What is mystery becomes irony what is opaque becomes translucent poetry. There are numerous flash-forwards, as well; and a mirroring of characters across generations. And while Oates doesn't quite reach the same heights of feverish ecstasies of her model, she did manage to create countless characters and images and actions in Bellefleur that I won't soon forget.
Which is not to say that I loved this novel unconditionally—several hundred pages in I knew which characters I didn't find very interesting and began to skim the chapters they appeared in, and I really did have to force myself to finish the last pages or so which is a shame, because it really does all lead up to an unexpected and incendiary conclusion. And for the most part, I enjoyed it thoroughly. Jun 22, Julie rated it liked it Shelves: I am only a few chapters in, will check back later It took me a long time to read this book.
It was nearly pages long, and just not my cup of tea. The reason I picked this book up was because it was listed as a gothic novel. There were too many characters to keep up with. I never really got a good read on the main character in the novel and at two or three times I felt the urge to just stop reading this book and pick up another one instead.
But, I forced myself t I am only a few chapters in, will check back later It took me a long time to read this book. But, I forced myself to finish it and was really disappointed that I read this whole thing and it ended like it did. I know Joyce Carol Oates is a critically acclaimed author and I have read some of her other novels, but this one I just couldn't get into. I started reading my first Sookie Stackhouse novel last night, which is, I suppose more my speed, and I had to laugh when when I saw some characters with the last name of Bellefleur!
View all 6 comments. If anyone was wondering, the books are not sequential and do not contain the same cast of characters except if a historical figure pops up in more than one which I believe might be the case. They can be read in any order. Bellefleur tells the story of the Bellefleur family, a prominent and wealthy line who own a large amount of land in the Adirondacks as well as a large mansion. The novel jumps back and forth and tells the stories of six generations of this family, from its lunacy to its failures to its triumphs. This book has supernatural elements to it, but I would not call it a supernatural book.
It's more surreal than supernatural, and these elements are very rarely the focus of one of the stories. The biggest strength of this book is the creation of a history. With six generations, myths and events happen and pass. Due to the non-linear nature of the tale, often an event will get alluded to before the story has been told in the narrative. I don't want to say that this book isn't a page turner because I do not want people to think that I was not excited to see what would happen next, or indeed what had happened before, but it is not a book that is filled with suspense.
It's not a book that one would devour in one sitting and I'm not sure many people could even be able to do that because of its incredible length. It's a leisurely read and one that I enjoyed from start to finish.
Bellefleur
Feb 26, Dixie Smith rated it it was amazing. This book is a long one, but is classic Joyce Carol Oates style.
The story jumps from place to place, from one point in time to another, from character to character, none of it in any particular order. She describes some things in great detail and while only hinting at others. She doesn't always prescribe to conventional uses of punctuation and will continue a thought for line after line after line, but there is a strong flow to her stories that I find addictive.
I enjoyed this book a great deal. It is a really long story, and everything is interrelated but you don't always see it. I love the flow of the stories it is kind of like a bunch of different short stories together and the way JCO writes. Overall, it's a great book. Sep 04, Anne rated it really liked it. I vividly remember Leah throwing open the door in a rainstorm that wildly blows and soaks her peignoir and lush hair for a cat named Mahalaleel! I remember a huge drum on the stair landing made from a man's skin. I remember a spinster sister visited my creatures resembling vampires.
I remember Mink Pond, debt, despair, the grinding away of love. I remember too many children, too many kittens on an overgrown stone patio. It was sort of like experiencing an opera. Mar 20, Deleted rated it really liked it. Seems to me that you either do or do not like Joyce Carol Oates and your reasons are as varied as the temperaments of her abundant books.
Perhaps no reason is more fitting than poet Michael Chapman's, who liked her because she was always holding a ball-point pen in her cover shots. This was my first Oates adventure and it was a consuming experience.
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If you delight in vacationing in exotic books, have a taste for the gothic and other-wordly, then this is a must-read. Jan 19, Katya rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is probably one of my top books of all times. You could call it a saga or an epic, and it is lush, sweeping and fantastic, often blurring the lines between sanity and lunacy, the real and the supernatural. Oates never quite makes the distinction between what is perceived and what is truly there, leaving the reader to decipher the reality of the Bellefleurs through their eyes.
This book is long. This book is wordy. If you don't like intriguing, labyrinthine writing that's a journey into itse This is probably one of my top books of all times. If you don't like intriguing, labyrinthine writing that's a journey into itself, perhaps you'd be better off sticking with something a little more simple, like Twilight.
Bellefleur is a law unto itself and a standard in literature. In my English class junior year, we had a choose an author and write a critical paper about several of their books. My 8th grade English teacher highly recommended Joyce Carol Oates, so I decided to read some of hers for this paper. Why I chose this tome is beyond me The writing style she adopted for this novel was so long-winded--I'm talking parathetical thoughts that go on for three pages. The time frame of the novel was weird t In my English class junior year, we had a choose an author and write a critical paper about several of their books.
The time frame of the novel was weird too--for some characters the novel took place over a couple of months, for others it was decades, and the landscape seemed to change like millenia had passed--which, once I finished reading this, was how much time I felt had passed as well. Jun 11, Mad Mister Mark rated it it was ok Shelves: To my mind it's like a great byzantine workshop where ol' Joyce trots out lots of ideas that will later become full books in their own right.
I recognize so many short stories, so many themes Perhaps this is an ambitious younger writer's attempt at something 'War and Peace'-ish. There are compelling strains of story, characters full of promise, but I just can't find my way th Let me start by saying I'm a HUGE fan of JCO, but this was my second attempt at this book, and I finally just gave up. There are compelling strains of story, characters full of promise, but I just can't find my way through all those WORDS.
There are far too many wonderful books in the world to be read in a single lifetime, and after two attempts, I've decided this will be one for another lifetime. Bellefleur, the mansion, is Bellefleur the family, is Bellefleur the story: It took me the whole summer to read this book, but that was not necessarily because of the length. Although pages of very tiny print was a lot to get through, definitely.
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Rather, I tried only to read this book when I was not distracted or rushed, which means I put it away for weeks at a time when my young stepson was visiting. The reason I gave this book such hallowed treatment is because Oates is writing in very heightened prose here, and it definitely keeps you on your toes. Some of her It took me the whole summer to read this book, but that was not necessarily because of the length. Some of her sentences stretch on forever, but they never feel stilted or forced, just languorous.
My disjointed reading of this book was aided by the fact that each chapter is on a totally different theme. Some recount a particular event, some quickly sketch the life story of a minor family member we haven't heard much about, while others enumerate one type of possession among all the family members through all the generations. For instance, the chapters called "Horses" and "Automobiles. However, there is a "present" of the book where the main action occurs; this is during the time that Germaine Bellefleur is a young child, and she is what I would call the main character, if I had to name one.
Speaking of time, Oates is definitely playing games with it in this book. I think it's not a coincidence that she omits almost all dates from the family tree at the beginning of the book, with only the first few generations having definite birth and death dates. At first I was convinced that the "present" of the book was in the late 's, but then about halfway through the book, the first car appeared, and by the end of the book, things were happening that could only have happened in the 's.
Likewise, the ages of the characters seem amorphous. The book opens right before Germaine is conceived and ends on her fourth birthday, so the action would be expected to take about 5 years. However, the twins Bramwell and Christabel are said to be 5 years old in the beginning. Clearly time does not proceed at the same rate for all family members. Even more puzzling is the case of Jedediah Bellefleur, one of the earliest family members, who spent twenty years of his life, from to , living as a hermit on the top of Mount Blanc. Although we have definite beginning and ending dates for his time on the mountain, he is never able to keep track of time while he's up there, and among his visitors are a modern Girl Scout troop clad in multi-colored parkas and one of Germaine's uncles who is surveying the mountain.
The sense I got from this is that all times exist simultaneously on top of the mountain.
Bellefleur by Joyce Carol Oates
No wonder Jedediah was so befuddled while he was up there! I had never read a novel by Joyce Carol Oates before, but I had read many of her short stories, and this is definitely a different mode that she's writing in here. If you are a fan of either of those books, you might want to give this one a try. If you like meandering gothic tales this is for you. While I do enjoy gothic tales sometimes Oates is a hard writer to follow, and then I feel rather dumb because I feel like I am missing an important point.
I did not feel like I engaged with any of the characters, as there were a lot of them, spread over a vast amount of time, sometimes with the same first name. The narrative jumped around chronologically from chapter to chapter, which also adds to the cognitive confusion. The writing is rich a If you like meandering gothic tales this is for you. The writing is rich and this is a great example of the gothic but I do like my reading to have a little more structure. Jul 31, Laura rated it really liked it. I really enjoyed Bellefleur.
This story of the Bellefleur family covers about 7 generations of crazy-brilliant nutjobs. Oates moves back and forth between generations and I was dizzily flipping between pages and the family tree in the front of the book at first. But then the Bellefleurs become your crazy, wealthy, mentally unstable family and who doesn't love that? The ending was crazy and not really in a great way, but the book was, overall, really quite good. Oct 23, Elizabeth Alaska marked it as set-aside Shelves: I spent days with this and actually got to page something - beyond halfway.
But I'm cutting my losses. Life is too short to keep reading what I'm not especially enjoying and what I think won't be rewarding to have finished. The people are just sick. What started as an enjoyable book, ended as a crazy mix of characters, 50 different stories, and unexplained paranormal and psychic activity.
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Hero after hero, story after story, she takes us deep into the family tree of the aristocratic inhabitants of the Bellefleur castle. In this book you have everything. A medium, a vampire, a shapeshifter, enchanted objects, a man going int Chaos. Not to mention the writing is too detailed and full of side stories and clarifications, half of which could have been omitted.
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Jun 18, Muldvarper rated it it was amazing. This is literature as it's meant to be. What sort of mind, driven by an unspeakable lust, had imagined all this into being? What maddened mind, deranged by an unspeakable lust, had imagined all this into being? Jun 19, Beth rated it liked it Shelves: I really liked this, but I prefer horror to be scary rather than disgusting and this went a bit too far for me in places.
I was fascinated, though. This is a contemporary take on the Gothic novel covering several generations of a very messed up family. I didn't particularly love the characters, but I loved the narrative voice -- lyrical and haunting. Mar 03, Terri Weitze rated it did not like it. I have tried and tried to read this book, and I just can't. The writing is lovely. But mother of god, where is the plot? Just pages and pages of description of very unlikeable people, and not a story line in sight. Then bear her to the greenwood, and build for her a bower, And give her what she asketh, jewel or bird, or flower— And bring the fife, and trumpet, and beat upon the drum— And bid the world Goodmorrow, and go to glory home!
There has been for many decades now a kind of obverse prejudice that a realistic novel ends unhappily, that marriage is disastrous, and maybe that society bears it out. I know I really am very Romantic, and idealistic, and often sentimental. So when attacking the genre of a Romance specifically and trying to revitalize some of the old traits of plot and characterization, I think I was really giving way to a sense that maybe today we do need to revitalize Romance. Images may not be reproduced without permission of Joyce Carol Oates. Frequent quotations in this volume, particularly of verse, are liberally drawn from the excellent books assembled by Mrs.
Martyn and Miss Bates, to whose literary labors, and bounties, I am very much in debt. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Enter your email address to subscribe to Celestial Timepiece and receive notifications of new posts by email.
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