Childwold

By Joyce Carol Oates

Book Overview

First Edition assumed with none stated. The Vanguard Press, NY 1976. Good-/Good- dust jacket condition. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0449234509
• ISBN13: 9780449234501
• Release Date: November 1981
• Publisher: Fawcett Books
• Length: 287 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Above average Gothic-style novel with social themes.

There are two specific aspects of 'Childwold' which some readers might consider to be serious drawbacks. One is the narrative method. The story of the novel is told in a series of short segments of stream-of-consciousness either of recollection of past events or of impressions of immediate experience. The length of these segments varies from one to a few pages and the identity of the character whose thoughts we are privy to usually changes with each segment. Thus, the reader is subjected to multiple stories, multiple personalities and multiple points of view as the book progresses. If this is not confusing enough, one of the characters appears to be living in the past, two seem to be suffering from severe delusional states, and one is an adolescent girl with very subjective views of the world. I'm not sure of the total number of characters revealed through their thoughts, but would say there are two main ones, three minor ones, and perhaps a couple more that only appeared once or rarely. The book presents itself somewhat like a jigsaw puzzle of many pieces. If the challenge is accepted in this spirit, then the persistent reader will gradually get an ever clearer picture of the history and personalities of the various characters and begin to see how the individual stories are related to each other as well as to the overall thrust of the book. The mention of the overall thrust of the book leads me to the other reason some might feel a lack of interest. The book was published in 1976 and, once the story begins to come into focus through it's multiple viewpoints, is seen to be very topical for the time in which it appeared. In other words, some might feel it deals with yesterday's news. It seems to me Ms. Oates has tried to draw us in to her story by getting us to play detectives and piece the strands together like Sherlock Holmes until we have come to know the characters, and ,with some prodding on her part, to empathize or identify with some, and feel horror and rejection of others. What we come to is a realization that the book is dealing with a time of transition for society. We see degeneration and decay as an ever-present backdrop for the poor family living in an old farmhouse in the remote countryside. Specifically, the old patriarchal, rural form of life is no longer viable. Society is moving into the era of more urbanization, more single moms, and more assertiveness from females to make their choices based on self-fulfillment rather than societal convention. This was the time of vets returning from the Vietnam War. One of the characters illustrates the horrific psychic aftermath of the experience of being seriously wounded in that war, and has become a grotesque parody of the aggressive behavior which leads to war in the first place. In fact, male aggression is also an ever present theme, and Ms, Oates is telling us through the mechanism of the story that this behavior is obsolete and unacceptable. The main male character who shuns viol