First Love

By Joyce Carol Oates

Book Overview

In her latest book, Joyce Carol Oates explores the bond between victim and abuser through the tangled strands of love and fear in a young girl's mind. Part nightmare, part elegy, "First Love" vividly... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0880014571
• ISBN13: 9780880014571
• Release Date: August 1996
• Publisher: Ecco
• Length: 85 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.0" x 0.8" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

Eerie....But a beautiful tale of sexual abuse....

Hauntiing..Chilling...This is my first reading by Joyce Carol Oates. The story is about an eleven-year-old girl Josie and her sad victimization and its influences exerted by her twenty-five year old cousin, Jared and her self-absorbed mother, Delia. Both Josie and her mother, Delia are set to stay with the Burkhardts in upper-state New York after Delia leaves Josie's father for unknown reasons. Unforunately, Josie is placed amongst religious hypocrisy as Jared her cousin strips her of her innocence while he is studying to be a man of the cloth. The black snake that Josie mentions throughout is the devil, the serpent Jared and it is in the marsh a modern day "Garden of Evil" where Josie is stripped of her innocence. It is Jared whose own loneliness forces himself to prey on a helpless victim, Josie as he has sexual relations and then forces her to taste her own blood to signify that there are blood cousins and invokes fear in Josie to keep their secret. However, although as sad as this story of sexual abuse may be, to Josie some loving even from an ominous relationship is better than none since Josie's mother herself is a wanderer in pursuit of her own love as she meanders from man to man. However, the reader always hopes that Delia would have motherly instinct to save her daughter from Jared, but unbeknownst to her Josie is sacrificed because of her own self-absorption leaving Josie as a target of a hypocrical yet troubled Jared. This is a gorgeous tale and depiction as to how fear operates in the mind of an innocent child and how fear from a sexual predator is a powerful weapen to paralyze its victim in not revealing the ominous act of sexual abuse--Fear is normal..Fear is good..Fear will save your life... However what is even sadder is the protection by Josie of Jared once her mother inquires into her bruising done by Jared. Unfortunately, rather than exposing Jared she protects him..One wonders what type of life will Josie lead after this abusive relationsp..This is a wonderfully hautingly yet beautiful book and the wooden-like illustrations by Barry Moser adds eerieness of the tale.

All Eyes Blink, all memory erased. . .

I bought this book for a friend, and after she read it--I stole it for a few days. Very enjoyable. The religious symbols and allusions are amazingly disturbing, yet allows one to see how a child--perhaps even an adult--could be confused with religion and love, together. It's a definite must-read. It's first and second-person point of view play a role in the novel's eeriness. A dark, twisted, mind-boggling novel. Snakes, swamp, sexual abuse and how "easy" one can suppress bad memories--all written so beautiful it's disturbing, yet enjoyable.

If you want to terrorize yourself here's a book to do it

This is a short book. You can read it in a single sitting. But I warn you--it will get you. It is a horrifying story. Oates is good at this stuff so beware--prepare yourself to ask: Why did I read that and put myself through such an experience? Real horror has little to do with monsters and everything to do with what resides in our own hearts and in the way our society molds us, and Ms. Oates knows how to make us squirm as she lays it all out.

Love can be a bitter cruelty of life

Life is cruel. Loneliness adds to such cruelty, and makes one a victim of it. This is the story of the bewildered 11-year-old Josie whose life is shattered one summer, and in response becomes the victim of other lonely people. "Fear is good, fear is normal. Fear will save your life." Oates begins her story with this warning on the first page, and ends with it just four paragraphs from the end. It is the story of a family that fell apart, and the harm that falls upon the innocent. The background is that Josie's mother left her husband and moved to another state, where her mother was soon engrossed in a frantic hunt to escape loneliness. She forgot about Josie, alone and isolated and lonely in a new town with no friends, and with the healthy curiosity of a young girl. A 25-year-old divinity student slips into her life and offers the attention to fill her loneliness, yet he has his own bitter demons. It is a story of sadism and domination, with Josie falling completely under the spell of the 25-year-old Jared. He strips all of her clothes off, inflicts cuts on her breasts, dominates and degrades her with taunts of "filthy little -- filthy, filth -- girl," ties her down with cloth strips to dominate her and leaves her "in terror, animal terror, beads of sweat breaking out like flame on your body." She accepts such pain because Josie wants, "Love. Love. Love Jared, don't hurt me." Everyone wants to be wanted, and if this is the only "wanting" that Josie can find, she'll take it. Her mother is emotionally absent, she's bullied at her new school, and that is why Josie turns to any substitute who gives her the attention she craves. Her mother finally defines the problem as her own inability to love anyone, ". . . . . . . I've been so unhappy, I've been so undefined. Every man I've ever wanted, when I have him I cease to want him -- it's a curse." Some people are like that. Give them love, and their own sense of inadequacy drives them to hurt others who offer the most. Oates presents the story as a snapshot of life; no moral judgments, no great lessons, no redemption. It's simply a slice of life. Most stories have a "plot," but we don't think of finely crafted photographs as having "a plot." It's often said a picture is worth a thousand words; in this case, Oates turns a few thousand words in a powerful picture. If you want answers for the cruelties of life, it's not here. If you enjoy a superb portrait of a gripping slice of life, this is a wonderful book.

First Love is a searing book that brings abuse to light.

In this novella, JCO, has added yet another masterpiece to her already voluminous collection. In a blue/middle collar environment, innocence is lost by a man who, in the future, would become a man of the cloth. It is a story that mirrors so much of what is visible in the news today of people who think that they are above the law. JCO shows the irony of the molester who is studying to be holy and virtuous in the eyes of God, but acts and committs in the name of unthinkable, selfish evil, which seems representative of much of humanity. A gritty, raw painfully truthful book!