find some kind of peace? Anellia's life and her experiences are not unique to her. She is "every girl" who is not willing to wrap herself inside a cocoon of hypocrisy, and she represents those women who wish to move beyond the bonds that bind females to roles as mother, wife, friend, daughter, and object. Joyce Carol Oates has created a heroine, who, at first, has no idea how strong she is, and does not understand how worthy she is until her great epiphany. In the end, Anellia knows she is and will always be a survivor.

--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum