A Garden of Earthly Delights

I believe I read this book some years ago, but forgot that I had, as Joyce Carol Oates has rewritten it. It is a wonderful story about migrant farm workers living during the depression, and what one of the characters, Clara, the daughter, does to get away from this miserable existence to a place where she feels she has some power. In essence, this book is the story of a woman who is realized by the company she keeps (the men... Read Full Review

The plot was all right, but I was most impressed by Ms. Oates's lyrical use of language. She has the ability to transform the most mundane actions, feelings, or settings into something that seems really unusual or noteworthy just by describing it a certain way. I love the way the the main character, Clara, sees the world...it is very refreshing and unusual. I can't really tell if the awesome descriptions throughout the... Read Full Review

Joyce Carol Oates revised and rewrote The Garden of Earthly Delights; this new version was just published in 2003 under the Modern Library 20th century rediscovered. (This was the author's second novel originally published in 1966.) The novel follows the life of Clara Walpole, born in a ditch to migrant workers during the Great Depression. She grows up moving from camp to camp, picking when children are allowed to pick, and... Read Full Review

This book combines the best of all things Oatesian. If released as a new work today, it would blast through the awards committees faster than a Philip Roth masterpiece. This reworking of Oates's second novel seamlessly integrates the fire of her yuthful writing, full of her own personal experiences, with the seasoned mastery of her later writing style. This completely rewritten book is ultimately satisfying because there is... Read Full Review

This is Joyce Carol Oates? second published novel. It is where she proved her ability to write a powerful epic as she would later do again in novels such as Bellefleur. It follows the life of Clara, a woman born to migrant workers in the midst of the Depression. She is born appropriately in the middle of a violent accident. Here we see the delicacy and terrifying indifference of human life swept up in a sea of natural transformation... Read Full Review