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31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Dangers of Our Unspoken Reality, June 17, 2003
This review is from: The Tattooed Girl: A Novel (Oates, Joyce Carol) (Hardcover)
After September 11, 2001 many authors felt it necessary to respond in some way. But how? Joyce Carol Oates has chosen to write a novel, not about that historical event specifically, but about the nature of hate and evil. She chooses to concentrate this exploration in the intimate environment of a celebrated, reclusive writer named Joshua Seigl. He has reached a point in his life where he realises that he can no longer block the world out and needs human company. Searching for an assistant to help him organize his enormous body of work and attend to the menial chores of his large house, he encounters a drifter who calls herself Alma. Her body is covered in what may be scars, birthmarks or tattoos. Alma uses these mysterious marks on her body to fashion a personality for herself which can confront the uglier aspects of the world that her more sensitive self cannot combat. After hiring her there follows a working relationship in the intimate space of Seigl's house that unearths hidden aspects of both their identities. The unspoken antithesis that exists between them is built through months of a seemingly harmonious working relationship. Yet the hatred that exists between them is brought physically to the forefront by the exaggerated attitudes of Alma's dangerous, anti-Semitic lover Dmitri and Seigl's mentally unbalanced, passionately upper class sister Jet. Inevitably, the central characters own prejudices must come to the forefront where a tacit understanding is formed amidst tragic events. The ultimate question this novel raises is: what place does art have in illuminating the past and dispensing with hatred? The answer is not as simple as it appears because fiction does not deal in truth. One can't help feeling that Oates herself is attempting to work out her own feelings over the matter in a heated argument toward the end of the novel where Joshua defends his writing: "`Alma, I think of myself as writing stories for others. In place of others who are dead, or mute. Who can't speak for themselves.'" This argument for the exhumation of buried events and people is the same that Oates has used in interviews to explain why she has written some novels such as Black Water and Blonde that reinvent historical situations. Alma's rebuttal is that he pretends to know these things, but doesn't actually know. However, one could argue that the point of fictional writing isn't to get at the "truth" but to convey an "idea" and in these "ideas" we discover the reality that has been hidden. The Tattooed Girl isn't a political novel in any obvious allegorical manner. It does, however, haunt your thoughts in the way it illuminates the divisions (economical, social, racial and religious) between people to such a startlingly intense degree. It is an incredibly important book that ought to be read now.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dark, thought provoking, beautiful... Classic Oates!, February 12, 2005
I have read all of Joyce Carol Oates's short-story collections and hadn't given one of her novels a whirl until now. The Tattooed Girl confirms my belief that Oates is one of the best writers of our time. The Tattooed Girl tells the story of a late-thirties Jewish writer and the strange girl he hires to be his assistant. He is taken by her gaunt, heavily tattooed appearance and lack of self-esteem. As he writes a historical novel based on his grandparents' struggles during the Holocaust, he is unaware of the anti-Semitic things that occur right from under his nose, things that are brought on by his assistant's racist boyfriend. There are various disturbing twists throughout the novel.
I couldn't put this book down. The writing is so beautiful and full of prose that it kept me turning the pages. The story is something I'd come to expect from Oates. Some of the dark and disarming passages would make excellent book discussions. This isn't just a story about hate, it is also a story centered on the layers of the characters' personalities and the inner workings of the soul. Oates delves once again on domestic abuse here, but she always adds a whole unique perspective to the aforementioned subject matter. I love how the author compared the things that go on in Seigl's novel with the things that occur to him in the real world. Some of those scenes moved me. Once again, Joyce Carol Oates has illustrated the reason why I love her writing so much. She is a true and rare talent and I look forward to reading all of her novels.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
3 1/2 Stars: Flawed Souls Yearn to be Healed, September 12, 2003
This review is from: The Tattooed Girl: A Novel (Oates, Joyce Carol) (Hardcover)
To say that JC Oates's THE TATTOOED GIRL is populated with flawed souls and monumentally flawed people is to understate the case. The two main characters, old-money wealthy and educated Joshua Seigl and Alma Busch (the tattooed girl of the title) are at the end their respective ropes: Seigl, a JD Salinger-type recluse living off the reputation of his first novel which deals with the survivors of the Holocaust, who can't quite bring himself to complete any of his many works in progress and Alma, a wanton, perpetually down-on-her-luck young woman who carries the marks of her past and of her lifestyle on her face and body. THE TATTOOED GIRL is not by any means one of Oates's strongest recent works but it certainly has it's moments and patented Oatesian scenes such as this one dealing with food and eating: "Her rapidly chewing mouth...Saliva glistened in the corners..." It has always been interesting to me that Oates, thin and trim in real life, has always written of food and eating in such a manner: uncontrolled, sensually even orgasmically. And she does it here once again. Seigl and Alma reach out for each other but not at the same time. In fact one of the weakest character motivations of this novel has to do with Anna's hate of Seigl because he is Jewish (which technically, he isn't having been born to a gentile mother) and her perceived notion that he thinks himself privileged: "Mostly that's why she hated him... he didn't know what he owned." Throughout most of the novel Seigl is completely unaware of Alma's real feelings about him and Alma likewise of Seigl's towards her. The connection is not made until the last few pages when it is too late for both of them to revel in the kind feelings, love and ultimately the redemption of their love for each other. THE TATTOOED GIRL is Oates at her very darkest. And even though the writing is often glorious and redolent with the aroma of truth, this is not Oates at her best: some of the characters are sketchy and could have been left out and some are retreads of characters from earlier novels, especially Alma. (Alma could be exchanged with Ingrid in MAN CRAZY or Anellia in I'LL TAKE YOU THERE. They are one and the same.) But a good Oates novel is better than most authors best and anyone interested in contemporary fiction would be hard pressed to find better, more aggressive writing of this quality anywhere else.
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