Pub Date: 2004-09-06 Pages: 336 Language: English Publisher: Harper Perennial Joyce Carol Oates is one of the worlds most respected living novelists Her new novel brings us a tale of dark passions. prejudice. and the strange forms that love. can take. A celebrated but reclusive author. young but in failing health. Joshua Seigl reluctantly realizes that he can no longer live alone. One day he encounters a young woman with synthetic-looking blond hair and pale. tattooed skin in a bookshop. She stirs something unidentifiable within him -.. pity desire responsibility He decides that Alma will be his assistant An uneasy relationship begins. one which lurches between repulsion and attraction. between hate and love Seigl is unaware that Alma has been shaped by abuse and misfortune His. kindness is baffling to her;. his bookishness completely alien She secretly harbours anti-Semitic...
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About the Author:
Joyce Carol Oates is a writer of wide appeal for all readers, described as `One of the Nation's finest writers', she has been a recipient of the National Book Award, PEN/Malamud Award for short fiction and was an Oprah Book Club Selection with WE WERE THE MULVANEYS. Her recent novels include MIDDLE AGE and I'LL TAKE YOU THERE. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is the Roger S Berlind Distinguished Professor at Princeton University.
From AudioFile:
Oates's novel about an intellectual and his barely literate assistant provides a narrator with a huge built-in advantage: The central characters couldn't be more different. Joshua Seigl is an acclaimed 38-year-old writer in upstate New York who suffers from a mysterious degenerative illness. He hires Alma as his new assistant, projecting on her an idealized nobility that couldn't be further from the truth. The book shows people so locked into their own points of view that they are blind to the essence of others. Kate Fleming certainly delineates the two characters--who couldn't? Her Alma is affecting, barely verbal but never without a hint of menace. But Fleming ages Seigl far beyond his age in the book, causing listeners to continually do mental calibrations. M.O. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
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- PublisherBOOK DEPOT REMAINDERS
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 0007170785
- ISBN 13 9780007170784
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
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