This review is part of the Literature World Tour.
(For some reason, I am convinced that I've met a Marina Troy, but she's definitely not the same Marina Troy who plays a principal role in Middle Age: A Romance, a novel by Joyce Carol Oates.)
I first started reading Oates this year with the purchase of The Tattooed Girl, which I read while getting tattooed (yes, I have no imagination). Having powered through that with generally positive feelings for it at the end, I decided to take a chance with something that I'd originally not fancied at all, purely because of the ho-hum cover. But jacket design is another discussion altogether.
Middle Age concerns the lives of a bunch of, well, middle-agers after the death of one of their number, the enigmatic sculptor Adam Berendt. His death that occurs in the opening pages of the novel is heroic, he was trying to save some children at a Fourth of July picnic. Little by little, we learn about the community of Salthill-on-Hudson, or at least the women who loved him (and, for those who have them, their husbands).
It's more than a sleepy novel of Americans living in the suburbs. It turns out that Adam isn't exactly who he says he is. Marina, who is, by far, the youngest of his admirers, inherits his home in the mountains and sets about creating a legacy on his behalf. Meanwhile, everyone goes through mid-life crises as they struggle to come to terms with Adam's premature passing.
Some have said that this is a political novel, and some others have questioned the subtitle, A Romance. I didn't see it as particularly political, but I did definitely see it as a romance in all its forms - Adam's mysterious appeal as well as short- and long-lived emotional attachments between characters in the novel are laid bare, inviting us in. Whoever thinks middle-aged people are boring should read this novel and think again.
Next in North America: Robert Burdock's review of Callisto
Next stop on the Literature World Tour: South/Central America and the Caribbean!
