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Cargando... Memorias de una viudapor Joyce Carol Oates
  
Top Five Books of 2015 (439)
  ) PamelaBarrett | Nov 14, 2022 |  Oates has entitled her book “A” widow’s story, but often in the course of it, she describes herself in the third person, in italicized letters. Some of these passages read like a third-person commentary (“In this way, unwittingly, and against the grain of her temperament, the widow has made a good decision,” p. 366). Others are formulated as bits of advice, almost like excerpts from a book of etiquette (“Any act a widow performs, or contemplates performing, is an alternative to suicide and is in this desirable however naive, foolish, or futile,” p. 97). I doubt many would prefer a life that never knows companionship, or a series of short, troubled relationships, to a long, happy marriage. There is a price to be paid, however. As Oates describes it, “widowhood is the punishment for having been a wife” (p. 102). The writing isn’t flawless. At times, Oates uses two adjectives when either (acrid, bitter) would have made the point. And I continue to wonder: are jellyfish both translucent and transparent? A minor quibble, I admit. I admired the way she interspersed batches of her e-mails into the account; they seem like a seismographic chart of her emotional upheaval. It’s a well-structured book, for instance in the recurring motif of the manuscript of Ray’s unfinished novel, abandoned decades earlier. This is not the kind of book I can say I “liked.” The pain, for all of the polite polish of Oates’s style, is too believably conveyed. I doubt I will soon forget the experience of reading of her struggles with the “basilisk.” That's the name Oates gives to that part of her interior dialogue that she describes as a beady-eyed lizard at the periphery of her vision, ever-reminding her that she is wrong to outlive her husband and that it is futile to continue to live. Does this sound crazy? Oates won’t argue: “Traveling in the wake of my husband’s death has been the outward face of my madness as my madness has been the inward face of my grief” (p. 238). ( ) HenrySt123 | Jul 19, 2021 |  ) sarahlh | Mar 6, 2021 |  ) kate_r_s | Oct 29, 2018 | turtlesleap | Sep 15, 2017 |
Brutal violence and catastrophic loss are often the subjects of Oates' powerful novels and stories. But as she reveals in this galvanizing memoir, her creative inferno was sequestered from her joyful life with her husband, Raymond Smith. A revered editor and publisher who did not read her fiction, Smith kept their household humming during their 48-year marriage. After his shocking death from a secondary infection while hospitalized with pneumonia, Oates found herself in the grip of a relentless waking nightmare. She recounts this horrific siege of grief from epic insomnia and terrifying hallucinations to the torment of death-duties, and a chilling evaporation of meaning. But Oates also rallies to offer droll advice on how to be a good widow. Oates has created an illuminating portrait of a marriage, a searing confrontation with death, an extraordinarily forthright chronicle of mourning. Her memoir of sudden widowhood will have an impact similar to Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking (2005). novelistic and expansive, switching between first and third persons, seeking to objectify herself as `the widow' ... mainly focused on the dark interiors, the psycho-chaos of grief.  This book’s timeline includes the facts that Mr. Smith died on Feb. 18, 2008, less than a month before his 78th birthday, and that it took Ms. Oates more than a year and a half to remove his voice from their telephone answering machine. It does not say that by the time he had been dead for 11 months, Ms. Oates was happily engaged to Dr. Charles Gross, the professor of neuroscience who became her second husband in 2009. How delicately must we tread around this situation?...A book long and rambling enough to contemplate an answering-machine recording could have found time to mention a whole new spouse. Pertenece a las series editorialesPremiosDistinciones
El libro más personal e impactante de Joyce Carol Oates, firme candidata al Premio Nobel «Le hipnotizará y le conmoverá... Un libro más dolorosamente autorrevelador de lo que la Oates novelista o crítica se haya atrevido a publicar jamás.» Ann Hulbert, The New York Times Book Review En una mañana gris de febrero, Joyce Carol Oates llevó a su marido Raymond Smith a urgencias aquejado de una neumonía; una semana después, ciertas complicaciones terminaban con su vida. Estas deslumbrantes páginas capturan el estado emocional de Oates tras la repentina muerte de su marido, y cómo se ve obligada a hallar su equilibrio sin la alianza que la había sostenido durante cuarenta y siete años y veinticinco días. Llenas de agudas reflexiones y, a veces, de humor negro, estas Memorias de una viuda narran también una conmovedora historia de amor, lírica, moral e implacable, como las que pueblan sus novelas, y ofrecen un inédito retrato de su intimidad, hasta ahora celosamente guardada. «Impecable... No cometa el error de pasar por alto este libro; simplemente, es demasiado bueno para perdérselo.» Dave Moyer, The New York Journal of Books «Sorprendente... Periodística e intuitiva, emocional y reflexiva... Oates comenzó escribiendo el diario de una viuda, y lo que ha logrado es la historia de un matrimonio.» Geeta Sharma Jensen, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel «Oates pertenece a la vieja estirpe de Poe, Borges, Kafka, Cortázar o Chéjov...» Ángeles López, Qué Leer «Una novela maravillosamente escrita y muy conmovedora# Una compra valiosa para el lector de memorias y, en especial, para los más mayores.» Library Journal «Oates escribe con una honestidad visceral y no ceja en obligar a sus lectores a las conjeturas al respecto de su próxima y estremecedora empresa.» Kirkus Reviews «Las memorias de Oates se unirán a Antonia Fraser y Joan Didion en la sección de obras esenciales sobre la pérdida.» The Daily Beast «Tiene tanto de retrato de un matrimonio único como de crónica del duelo... Inmensamente conmovedora.» Kim Hubbard, People Magazine «Tan cautivadora como dolorosa... un relato desgarrador... Esta posibilidad que Oates ofrece al lector de experimentar la muerte de Smith del mismo y dramático modo en que lo hizo ella es algo muy característico del excelente equilibrio de la autora entre lo intelectual y lo emocional.» Valerie Sayers, The Washington Post No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: (3.73)
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JCO memoir 'A Widdow's Story'
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