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    Carthage: A Novel
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    Carthage: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Carthage: A Novel
    Ebook591 pages11 hours

    Carthage: A Novel

    By Joyce Carol Oates

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    New York Times Bestselling Author

    A young girl’s disappearance rocks a community and a family, in this stirring examination of grief, faith, justice, and the atrocities of war, the latest from literary legend Joyce Carol Oates

    Zeno Mayfield’s daughter has disappeared into the night, gone missing in the wilds of the Adirondacks. But when the community of Carthage joins a father’s frantic search for the girl, they discover instead the unlikeliest of suspects—a decorated Iraq War veteran with close ties to the Mayfield family. As grisly evidence mounts against the troubled war hero, the family must wrestle with the possibility of having lost a daughter forever.

    Carthage plunges us deep into the psyche of a wounded young Corporal, haunted by unspeakable acts of wartime aggression, while unraveling the story of a disaffected young girl whose exile from her family may have come long before her disappearance.

    Dark and riveting, Carthage is a powerful addition to the Joyce Carol Oates canon, one that explores the human capacity for violence, love, and forgiveness, and asks if it’s ever truly possible to come home again.
     
     
     
     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 21, 2014
    ISBN9780062208149
    Author

    Joyce Carol Oates

    Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

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    Reviews for Carthage

    3.5/5

    126 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      In the small Adirondacks town of Carthage, New York, 19-year-old Cressida Mayfield goes missing. The prime suspect in her disappearance is a severely wounded Iraq war veteran who happens to be her older sister's fiance. I don't want to say much more about the plot, because it's twisty enough that every time you think you've got a hold on something or someone, it turns out you don't. I love how Joyce Carol Oates takes a fiction genre and plays around with it until it is more than the sum of its parts, while remaining completely respectful of the genre she is borrowing. Here, the whodunit aspect is legitimately suspenseful, but the reader's attention is more strongly drawn to the the seething emotions of the characters. I didn't quite know what to make of Cressida - is she on the autism spectrum or not? - but I was drawn to her in all her brittle unlikability.It's an odd book. It's dark. Joyce seems to delight in confounding the reader! I do have to wonder about all the exclamation points and italics. They seem to be an Oates trademark, but in this book they really struck me.
    • 4/5
      Very, very long because you are seeing the story from several points of view and yes, they are all different and Joyce Carol Oates is a master of detail. I was listening to this while I was working on something else---I'm not sure I would have finished it if I had been reading it.
    • 3/5
      An overly long examination of what happens to the family and friends and victim when a teenage girl goes missing.
    • 4/5
      I felt like this book took me forever to read. The fist half of the book I had trouble finding a character that was likable. It wasn't until the last several chapters that I could really find any redemption for them. Joyce Carol Oates is a master at exploring the darkness of humanity.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this novel. Well written story with a great cast of characters. I'm a new fan of Joyce's and can't wait to read more from her. Highly recommend Carthage!
    • 5/5
      So far, and I've read only about twenty of her books, I think this one is her best. The characterization, which she is such a master at, in this case outstanding. Oates allows you to get inside and be the character. In this case the plot was unique as well. I just wish the ending was a bit more complete. We know what she intends to do about Brett Kincaid, but what about the old man?
    • 2/5
      This is a good story but I found the writing style difficult, so much so that reading it felt like work. The author is widely praised, I know, but I probably won't read another of her books.
    • 4/5
      This novel was a bit of a muddle for me, at times so, so good and at others, painfully labored. It's about a missing girl and the effect of her disappearance on her family and the accused perpetrator. That's the surface story anyway. Deeper, it's an exploration of alienation and misperception, and about the dark currents often flowing just below placid surfaces. Oates' characters are both sympathetic and infuriating, their actions and motivations perfectly understandable at times and completely inscrutable at others. It's this kind of complexity that I loved, despite my struggle with some parts of the book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I have never read this author but she came highly recommended from a friend. I loved the book, although the middle section that was relevant but at times too detailed and long. The book is dark and the main characters not that likable, if fact I'm not sure I really "liked" for any of the characters.Despite this, I read the book straight through and if has left me thinking. That's a compliment!

      1 person found this helpful