The Gravedigger s Daughter
£2.69
A thoroughly good read :-) - I have spent that last two days reading this book and what a page turner it was. There is no mystery to this book or twist in the tale, but instead a real story about how the life and suffering of Rebecca and her son unfolds. The story is based in America and begins with a Jewish family escaping from Germany prior to WW2 and the impact this has upon their lives, and in particular the main character in the book, Rebecca. Rebecca s life and her journey is described page by page from that of a small child to a woman in her 60 s dying from cancer. This book was recommended by a friend and I would definitely recommend it to others. :-)
Strange, somewhat really intriguing - I finished this book in a matter of days, not because it was so good I had to keep reading but because I felt it was leading up to a surprising spectacular ending. Unfortunately, I got my hopes up too high with this one!The first half of the book sees the main character (Rebecca/Hazel) as a child, which I thought was perhaps the best written part of the book - it was very dark but on the other hand was, in my opinion, relatively well written.I think it started to go downhill a bit as the main character got older. It s difficult to pin point bad and good points because ultimately I felt some parts of the book were very good, but some were dismissavely boring.As I said before, the ending was a bit of a something of nothing. It could have been made a lot more exciting with a few twists in it. I think the most interesting characters were invented during Rebecca/Hazel s childhood but they were rarely mentioned again and could have been brought into her adulthood more than they were. I think that would have linked the book more together and bound it as a life-story. I m glad I read it, because i did enjoy it, however I probably wouldn t go out of my way to recommend it to a friend.
Tedious in the extreme - I am one of those people who persevere to the end of a book, no matter how much of a hard slog it is, but I really did have to force myself with this one. For a start, it is far too long, after reading fifty pages, I wondered if anything was actually going to happen.The characters themselves are quite interesting but the whole thing was just far too tedious. I have never been so bored with a book! Perhaps it s just the American idiom but I found it poorly written (inadequate punctation, which is always a bugbear of mine), spelling mistakes, etc.. Did anybody actually bother to proof-read it?This is the first book by this author which I have read and I don t think I ll bother with any others.
Musical Chairs - Rebecca Schwarts is the gravedigger s daughter. In many ways she is the ultimate Joyce Carol Oates heroine: flawed, cowed by life, the child of hysterically dysfunctional parents, orphaned by a family tragedy yet always hopeful, always wanting a better life, always yearning. Because of all that befalls Rebecca she builds a wall of despair and impotence around her: All they knew of Rebecca was that she kept to herself. She had a stubborn manner, a certain stiff-backed dignity. She wouldn t take bs from anybody. Rebecca s father held his family in terror: he lorded over them and kept them ignorant of the outside world: Mr. Schwarts bought a radio one day and rather than share the news of the day with his family (as in WW2) locked himself and the radio in his den. All that Mr. Schwarts family (wife, daughter, two sons) knew was that Schwarts had escaped an unspeakable life in Germany: her (Rebecca s) father had been grievously wounded in his soul. Mr. Schwarts was fearful of the world, despised it even: They do not know us Rebecca. Not you and not me. Hide your weakness from them and one day we will repay them! Our enemies who mock us. Schwarts has invested in his daughter with a fear of the world, a wariness of anything out there. Somehow a man, Niles Tignor finds Rebecca, who while working as a housekeeper in a hotel and marries her: Tignor had not asked about her parents and might not have wanted to know more. Rebecca, always hopeful, always wanting to find someone that she can count on gives her all to her marriage to Tignor: she even has a child. It was said of Tignor that you never got to know--but what you did know you were impressed by. Rebecca s marriage to Tignor goes sour (he (Tignor) could make her come like a dog when he snapped his fingers...) both on a personal, physical level and on an emotional one and Rebecca finds it necessary to escape and to change her name to Hazel Jones. In large part due to her youth and good looks, Rebecca is able to make a new life for herself though always fearful that Tignor will find her. This fleeing is a major step for Rebecca, daughter of European peasants: You made your bed....now lie in it...it was the gritty wisdom of the soil. It was not to be questioned. Her wounds would heal, her bruises would fade. Then Rebecca and her son Zack are found by Chet Gallagher and both of their worlds change forever. (She did love him, she supposed. In the man s very weakness that filled her with wild flailing contempt like a maddened winged creature trapped against a screen she loved him) The Gravediggers Daughter is Oates s greatest accomplishment in a career of major, major work: Missing Mom, The Falls and my own personal favorite, We were the Mulvaneys. But despite these career highpoints and probably because of them, Oates has even improved upon her best work with this sprawling, intelligent, gorgeously written novel of Redemption on the one hand and the Power of Love on the other. The world that Oates has created here is one in which good acts are rewarded with a good life: a world in which there is hope and that hope is not smashed and assaulted but actually leads to a better relationships, a better understanding of life and a better life. The Gravedigger s Daughter is Oates at her most hopeful, her most positive, her most forcefully repellent of all of her usual dark impulses and as such it is Oates at her most refreshing and therefore at her most humanely thrilling and thoughtful.
In animal life - - ... the weak are quickly disposed of. So you must hide your weakness, Rebecca. We must. This opening statement reflects a father s command to his daughter, setting the stage for her life. Rebecca, heroine of the story and daughter of immigrants, grows up in rural New York State during the Depression and World War II years. Her environment is characterized by abject poverty, discrimination and prejudice against those who are different. Denying their German-Jewish background is part of their tragedy. No German language is allowed in the house, but neither the mother nor the two older brothers manage the adopted language adequately. Violence, alcoholism and crime are part of daily life in the family and those living in their neighbourhood near the graveyard.Oates skilfully evokes the oppressive atmosphere in which the gravedigger s family eke out a living, literally at the edge of human society. Increasingly, the young Rebecca withdraws into herself, drops out of school and tries to escape and to follow her brothers. A violent family drama that almost kills her and leaves her alone, in the end provides her with the opportunity for a much brighter future. However, is she capable of freeing herself from her background? Can changing her name, as she does a couple of times, change her life for the better? Hope, trust and happiness are emotions and experiences that are new to Rebecca and that will have to be learned. Her son, a child prodigy pianist from a marriage that was supposed to bring love and happiness, provides her with new energy and focus. But she has to escape again and, now completely unsettled, is moving from place to place until she finds an environment that offers hope and security for her son and herself. Will she stay? Is a new life possible and how will she be able to adjust to love and comfort? Can she trust enough to reveal the story of her past?Oates exquisite use of language to evoke characters and landscapes is well known. This talent comes again to the fore in The Gravedigger s Daughter. As the author depicts the ups and downs of Rebecca s emotional and physical life, her style is, at times, light and almost playful, but mostly, given the subject matter it reflects, it is intense and anguished. Those around Rebecca, who are supportive and caring, even loving, are painted as almost too good to be true. The Gravedigger s Daughter is a complex story that will keep the reader captivated to the end. Questions remain in the mind of the reader that the intriguing epilogue will not answer fully. It is not an easy read but worthwhile, in particular those interested in the social complexities in the pre- and post World War II American society. [Friederike Knabe]