Customer Reviews

The Rise of Life on Earth

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This book, in the Gothic-Oatsian tradition, follows an trod-upon product of our society--yes, a female. Beaten nearly to death by her alcoholic father--in the same beating, her sister was killed--our "protagonist" decides she wants to be a nurse during her two week hospital recovery. She half-meets this dream by becoming a nurses aide, but she never makes a full emotional recovery. Another key event keeps her anger just beneath the surface to errupt when it seems safe for her to do so. This books twists through some small, dark avenues and ends on a scene that is unforgettable, grotesque, and devastating.

Kathleen Hennessy, the main character in "The Rise of Life on Earth" by Joyce Carol Oates is a person like many we pass by everyday, barely registering them in our consciousness, not noticing and not paying attention, while we perhaps should.





This short novel starts when eleven year old Kathleen is in the hospital after severe beating she received from her father when her mother ran away from the abusive household. Kathleen's younger sister has fallen into a coma and died following the beating. Kathleen, docile, quiet, unattractive and slow, overweight girl, is nevertheless because of her apathy, her calm and passive agreement to everything going on around her, a favorite of the hospital nurses, who pamper her with leftover gifts. There is, however, something disturbing about this girl, and what it is we learn soon enough to expect a climactic event. How much was she damaged by the abuse she witnessed and how much of her behavior is just her natural way - are the two even possible to distinguish from one another?





Later on, Kathleen passes through a succession of better or worse foster homes, all the time apparently seeing the outside world as through the window in the rain. At school, she continues to be slow and with much pain barely learn enough to sustain herself on the surface. In one of the foster homes, a mysterious fire kills most of the inhabitants, but Kathleen escapes and goes on with her seemingly unremarkable life. She becomes a nurse aid, manages to be organized and perform well according to instructions , which makes her happy enough, The problem is, Kathleen longs for love and family - she does not want to be perceived as worse than her colleagues and falls into the trap of being available to basically any man who wants her... The one she really falls for is a resident from her hospital, Orson, who is a drug addict and fails in his career, but is backed up by his well-off, respectable family. Orson is, naturally, not serious about Kathleen, and only wants to (even against his will, just following the animal in himself) use her for his physical needs. The obvious consequence, pregnancy, has an effect opposite to Kathleen's dreams of marriage, but facing the reality she decides to deal with it alone, as she dealt with everything in her life before.





"The Rise of Life on Earth" is written in a dry, reporting the facts, unemotional way, which, as is often the case, stresses the tragism of Kathleen's life and the events described. I read it in a little more than one hour, without being able to put the book down, angry and sad. How can the Kathleens of this world change anything despite the rage boiling inside them? The obvious conclusion from this novel is that there is no hope for people born and raised in certain circumstances even in so-called democratic, developed societies. They stay where they are, unhappy as they are, and life goes on with misery and without light, which is the fault of the society as well as of what these people are - it is a vicious circle which cannot be broken... The prose is sometimes written as the stream of consciousness, without division into short sentences, which even more stresses the chaos in Kathleen's head.





Although I don't think that it is the best novel written by Oates, who is a very prolific author and so not all of her novels can have the same level, and here she needed to be very concise to get the message through in a short literary form, "The Rise of Life on Earth" is a disturbing and nightmarish book which stays with the reader forever, leaving them with the feeling of helplessness, because of the weight if the questions tackled.

The more I read of Joyce Carol Oates, the more I get drawn in by her tales of women on the edge.

We have all seen women like Kathleen Hennessy. When you look at them with the eyes half-closed, they are almost fetching if you are feeling somewhat peckish; but alpha males just continue scanning for more promising material. (If the preceding sentence strikes you as callous, you may be wound up too tight to read this book.)

That Oates can take seemingly unpromising material like Kathleen Hennessy and, while being true to her subject, manages to show that, for many, life on earth hasn't risen far enough. The daughter of an abusive father and a runaway mother, Kathleen finds herself in a series of foster homes in the Detroit area, growing up hoping to become a nurse but ending up as a nurse's aide. She manages to attract a young physician named Orson Abbott, but the relationship progresses no further than her pregnancy.

Without giving away the ending, I can only say that Kathleen's solution to her problem is simple, methodical, and great material for a supermarket tabloid spread. In fact, certain events occur almost in passing that would make for a great cover story in the NATIONAL ENQUIRER.

Oates is second only to Anton Chekhov in her ability to take a seemingly uncomplicated person and show us depths we had never before imagined. Why, I wonder, is she not given the honor she deserves? I think many readers take her for granted because she is so prolific and writes mostly about women. Duh, so did Jane Austen!

This novel has haunted me since I first read it several years ago. With exquisite prose Joyce Carol Oates achieves, once again, a gritty realism that expresses so many of the hidden textures of our lives. I don't know how she does it but her character, Kathleen, comes to life like a trick you can't explain. By that I mean a reader doesn't get caught up in her writing style or any sort of convention; it just IS. And that's what makes the best JCO writing worth reading.

One of America's finest authors, Joyce Carol Oates turns her attention to the story of nurse's aide Kathleen Hennessy and the cycle of abuse and indifference that dominates her life. Orphaned at a young age when her father is imprisoned for her little sister's death, Kathleen grows up quiet and seemingly untouchable in a series of inhospitable environments while
disaster waits at every turn. Kathleen is an archetype of the cowed young woman: possessing little enough intelligence, not really much given to introspection, lacking any confidence or self-esteem, able to learn what she is taught by breaking everything down into simple tasks, but never really seeing the big picture. Naturally men take advantage of her, but Kathleen won't let their degradations affect her calm demeanor. What she doesn't see is how living without love has warped her own personality. Again and again we see her lashing out at the innocent because she can't bring herself to confront the people who are really offending her.

Oates avoids melodrama in this powerful story by describing everything - even the most graphically gruesome scenes - in a very objective, detached, one could say clinical, narrative voice. Kathleen breaks these too into sequences of small but individual events so that she can more easily control, or ignore, or perhaps justify, the suffering that seems to permeate her entire world. We find ourselves wanting to forgive even her most wanton acts because we recognize how little she really understands of human kindness, never having experienced much of it. The world is full of women like Kathleen, who have been born into pain and violence, and who have no hope of ever understanding anything else. In this grim and almost gothic novel, Joyce Carol Oates weeps for those for whom life on Earth is not a rise, but a fall. This is not a pleasant book - most readers will be shocked, disgusted, or at the very least depressed by it, but the author clearly has tried to make a real difference in how we perceive the quiet, solitary, seemingly dispassionate woman who lives next door.

The peculiar style of lengthy sentences (many a full paragraph) and sometimes disjointed thoughts, is a little jarring. This is a very short novel, however, its ability to haunt is permanent. I first read it years ago and turned each page nearly with dread: as if being forced to watch someone being strangled, inch by inch, until their last breath. I was left so horrified at the range of human cruelty and shocked at the main characters apparent ability to withstand it. Her attempt to grasp even the smallest acts of kindness - so rarely shown to her! - in order to keep from drowning, are heartbreaking. I just read it again, hoping to find any message of hope that I might have missed the first time. Unhappily, one is left in despair to realize that this is only one story of the many disowned, displaced and unloved among us. Her acts of "revenge" are scarcely thought out and so wholly forgivable, so incapable she is of truly processing the nightmare world in which she is trapped. Not for the faint of heart, this is a heavy read.

It's always a bit of a gamble picking up a book by JHC. Her writing style varies so much from novel to novel that the reader can never be too sure what he/she's getting into. This isn't the sort of book that is going to change your life; but it is pretty good. The plot is fairly basic; it's the story of the ripple effect that a severe childhood trauma has on the main character. However, the story has a few good twists and the style managed to raise my eyebrows more than once. All in all: a good book.

This, by far, is the most disturbing book I have ever read. The characterization of Kathleen hennessey is lacking in depth as far as I am concerned. The book makes her out to be a sociopathic killer rather than and abused, tormented women that she supposedly is. The book is almost as depressing as the bell jar, perhaps more. IF you want to be depressed and disturbed, read this book. Kathleen Hennessey is hardly a likeable character, and her actions are blamed on the abuse she incurred in her childhood. Obviously Oates is conveying a far darker and more sinsiter message here, that people are unable to rise above their circumstances and change their life. Although I enjoyed the fact that the book was very different and has a good message,which I believe is that people should be nicer to one another,the fact that the character seems barely human and murders her little sister- and the highly disturbing, graphic scene in the end where Kathleen gives herself an abortion with a knife- makes the book un-enjoyable and leaves the reader trying to figure out what just happened- were they supposed to feel sorry to Kathleen? Were they supposed to relate to her?

oates writes a really good short novel about a girl whose life turns her into something both chilling and sympathetic. oates has a bit of an experimental style with her massive sentences and some odd structures late in the story. it's definitely not your regular book.

This was the worst book I have ever read. I was very suprised, because Joyce C. Oates writes in a way that is very crisp, but I think she must have gone through some crisis in her life to come up with this crap. Thank God this book was not that expensive, I would have more upset. Read at your own risk !!!!