Broke Heart Blues

By Joyce Carol Oates

Book Overview

IN THE HEART OF A LANGUID JULY, ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD JOHN REDDY HEART drives a traffic-stopping, salmon-colored Cadillac into the quiet upstate town of Willowsville, New York. His mother, Dahlia Heart, a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525944516
• ISBN13: 9780525944515
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Dutton Adult
• Length: 369 Pages
• Weight: 1.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 1.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A moving and epic novel about high school

I read quite a few negative reviews about this book before buying, but I always enjoy JCO's books so I took a chance. And I wasn't disappointed. Broke Heart Blues is a sweeping, nostalgic and bittersweet look back at high school through the minds of an elite class of rich kids in a suburb of Buffalo. Willowsville is a town populated by the wealthy and finds itself turned upside down when John Reddy Heart and his glamorous mother, grandfather and younger siblings arrive. Since the moment he drives in town sitting on three Las Vegas phone books at 11 years old, this town will never be the same. There are legends, rumours, half-truths abounding about this kid until he is arrested for the murder of a well-known man in his mother's bedroom and then the John Reddy Heart mania truly begins. Each of them finds a little something different in John Reddy and this is an obsession that lasted throughout their adulthood as well.The first part of the book deals with the rumours and people's perceptions of the boy through various eyes. Its a lengthy and detailed narration using different voices that all worshipped him. The second part is about the real John Reddy Heart, a nice, quiet kid who had trouble expressing himself which gave rise to his mystery. It tells of his difficult life and shows just how wrong people can be about someone else. The real boy was far different than the kid idolized in town. He was really a shy kid trying to make sense of his out of control life and attempting to keep his family together. It also goes into his adulthood and the kind of man he became. The third deals with the thirtieth reunion and this is a bittersweet, funny yet very sad account of rich suburbanites who never left high school. It almost makes you sad for the popular crowd because they never left that mindset behind in this book. The end of this is tragic. These middle-aged kids at heart still trying to make sense of life throughout various disasters from heart attacks, cancer, divorce and children. At the end, you realize that no matter how much money you have or how old you are, there is a part of you that will forever remain in high school. This was one of the best parts of the book and sad too. This one is very detailed and not for everyone but I loved it. Its a great read and one that stays with you long after its finished. One of my favorite JCO books.

broke heart blues

Ms. Oates, America's finest writer, takes her keen writing, observation, and analytical abilities to new heights as she deals with concepts of hero-worship, the trauma's of teenage existence and the unique qualities of "community" in the American culture. This is a fun, thoughtul book.

This is good stuff

I have the distinct advantage of not having read any other Oates works, and so Broke Heart Blues writes on a tabula rosa. I thought it allegorical, not "a stretch" like others. I found it wholly engaging, not "tedious" as some did. And far from trivial, I found it profound.The book parlays the contrast between female adolescent male hero-worship and middle-aged female angst into a wonderfully insightful and moving story. Oates evokes both the harmony and the discord of each of these life stages; one hears the cacaphony of emotions as they play out in each. She paints the tragedy (as well as the inevitability) of the co-existence of adult yearnings in teenagers and adolescent yearnings in adults. The mix is equally problematic, and often disasterous, for the members of each group. While devoting few words to sex per se, the book is mostly concerned with about precisely that, and its continuing power over the emotions, and often the actions, of young girls and boys, middle-aged parents, and even children and old men. Trouble is greatest when a character acts on chronologically out-of-synch emotions.At the center is the child-adult Heart, who grows into the adult-child Heart, and is thus is nearly always out of synch. He serves (literally and figuritively) as the lightening rod for the women characters' emotional and physical cravings in both adsolence and adulthood. He also functions as the focal point for the fanatsies (including the heterosexual ones) of the male characters. They lust after their female peers vicariously, deeply envious of their dream girls' devotion to the mythology of Heart. This hero-worship by both sexes is beautifully and evocatively symbolized by a certain tatoo on a main character's body, and by her boyfriend's public self-prostration in adoration of it.This book is good stuff, and shouldn't be missed by any thinking person in their forties or early fifties with even a dim remembrance of themselves in high school or college.

A Fevered Masterpiece from America's Favorite Glamorpuss

At last, the A-side to "Starr Bright." I agree with PW. Broke Heart Blues is one of Oates's very best. It made me wonder, though: Is Joyce America's oldest teeny-bopper? Sometimes I think she's the Dick Clark of contemporary lit.

America's greatest writer

Oates creates wholly complete worlds. In this book, more than any of her others, she merges narrative with mythology - we make gods of thosw we know bwcause they make us feel that being extraordinary is possible. The transition from 'ordinary kids like us' to those who attaain high success or plumb sad failure has never been more tellingly captured. And at the heart, the hero - John Readdy - is the perfect enigma: a life projected by others onto the screen of experience, and captured like a fading phtograph in case on ever fogets that people just get older.Every year JCO produces another book. (She is very like Anita Brookner except AB writes the same thing over and over and JCO never repeats herself). And there is never a dud. She writes like a dream, and I mean that in simply every meaning of that word.