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Title details for Missing Mom by Joyce Carol Oates - Available

Missing Mom

A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates
Anna Fields
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available

This is the story of missing my mother. One day, in a way unique to you, it will be your story, too. So begins Missing Mom, Joyce Carol Oates personal and candid new novel. Nikki Eaton, a single, 31-year-old, sexually liberated and economically self-supporting young woman, never particularly thought of herself as a daughter. Yet following the unexpected loss of her mother, her identity is transformed during the course of a tumultuous year of mourning that brings sorrow, illumination, wisdom, and even - from an unexpected source - a nurturing love.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    May 1, 2006

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780792744474
      • File size: 415687 KB
      • Duration: 14:26:00

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Nikki, an upstate New York feature writer, tells the story of life as the daughter of Gwen, recently widowed and given to a homey gentility. Gwen is subsequently murdered, but the book is less a murder mystery than a self-absorbed narrative, by a not particularly likable main character. Listeners might expect that a novel read by the wonderful Anna Fields and written by the incomparable Oates would knock their socks off. The novel starts out with Oates's usual expertise, but then things become tedious and disappointing. Anna Fields provides a valiant, emotional reading, but not even she can present an unbearably long list of the word WHY without its becoming tiresome. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 8, 2005
      Oates's latest returns to upstate New York's Mount Ephraim, the setting of We Were the Mulvaneys
      , Oates's 1996 novel—a 2001 Oprah
      pick—about one family's privilege and decay. This time, Oates turns to the middle class: narrator Nikki Eaton, 31, is a reporter for the smalltown Beacon
      and her family's black sheep. She's having an affair with a married DJ; she barely tolerates her widowed mother, Gwen, and her homemaker sister, Clare. As the novel opens, Nikki arrives at Gwen's Mother's Day party with newly spiked, "inky-maroon" hair and contempt for Gwen's cooking, one-story house and endless munificence to her ragtag guests. Two days later, Gwen is murdered by an ex-con. Chronicling Nikki's year following Gwen's death, the novel includes some wonderfully precise emotional observations. But more often the prose sags beneath the weight of banal information and a story line too redolent of pulp. Naturally, the "swarthy" police detective investigating Gwen's murder initially seems repulsive, and naturally, in the novel's final pages, Nikki thinks: "I had not noticed in the past how strong his profile was." There are no surprises, that's for sure. And yet the novel is so conventional and relentlessly detailed that it can't help showing its characters behaving in ways that resonate.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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