Customer Reviews

Marya: A Life

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I read this book and couldn't help thinking that I was just "hearing" an account of someone's life. I felt as if I was missing something which I was. And it came out in the last sentence of this amazing and I don't know how she does it book by Joyce Carol Oates. Between "Them", "Do With Me What You Will". "You Must Remember This", and Short Stories written by this woman, I don't know how she knows, how can she get into "our" lives, "our" minds, "our" thoughts, and write so knowingly and correctly about life with such feeling and understanding, I'll never comprehend, just wish if only I had the insight and ability she has. A friend years ago said this book was written as if about my personal family and knowledge she had about our life, but this book was everyone's story, no one could not relate. Again, I thank Joyce Carol Oates for her knowing. I am sure she would understand the previous sentence.

It was Virginia Woolf who decried the lack of literature about the lives of the masses, the everyday folk: "All these infinitely obscure lives remain to be recorded," she said. Of course, she didn't promise to read them!

In MARYA, A LIFE, Oates attempts to fill that void. Marya is a portrait of a modern woman from a bewildered childhood to a womanhood that commands admiration, respect and love. She is a loner, bright and different from the people around her. She strives for self understanding and fulfillment.

Joyce Carol Oates is a meticulous storyteller and a vivid writer. I wonder if this is autobiographical. If so, the Woolf reference becomes irrelevant. Oates is definitely ordinary folk -- she is one of the finest and most recognized writers on the contemporary American literary scene.

But if you're in the mood for a book about a woman growing up and "making it" on her own, you'll enjoy this one.

Sunnye Tiedemann (aka Ruth F. Tiedemann)

The atmosphere in this book is similar to that in other of Oates' novels - - it borders on Gothic Modern.

The protagonist is a brilliant, somewhat bizarre loner, a survivor of a dysfunctional family. Her life is spent in proud, purposeful separateness. This becomes so natural for her that the reader does not know if other possibilities or options exist.

There is always the threat of a hurricane of emotions behind the facade of calm. It is always understated but we know that only the surface emotions are portrayed. The protagonist shays she's never cried because she's afraid that if she does she will never stop.

I love the work of this author. This book will not disappoint if you enjoy the dark, mysterious and bizarre side of human nature. Oates gets this just right.

Our book club chose "Marya: a Life," so I came to it with no foreknowledge. (The only Oates I had read was her stunning short story, "Where Are You Going Where Have You Been.") I found "Marya" far better than most of its recent reviews indicate. It is a tough-minded, beautifully-written look at the early years of a writer who has risen from mean beginnings to find success in the world. It is a far stonger book, in my mind, than book club favorites such as "Liar's Club" or "The Glass Castle," both of which are good books in their own rights.

That said, the paperback edition was a huge disappointment -- it was poorly typeset/printed, to the point where it was unpleasant to read. Fortunately, several Amazon sellers had used hardback copies. I recommend that route should you chose to read this excellent coming-of-age book.

This is another great book by Oates, that really takes you into the mind of the character. At times it is a bit erratic, and even tedious, but in a style that makes you want to read on. It is a good read if you love the descriptive style of Oates and don't require a lot of dialog and action to maintain your attention.

This incredibly prolific author has readily admitted to this novel as her most autobiographical. Marya whirlwinds through the brutality of schoolyard life, the angst of adolescence, the trials of academia, the upsets of failed relationships. In the loosest sense, this is a Bildungsroman, the tale of a young person on the make. If one scene in the novel stands in the reader's memory, it would be an episode about a third of the way through when the school's English teacher is tormented by the class to the point of nervous breakdown.. The episode invites comparison with what happens early along in another Bildungsroman, Richler's THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ.

This story is Marya's life, but in some strange way Marya is an outsider, someone less at the centre of events than someone pushed round by them. Self-awareness is her salvation; if not for Marya, then for everyone around her we are reminded of Nietzsche's words about nondescript people who register their presence in the world with a kind of dumb amazement. Everything Marya does shows her on a level of understanding far beyond that of her kin, her classmates, her coworkers. Halfway through the novel (p. 137), we have the intellectually precocious Marya, for whom "every word of LEAR [was] hooked in flesh and could not be dislodged." [218 words]