Black Water

by Joyce Carol Oates

Book Overview

The Pulitzer Prize-nominated novel from the author of the New York Times bestselling novel We Were the Mulvaneys "Its power of evocation is remarkable." --The New Yorker In the midst of a long summer... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452269865
• Release Date: May 1993
• Publisher: Plume
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.3" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Suffocation by Manipulated Narrative Structure

"Black Water" is one of Joyce Carol Oates' masterpieces. Being predisposed to lean toward her short fiction, I was surprised to find myself so in love with this book. To answer a few questions, yes it does bring to mind a certain senator who is a member of "America's Royal Family." And yes, it does completely abandon the traditional guidelines for storytelling. Howecer, only a truly magnificent writer can take these rules and throw them out the window with such skill. This novel begins with its central character drowning in a car accident. In fact, every single chapter details the exact same event. Oates' tale is like a memory. We are looking at the same thing over and over until we finally understand its origin. This is not the only truly amazing thing about "Black Water." Oates makes us drown too. This is something that is said all too often about way too many writers; however, in this case, it would be true. It brings to mind earlier work. I find myself reminiscing over the way I felt for Connie when I first read "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" I am excited to see how fast she will make my heart beat in the future.

taste black water

Joyce Carol Oates presents the reader with a simple story in "black water" !!In every chapter, there are thrilling sentences that left this reader in awe of Oates's strength as a writer.„If you're looking for a book different from many others in the way it's written, I would Black Water." ...

Review of Joyce Carol Oates' Black Water

This novel was one of extensive study by my part, and the more I read, the more I appreciated the fear, the possible real life correlation to a US senator, and the momentum in which Oates carries us through the scene of this horrible accident. The entire novel is barely a hundred and fifty pages, separated by thirty-two chapters. The speed and the brevity in which she writes makes it all the more believable, and is in my opinion the best dramatic choice Oates made as far as the convention of the prose. Although these thirty-two chapters were small, they were jam-packed. That question everyone wants to know is in there and seems to be answered, which I can't reveal or I would spoil the book. The worldview Oates' is two dimensional to me. One part of the view portrays through the accident is something we all know, accidents happen. The main character being a younger female, interested in politics, and interested in starting her life while thinking in almost every chapter, "am I going to die-like this" really wakes the reader up and moves the common "accidents happen" theme to "accidents can happen to you too, at any time." The other most significant and compelling part is shown through a young woman who is violated when she trusts an older man. As she sits trapped in the sinking car, the Senator escapes and physically uses her body as a stepstool, leaving her behind. The most intriguing part of the story for me was that she was convinced he was coming back, and yet this is a smart character. A character who makes a conscious effort to discard anything as silly as a horoscope and one who is approach is intricate in design no matter what the circumstances. So what happened? The complications Oates made within the main character really move your mind in several directions. Any female reader can really relate to the dramatic choices in dialogue and characterization the Oates makes. The element of fear is something that Oates really plays around with through the entire book. There is the stark fear of death, fear of talking out of turn, fear of consequences from men, fear of leaving a relationship, fear of putting somebody above you in the political world down on your level, and fear of life itself. And the fear that is still surfacing after finishing the novel is the fear of trusting people. The reader watches a spark between a man and a woman as Oates so simply and naturally creates the scene and this so thought harmless afternoon fling turns into a bloodcurdling accident that details the thoughts of the victim and the disbelief-it's amazing. This novel has an element of truth, or motivation from the 1969 Chappaquiddick Island accident involving Senator Edward Kennedy and Mary Jo Kepechne, who was in a similar position as Kelly Kelleher. However, it is obvious fiction since no author can rewrite the thoughts of a deceased individual. Nevertheless, the prose by Oates was critical in creating a believable situation. It all takes place in Kelly Kellehe

American girls, politics, tragedy, deterrence.

With her novel Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates has taken a sad occurrence in American political history, the Chappaquiddick incident, and explored it from the perspective that most of America and the media did not consider when the accident happened, that of the young woman who lost her life in the car crash. She then utilizes that perspective to put forth a compelling statement of the deterrent effect such an incident should have on other "American girls" who would follow in the footsteps of Mary Jo Kopenkney, whom Oates bases the main character, Kelly Kelleher, upon. The book's most striking feature is its unconventional structure. Though it is only 154 pages long, it is divided into 32 chapters, some of which are only a page long, and two parts. The chapters often repeat sections of the story over and over, adding a little more information or changing the perspective just a bit, until ultimately the reader receives a fully constructed picture of the incident and the preceding events. Oates chooses to delve deeply into the main character, Kelly Kelleher, and leave the would-be antagonist with just a vague descriptive title, The Senator. There are several reasons for this, among them a kind of ironic objectification of the political figure in a way similar to the media's treatment of Mary Jo Kopenkney, and to focus the reader's attention in such a way that he or she realizes that the identity of The Senator is not what is important. It is what he represents, a glossy, distinguished portrait of American political success that is most vital to Oates's thematic concerns. Oates is addressing the attraction that some young women in our society feel for that political success, and the resulting ways that cold and selfish men can manipulate that attraction. Black Water is a wake up call for those who would be Kelly Kelleher, an "American girl" who is led into a dangerous, even fatal, situation by letting herself be controlled by a man's esteem and political power. Oates wishes that those who would follow in Kelly's footsteps to see the incident as a deterrent, a warning, and she makes this absolutely clear with her inclusion of a detailed description of the death penalty in chapter 30. The death penalty is intended as a deterrent to would-be criminals, and Oates wishes Kelly Kelleher's "death penalty" to be seen in this way as well. The novel's prose style is simple and pristine. Oates leaves aside complicated, dense language in order to better communicate her thematic concerns. At times the structure can be a bit confusing because of the repetition, but the average reader should have little trouble. Its subject matter is somewhat dark in tone, but that is simply the nature of the theme, which inherently requires a grave and serious approach. With this novel, Oates has achieved an excellent balance of pleasurable reading with the exploration of a vital issue. I highly recommend this book to any reader, regardless of your favorite g

Beautifully written, it reads like poetry

The premise for Joyce Carol Oates' tiny novel "Black Water" is the scandalous Chippaquiddick incident that anyone over the age of 40 should be familiar with. But what's remarkable about it is that Oates has transformed this "faction" into a beautiful ballad. The happenings of that fateful night when the black Toyota plunged headlong into the swampy river is told through the eyes of the drowning girl. There's a sense of real pathos in the telling cos it's painfully obvious the girl's impressed with the Senator for the wrong reasons and that he's a cad. The manner of the Senator's escape from the capsized car and his cruel abandonment of her as she awaits hopelessly for her own rescue is a wrench to read. The novel reads like a poem in parts. Maybe there's a song in there somewhere, with a verse, a chorus and a middle eight. By using the drowning girl's vantage viewpoint, Oates has created a powerful masterpiece that's so wonderfully compelling it bears reading over and over again. Truly great stuff !