My Sister, My Love [Paperback]

Joyce Carol Oates (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Harper Collins, New York (2008)
• ISBN-10: 1607515210
• ISBN-13: 978-1607515210
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,908,558 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Re-Imagining An Infamous Case, July 17, 2008

By 

Susan K. Schoonover "Sue Yingling" (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike (Hardcover)

Very prolific author Joyce Carol Oates' latest lengthy novel MY SISTER, MY LOVE: THE INTIMATE STORY OF SKYLER RAMPIKE is quite obviously "inspired" by the still unsolved Ramsey murder case of over ten years ago. Names, locations, and a whole lot of facts have been changed to prevent lawsuits in this "re-imagining" but Oates still manages to put forth a pretty compelling tale of "what might have happened" in that infamous child murder. The story is told from the viewpoint of six year old ice skating princess and murder victim, Bliss Rampike's, brother Skyler. Nine years old at the time of the tragedy but writing his memoirs ten years later, he makes some sharp satiric observations about upper middle class suburban life in his rambling account. The Rampike parents "Bix" and "Betsy" come plausibly alive as shallow, upwardly mobile strivers both before and after the tragedy that changed their lives. The final quarter of the book includes a first person novella that describes Skyler's teenage years as a resident at a school for troubled rich kids (Skyler battles addictions among other problems) and his doomed romance with the daughter of a famous athlete who in a very familiar sounding manner was tried but not convicted of the murder of his ex-wife and her boyfriend. The book concludes with Skyler at age almost twenty visiting his mother for the last time, seeing his father for the first time in years and the revelation of what really happened to his sister. The style of the book is not for everyone as it is filled with footnotes, asides from both the narrator and author Oates and other devices Miss Oates often employs in her writing. The book is really quite a bit too long and could have benefited from an editor's pen but at this point in her career Joyce Carol apparently writes whatever she pleases.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Will you make me a red-ink heart, too?", July 28, 2008

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H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike (Hardcover)

Joyce Carol Oates has written fiction based on actual events before, BLACK WATER (1992) and BLONDE (2000). Now she has written a gargantuan novel (562 pages) that has its "genesis" in what she calls in her Author's Note/Disclaimer a "true crime mystery of the late twentieth century." Think the murder of Jonbenet Ramsey and tragic aftermath of events that followed. The family name here is Rampike; the parents are Betsey and Bix; the childen, Bliss, whose name was changed from Edna Louise, and Skyler. This rambling story unfolds through the eyes of Skyler, who is nine years old when his six-year-old sister, an ice skating prodigy, is killed in the upper-middle-class family's home in suburban New Jersey.

Ms. Oates' world view is nothing if not dark-- at least in her fiction I have read although I do not pretend to have read her 70 or so volumes. In MY SISTER, MY LOVE Ms. Oates satirizes a certain section of American society, the perennial social climber. Thr Ramikes must get into the most prestigious social club. Betsey arranges playdates for Skyler with the children of the most important neighbors. Then there is Bix, the red-blooded former football star who has a cliche ("who's complaining?" "cut your losses!"never say never!" for every occasion. So what are they to do with a troubled son with a limp who always appears to smirk in the obligatory publicity photos of Mummy, Daddy and Bliss, the holder of the title of "Little Miss Jersey Ice Princess" among many others?

Ms. Oates skewers fundamentalist get-rich religion as well. While Bix can take his religion or leave it-- he believes in a Caucasian god and is a nominal Episcopalean-- Betsey after the death of Bliss joins a pentecostal church and writes memoirs of her tragedy and produces a line of "Heaven Scent" products-- cosmetics, candies et cetera, to help heal her wounds. Her funeral in a mega-church, a "fervent/impassioned/'smiling-through-tears' Assembley of God" that seats 2,100 and is located "beyond Wal-Mart, beyond Home Depot and Big Savings Bonanza" with a copper cross twelve feet high floating over the stage-- there is no altar in sight-- is way past macabre.

Threaded through all this picture of modern American bad taste is Skyler's sometimes creepy, at other times moving, but always sad account of his love for his little sister-- at her insistence he inks a red heart in her palm-- and his own shipwrecked life. There are precious few people to like here. Both Rampike parents are despicable in twenty different ways. Oates is neither subtle nor merciful in her portrayal of them or many others as well. The two bungling detectives assigned to the murder invetigation are named Sledge and Slugg. She reserves her sympathy for the most part for the young people, Bliss and Skyler and Heidi Harkness, the teenager Skyler falls in love with at the Academy of Basking Ridge, New Jersey, a school for students with "special needs." Heidi is the troubled daughter of a celebrity murderer and former major league baseball star recently acquitted for the murder of his wife, her alleged lover and the wife's poodles Yin and Yang. Pastor Bob is a decent person too.

Ms. Oates in the end solves Bliss' murder. I wondered, as I finished this long novel, if she would have changed the ending, knowing what we now know about the DNA evidence in the Ramsey case. Additionally, even though Skyler is a brilliant young man, at times he has to be channeling Ms. Oates for he knows far too much and writes too well for even the most precocious of nineteen-year-olds.

Finally- believe it or not-- this novel ends on a mildly optimistic note with just a whiff of hope. Maybe that is all we need in the end.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tragic and Comic, August 9, 2008

By 

Big Mac - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike (Hardcover)

Our book club's book for August was MY SISTER, MY LOVE by Joyce Carol Oates. Originally we had thought about reading some nonfiction for a change, but then someone suggested a "novelization" of a true story. We were thinking of IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote, but then someone suggested MY SISTER, MY LOVE which is a fictional account of the JonBenet Ramsey murder case. In light of the recent evidence that came to light, we thought this would make for good discussion. And it helped that we have read the Rosamond Smith books in the past, and liked them...so we chose this one! (P.S., For other book clubs, did you know you can often get a bulk discount from a bookstore if you ask for it? We got this hardcover book for not much more than a trade paperback would cost.)

This is mostly a first-person narrative from the perspective of Skyler Rampike, the older brother of the murdered child--who is here named "Bliss Rampike." The setting is New Jersey, not Colorado; and Bliss Rampike is a child skating prodigy rather than a child model. Many of the other details are similar to the Ramsey case, however: the upper-middle class setting in a world of expensive homes and SUV's, the infamous ransom note, and the media feeding frenzy that really never quite abated.

What is most strikingly different is the exploration of the life of the older brother, who was of course suggested as the murderer throughout the years of the Ramsey murder investigation. Here, Skyler is the original target of his parents' ambitions to live vicariously through their children. When young Skyler proves to not have what it takes to be an Olympic gymnast (brought on by a serious accident, perhaps caused by his father, that leads him to limp for the rest of his life), "Mummy" Betsey Ramsey turns her attentions to young Edna Louise, who is rechristened "Bliss" as her skating career begins to take off.

The novel is certainly long, and not as tightly written as the Rosamond Smith mystery/suspense books. Still, most of us found it difficult to put down, as well as heartbreaking. Skyler is basically an orphan in his own family--not enough of a "guy" for his macho father, easily ignored while Mummy devotes all her attention to his sister. Is it any wonder that the poor kid ends up in "special schools" for the troubled children of the wealthy, experimenting with drugs and never forming any real attachments? The novel is gripping not only because we come to care so much about what becomes of poor Skyler, but also for the way Oates "solves" the murder (which, interestingly, does not match the recent evidence that came to light...which led to some good discussions regarding whether a novel must match the facts exactly to be "realistic" or effective).

We wondered how Oates, a woman in her sixties, could so understand the life of a teenage boy--but she does. Several of our women members talked about crying throughout much of the book, while the men talked (a bit uncomfortably) about their adolescent experiences.

One unexpected (and enjoyable) part of the book is a pretty savage look at the pretensions of the nouveau riche, as well as the "industry" that can spring up around tragedy. Among all the pathos, Oates tosses in some really brutal parody that makes you laugh out loud. And, as you might expect, she saves her sympathy for the children who are so brutalized by money-grubbing, social climbing parents.

The chief complaint was that the book is "too long," but when we looked more closely we wondered if this was a valid criticism. We asked, "OK, what would we take out to shorten the book?" But every time we suggested that this or that chapter could be excised, we decided the book would be less rich without it. For example, there's a 50-page chapter that tells about Skyler's failed first romantic relationship (with a character who is supposed to be the daughter of an O.J. Simpson type). Some of the readers said getting rid of it would shorten the book, but others were horrified at the thought, because it's so heart breaking to see this poor broken kid finally reaching out. And it's amazing, with what he went through, that Skyler has any love at all left in his heart--but he does, and to learn more you'll have to read the book.

Another criticism was the occasionally self-conscious literary style, with a lot of references to "my manuscript," as well as a lot of footnotes that break the narrative. We weren't quite sure what these were meant to accomplish, and they did seem to interrupt the flow quite often, but in the end we decided that Oates knows a lot more about novel-writing than we do.

This is a very sad, and sometimes very funny, book, and we thought it was an extraordinary look at the way the sins of the fathers (and mothers) are visited upon the children.