Customer Reviews

Missing Mom: A Novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

We all love our mothers but many times throughout our lives, we don't. When we are old enough we can't wait to get away from them: we crave our freedom and when we get it... returning home is often a chore: "I didn't visit home often. I tried not to feel guilty: Mom tried not to make me feel guilty. But a kind of constriction came over me when I returned, an invisible clamp across my chest...When will you get married, Nikki? When will you have children...Without family, what is there?"

Nikki and Clare's Mom, Gwen Eaton was a kind woman. A woman who was called "Feather" in high school because her personality and demeanor was as light as one. After her husband dies she dedicates herself to others: teaching swimming to seniors, volunteering, making others feel comfortable...this made her feel good and it made her feel useful. Then one day Gwen is "there" and the next day she isn't.

"Missing Mom" is Joyce Carol Oates tribute and heartfelt reminiscence honoring the spirit of her mother, Carolina and as such it is a major departure for Oates. This novel is warm, cozy and basks in the kind of gold, autumnal glow of a life fondly remembered. Gone are some of Oates' trademarks: the grotesque scenes of gluttony and sexual abandon to name a couple. But Oates being Oates she can't help but include scenes like this: "...her face had been virtually remodeled with some kind of flesh colored putty. It was still a round face but appeared flattened somehow...this was a wax-doll face attractively powdered, rouged, lipsticked rose pink to suggest innocence, purity...you were meant to think...Why she is only sleeping...So Peaceful. Except this wasn't sleep, and it wasn't peaceful. More like a coma."

Though Clare and Nikki react to their mother's death in different ways, it is Nikki that Oates zeroes in on: "...Mom had been strong, Mom had not been weak and self pitying. But I was made to realize now that grief would come in waves and there would be wave after wave, there was not one big wave to be overcome and endured."

Nikki is the black sheep of the Eaton family. She dyes her hair purple, sleeps around and dates married men. But she loves her family deeply. She is in essence the quintessential Oates heroine: one of the walking wounded, Nikki is deeply flawed on a social and maybe moral level but in possession of a soul filled with caring and love.

"Missing Mom" is a novel about just that. As Oates states in the prologue: "This is my story of missing my mother. One day, in a way unique to you, it will be yours, too."

There's nothing dramatic or different about the plot and characters of "Missing Mom," but I couldn't put it down and I'm not sure why! This is the story of an ordinary mom in a very ordinary town in upstate New York, with two very ordinary daughters--an older, competent, settled one and a rebellious, angry younger one. Gwen Eaton, called "Feather" in her youth, is the perfect small town woman, a widow in her late 50's who spends her days in a seemingly endless cycle of visiting relatives, volunteering at various community organizations, and worrying over her daughters. The most extraordinary thing that happens to her is her death, a senseless act of violence that no one can believe happened to her (but then again, have we ever heard anything bad said about a random murder victim?) Nikki the younger daughter goes home, at first to clear out the house, but soon to stay and, in a word, grow up.

"Missing Mom" is the novel Oates wrote after the death of her own mother at the age of 87. I heard Oates speak about it--she views it as very different from her other work, and indeed it is in its clear plain style of writing, and sheer "ordinariness." Oates meticulously details the average middle class life--the food, the house, the clothes, with its secrets that aren't so very different from anyone else's. In the interview Oates explained how she tried to portray the lives of those who don't live in NY or LA, don't talk about literature and art, don't undergo therapy, but simply show their love through everyday small kindnesses.

Nikki discovers how her grandmother and father actually died, and that her mother had suffered through an awful childhood and a broken heart as a young girl. Gwen's tireless efforts to make others happy was her desperate way of staying above it all, floating like a "feather" above the griminess of her life. Seen in this light, Nikki can finally accept her mother's outward perfection.

This is a special book for mothers and daughters, but beware of recommending it to anyone who has recently lost a mom. Oates' descriptions of grief are spot on. I highly recommend this book to anyone who still has a mom--you'll appreciate her more for having read it.

I became a fan of Joyce Carol Oates after reading "The Falls" and "We Were the Mulvaneys." As with those novels, there is more - much more - to this book than I originally assumed after reading the first few chapters. The dual identities of the characters crept up on me and I looked back on my original premises with surprise as I continued to read. Oates is a master at drawing her readers into character and plot complexities. This is a book that should not be missed - it is harrowing, heart-rending and, above all, absorbing. You won't be able to put it down until you have read the last page and then you will sit and think about it.

I found myself strongly drawn to this story and could not put it aside until I finished it. The mother-daughter-sister relationships portrayed were so real as was the revealed inner life of the main character. I have always enjoyed this authors writing but I also found this oddly compelling for reasons I still cannot identify.

There's no stopping Joyce Carol Oates. She arguably may be the most prolific author of the 20th and now the 21st century. She spins literary gold faster than most readers can keep up with her gilded publications. Her latest, MISSING MOM, adds to her sumptuous buffet of fictional delights.

Returning to the setting of WE WERE THE MULVANEYS --- Mount Ephraim, New York --- Oates's focus moves from upper class struggles to the mundane of the middle class. Gwen "Feather" Eaton, a widow in her late 50s, is a realistic woman, a mother of two daughters who takes in strays and enjoys playing hostess for family events. She's remarkably likable, in fact more likable than daughter Nikki, the narrator of the book.

Nikki, with her "inky maroon" hair, is a somewhat aimless reporter involved with a married man. Her disdain for her mother is clear right from the start of the book when her mother's motherly reaction to her new hairdo leaves Nikki upset and thinking, "Before I was through the doorway and into the kitchen. Before she hugged me stepping back with this startled look in her face. I would remember the way Mom's voice lifted on hair like the cry of a bird shot in mid-flight."

Nikki thinks and behaves more like a teenager than the 31-year-old she is. When her mother is brutally murdered by an ex-con fifty pages into the book, Nikki blames her mother when she says, "You are to blame for what happened!" and then asks over and over and over again in a shrill, adolescent voice, "Why? Why?"

Ironically, the novel begins with Nikki saying, "This is my story about missing my mother. One day, in a way unique to you, it will be your story, too." The women, despite their differences, are a tight family, and the death of Gwen affects them all. Nikki is forced to mourn, to deal with loss and to deal with revelations she had not anticipated.

It is Oates's genius and to her credit that she takes the most mundane of things and crafts them with hypersensitivity --- the items in a junk drawer, the mother's care at meal time, the color of Nikki's hair. They are all heightened by the fraught interactions between mother and child at the start of the story and further charged in the time after the death of Gwen. Violence, a common theme in Oates's work, has its place here, but it is the common, the subtle, that is brought to new heights by Oates. Gwen, an unassuming character who might have been lost at the end of someone else's pen, is rendered by Oates to be long remembered.

--- Reviewed by Roberta O'Hara

"Missing Mom" is another outstanding effort from Joyce Carol Oates. Nikki Eaton is the narrator of this book: She's a 31-year-old reporter for a relatively small paper in the state of New York. Nikki's always been the black sheep of her family. Instead of sticking close to home with her mother, Gwen, and older sister, Clare, Nikki chose to move miles away and attempt to build a life of her own. Uncomfortable at rare family gatherings, Nikki generally prefers to do her own thing or spend time with Wally, a married DJ she's been having an affair with for three years. However, Nikki's world comes crashing down around her following the unexpected death of her mother. The novel chronicle's Nikki's struggle to maintain balance in her life while coping with loss and grief.

I enjoyed this novel very much. Oates is an extremely gifted storyteller, and I had a hard time putting the book down. There were some things about the story that bothered me, though. I hated Clare's character, which seemed to be very one-dimensional. Nikki's behavior also bothered me much of the time, and I thought her odd relationship with the police detective was very strange and unbelievable. Still, "Missing Mom" is great because of the way it depicts Nikki struggling with so many different emotions after losing her mother. This is a solid book that I recommend, although it's definitely not the author's best work.

Joyce Carol Oates is a prolific author with over 100 works of fiction and essays published (see "Foxfire"-1994 and "Blonde"-2000). Her newest creation is a portrait of one family, especially one daughter, who are rocked by a crime that creates the title of the novel. The reader should be aware that this title has two meanings which are the twin themes of the novel.

Ms. Oates goes back to re-visit Mount Ephrain in upstate New York (also the hometown of "We were the Mulvaneys"-1996). The secrets uncovered by the daughters, how they made their life choices, and how they cope with their "Missing Mom" is the heart of the book. While this is a short work (at 400+ pages) for Ms. Oates, the story benefits from the lack of overwriting that occasionally detracts from her longer works. This a book to savor over a rainy weekend.

I'm worried. Joyce Carol Oates may be the greatest living writer in America and my all-time favorite author, but there's a disturbing trend arising, and that is how I can't seem to find any interest in the books she's written in about the last two years. I didn't care for The Tattooed Girl, The Falls, and now Missing Mom was probably the most lackluster of the aforementioned trio. I know the subject matter of an abruptly severed parent-child relationship, murder, the legal system, introspection and regret was disturbing and---as in The Tattooed Girl---the characters were intentionally flawed and not welcoming, but there just was not enough substance in this novel to make it compelling. As someone pointed out and I thought, too, this book reads almost like a cluttered collection of stereotypes and heavy-handed messages. It did not feel like an Oates work.

However, this book does do one important thing, and that is it reminds us in a very loud voice that we should never take for granted the continuing presence of those we love. Life could change at any moment. One day life WILL change. Make each moment count and be glad for the time that's been there and is here now to spend with those we care about.

Although I do not think that "Missing Mom" is Oates's best book, it is certainly very good. As always, Oates treats a subject that, while not unusual, is presented with a unique point of view. The characters are realistic, reacting to situations and behaving in ways which the reader can comprehend. Like many of Oates's books, "Missing Mom" reveals its secrets in layers, and what Oates says is true. She understands people and reveals them with their faults, but with sympathy.

I am torn when it comes to Joyce Carol Oates. While I really liked "We Were the Mulvaneys," I hated "What I Lived For"...I found that book just disgusting, painful, and not that interesting.

With "Mother, Missing," we have a story that could take up 50 pages, but is spread out and out with inane detail. In this book Oates seems obsessed with appearances. Each time a character shows up, we read about his/her hairdo, shirt color, degree of perspiration, nails (painted or not?), etc. etc. But we don't see into the characters. Honestly, I am only on page 300 of the book but I am getting tired of it. I majored in English; I read a lot. I am not turned of by detail, usually, but I am when it replaces real substance. I agree with the reviewer who said that the novel's Nikki is like an Olsen twin. Sad, but true. And Oates just seems lazy throughout the book, recycling the same details, observations, descriptions over and over. I found this especially jarring when Nikki noticed that it was good her father hadn't lived to see the neighbors put in a pool (their noisy kids would have driven him mad!) and then a little while later she makes this exact same observation. Really, "less is more," and perhaps Oates should tweak at her books a little bit more before throwing them at the publisher.

On the one hand, I did like some of the nostalgic mood of the book, and some of the descriptions of grieving for the lost person, returning to the childhood home, etc; but I still found these really rich moments too few and far between.

I don't think I would recommend this book, except, maybe, to my bratty younger sister.