Them

It’s a gritty book about living/growing/existing while poor in Detroit. Part coming of age but also part never getting there.

"Them" has an intriguing and even risky premise: Joyce Carol Oates, who was teaching literature at the University of Detroit in the 1960s, receives some rambling, emotionally revelatory letters from a former student and fashions a novel out of this poor girl's life story. The girl was not a good student--Oates had flunked her, and it's easy to see why if her epistolary manner indicates the quality of her literary essays. But the passion and the pain in her letters cry out for a story to be told, one that is probably more interesting than any that could have been furnished by a better, happier pupil. The girl is given the pseudonym of Maureen Wendall, and "Them" is the saga of her dysfunctional lower-class family from 1937 to about 1966. A laundry list of domestic turmoil--rape, murder, attempted murder, assault, accidental death--devastates the Wendalls as they migrate throughout the poor neighborhoods of Detroit, chasing solvency and dignity in vain. Her older brother Jules, a restless, rebellious spirit, can't stay away from bad influences or out of trouble, and her younger sister Betty is a mischievous tomboy whose delinquency seems to arise from familial neglect--they only take notice of her when she's doing something wrong, which of course is most of the time. Maureen herself is bright enough and behaves well; she likes to read and makes the public library her sanctuary, where in the permanence of the words of Jane Austen novels she finds a comforting reality lacking in the instability of her home life. Her innocence is destined to falter, however; as a teenager, she begins meeting an older man and accepts money for having sex with him. When her ogreish stepfather suspects her of misdeeds, he beats her severely, incapacitating her to a bedridden, emotionally withdrawn state for about a year. Jules, in the meantime, has quit school and begun living the life of a job-hopping, potentially dangerous drifter, part Frank Chambers, part Studs Lonigan, and (to be kind) a little part Tom Joad. He is hired as a chauffeur by a blundering rich (or once-rich) man named Bernard and through him meets his pretty niece, Nadine, a girl residing in an affluent suburb representing a world he has never before been able to attain. She runs away with him, and what happens to them on their cross-country journey and then afterward is too sad to be comical and yet too absurd to be tragic in the classical sense; too gross for the conventions of fiction, it could be expected to happen only in real life. Oates culminates this novel filled with various kinds of violence in a race riot, against the backdrop of which the ideological diatribes uttered by several characters newly introduced to the story, advocating large-scale social changes for the nation, seem oddly removed from the more private concerns of the Wendall family. But, after all, the Wendalls' privacy is impacted and influenced by the public force of human presence, the people we don't neces

This is one of Ms. Oates' earlier works set in Detroit. It is a book of excellence as one generation is rolled into the other. A very true to life book where as the characters advance in reaching their destiny however small, they are always setbacks and stumbling blocks, not allowing them to see the light at the end of the tunnel, reminding us of the pathways we've walked before and are forever walking in. This was a very emotional book for me with great depth to the story line. It is a long book and should be read with patience in order to get the gist of the Detroit the author penetrates in that century with it's poverty, racial and violent concerns. You won't forget Maureen Wendall who some will empathise with you see her desires and the things she yearns for with all her heart and soul.......and you won't forget her brother Jules either...intelligent and so very intricate you wonder what he is about to do next with that brain that never stops ticking. I cannot help saying what a brilliant writer I have found in Ms. Oates, and I encourage those who love her as much as I do to try THEM. I recommend it to all her favourite readers who haven't read this one as yet. Reviewed by Heather Marshall Negahdar (SUGAR-CANE 02/03/02)

Joyce Carol Oates is a novelist of the first order. Her novel of postwar Detroit (really of postwar America), Them, is her best. Nothing she has written, before or since (even including her newest, the fictionalized biography of Marilyn Monroe) brings the reader the emotional power, or the superb prose of Oates' immortal classic. Readers who read Them when it was first published years ago deserve to study the new Modern Library edition. Readers unfamiliar with the best of Oates should run, not walk, to their bookstores or their personal computers and order this classic. It is as simple as that. Them is a masterpiece.

This book was somewhat of a struggle for me, though I am a giant Joyce Carol Oates fan. I thought it wasn't possible, but "Them" is more of a brooding, dark, and realistic novel than Oates has pulled off anywhere else in her career. Here is a lot of characters that are in constant danger of falling to pieces, of escaping one another, of realizing their limits as individuals and as a family unit. If you are not a reader who can take a kick in the stomach, don't read this book. However, if you are willing to realize there is a hard edge to life which goes unrecognized each day, pick this book up as soon as you can - Oates creates a world fatalism and human conditions that are at once terrifying, yet beautiful: it is hard to look away. I was held breathless and scared until the last word dropped like a boulder.

This book describes the state of American turmoil during the 1960's with vivid imagery. Being in my mid-twenties and not alive to experience the 1960's, I feel this book provides an important account of these times. I truly felt the eerie adrenaline-induced excitement of this tumultous period. Jules' character chilled me to the bone; his evil sexuality reminiscent of the character of Arnold Friend in 'Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?" This is a beautifully written book, one of JCO's finest works to date.