The Tattooed Girl

by Joyce Carol Oates

Book Overview

Celebrated author Joshua Seigl, an idiosyncratic bachelor and confirmed recluse--young but in failing health--reluctantly admits to himself that he must hire a live-in assistant to help him with his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060531061
• ISBN13: 9780060531065
• Release Date: June 2003
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Another great novel by Joyce Carol Oates

After falling in love and pain with We were the Mulvaneys I had to read another one of Oates' books. The bookcover drew me in, the title and the description on the flap. The characters are soo well thought out that you feel as if you can really see this happening. You feel sad for the tattooed girl, the lonely bachelor losing his independence and the wacky sister who turns out to be the craziest one of them all. A touching story, this one takes you into the darkness...

Dark, thought provoking, beautiful... Classic Oates!

I have read all of Joyce Carol Oates's short-story collections and hadn't given one of her novels a whirl until now. The Tattooed Girl confirms my belief that Oates is one of the best writers of our time. The Tattooed Girl tells the story of a late-thirties Jewish writer and the strange girl he hires to be his assistant. He is taken by her gaunt, heavily tattooed appearance and lack of self-esteem. As he writes a historical novel based on his grandparents' struggles during the Holocaust, he is unaware of the anti-Semitic things that occur right from under his nose, things that are brought on by his assistant's racist boyfriend. There are various disturbing twists throughout the novel. I couldn't put this book down. The writing is so beautiful and full of prose that it kept me turning the pages. The story is something I'd come to expect from Oates. Some of the dark and disarming passages would make excellent book discussions. This isn't just a story about hate, it is also a story centered on the layers of the characters' personalities and the inner workings of the soul. Oates delves once again on domestic abuse here, but she always adds a whole unique perspective to the aforementioned subject matter. I love how the author compared the things that go on in Seigl's novel with the things that occur to him in the real world. Some of those scenes moved me. Once again, Joyce Carol Oates has illustrated the reason why I love her writing so much. She is a true and rare talent and I look forward to reading all of her novels.

Fascinating Probe Into the Emotions of Hatred

First off, a brief summary of the story: A wealthy heir/author who is rather eccentric decides that he needs an assistant. The author hires a young woman who has been abused and has almost no self-esteem. Her newest boyfriend is a white supremacist who often waits on the eccentric author at a local cafe. He hates the author who found fame by writing about the Holocaust. He then spreads his hatred to his new lover, who is the author's assistant. I'll avoid mentioning the rest of the plot and will not reveal the quirky ending.The true appeal of this story is the way Oates' enters the mind of her two main characters. The author and his assistant end up sharing a significant portion of their lives together and never connect. Along the way, their relationship is marred by the stain of religious hatred. The hatred is more subtle than the usual anti-Semetic, white supremacist vitriol. Most interestingly, it is captured by Ms. Oates in her examination of their thoughts and emotions.Some people have criticized Oates for this in the past which seems ludricous because she's written this way for years. You'll get your plot eventually and the story will move on, but only until you experience every change in emotion and confusing thought that comes to the mind of each major character. At times it's unsettling but that's the nature of this story.In the end, you are likely to be somewhat disturbed by the story and the ending, but if it has made you think about certain truths of life, than it was worth your time to read it.

Oates in her rare form again

Oates has done it again. Just when we thought she was going soft with middle aged romances and blonde biographies along comes another modern, gruesome, gothic novel. In the tradition of Man Crazy and the Rosamond Smith serial killer novels, Oates returns to some of her favorite territory, the stalker with murder in mind. Here the usual territory takes a decidedly literary twist. The object of all this attention being a classical author, very much like Philip Roth, coincidentally the man Oates has singled out for her dedication. Poor Roth, or Joshua Seigl in the book, is in for a tough time. Oates has several villains in this piece, a barely literate girl deliciously contrasting our literally self-absorbed hero, a psycho boyfriend, and a sister from hell to torment her secluded writer brother. Get set for a fun ride, and some thoughtful musings about evil's random victims. Oates has been occupied of late with rewriting some of her past literary works, The Garden of Earthly Delights, and them, but she is not too preoccupied to continue her now grand old tradition of creating a spooky thriller. I just want to know when she has time to eat.

The Dangers of Our Unspoken Reality

After September 11, 2001 many authors felt it necessary to respond in some way. But how? Joyce Carol Oates has chosen to write a novel, not about that historical event specifically, but about the nature of hate and evil. She chooses to concentrate this exploration in the intimate environment of a celebrated, reclusive writer named Joshua Seigl. He has reached a point in his life where he realises that he can no longer block the world out and needs human company. Searching for an assistant to help him organize his enormous body of work and attend to the menial chores of his large house, he encounters a drifter who calls herself Alma. Her body is covered in what may be scars, birthmarks or tattoos. Alma uses these mysterious marks on her body to fashion a personality for herself which can confront the uglier aspects of the world that her more sensitive self cannot combat. After hiring her there follows a working relationship in the intimate space of Seigl's house that unearths hidden aspects of both their identities. The unspoken antithesis that exists between them is built through months of a seemingly harmonious working relationship. Yet the hatred that exists between them is brought physically to the forefront by the exaggerated attitudes of Alma's dangerous, anti-Semitic lover Dmitri and Seigl's mentally unbalanced, passionately upper class sister Jet. Inevitably, the central characters own prejudices must come to the forefront where a tacit understanding is formed amidst tragic events. The ultimate question this novel raises is: what place does art have in illuminating the past and dispensing with hatred? The answer is not as simple as it appears because fiction does not deal in truth. One can't help feeling that Oates herself is attempting to work out her own feelings over the matter in a heated argument toward the end of the novel where Joshua defends his writing:"`Alma, I think of myself as writing stories for others. In place of others who are dead, or mute. Who can't speak for themselves.'"This argument for the exhumation of buried events and people is the same that Oates has used in interviews to explain why she has written some novels such as Black Water and Blonde that reinvent historical situations. Alma's rebuttal is that he pretends to know these things, but doesn't actually know. However, one could argue that the point of fictional writing isn't to get at the "truth" but to convey an "idea" and in these "ideas" we discover the reality that has been hidden. The Tattooed Girl isn't a political novel in any obvious allegorical manner. It does, however, haunt your thoughts in the way it illuminates the divisions (economical, social, racial and religious) between people to such a startlingly intense degree. It is an incredibly important book that ought to be read now.