Beautiful Days by Joyce Carol Oates

4 Stars

The title is a trap, which is very representative of the story themes. 

The writing is very good. It is worth experiencing Oates craftsmanship, but that said, this is not easy reading. The themes are heavy, disappointment-filled, and agitative. The quality is higher than my rating implies, and I want to read more Oates--after a spell. 

Once upon a time, a man and a woman had as many children as God sent them. That is, the woman had as many children as God directed the husband to afflict upon her.

Oates holds up a mirror of middle-age, suburban white women. Often times they appear neurotic, but is that them or the choices life has made them make? There's a focus on the schism of womanhood between modern and traditional roles and how it tears. Educated, becoming more frantic, and set in their patterns. Women troubled by relationships with men. Obsessive.

Lovemaking. The Making-of-love.
As if love does not generate itself, but has to be made--by the effort of two.

Water, symbolic of sex features prominently in several of the first stories. I'm always drawn to interactions people have with water, how they approach it, and their underlying relationship with it. Here, water is troubled and unsettling, reflecting the characters' lives.

Like swimmers drowning together, but gripping hands. Tight.

There is always a foreign element or a sense of "other" present, shading the interaction. Eastern European males, French-Canadian setting, black versus white; nothing is comfortable. A bizarre sense of exoticism and threat. Even pleasant interludes have ominous undertones that envelope the characters. 

The man was her lover, but not her friend.

It is hard to live in a body, we have learned. The body betrays the pretty doll-face and makes of its prettiness a mockery.

Oh, this strange panic-sensation! She had left him behind in his own dull bell-jar life, to suffocate.

Time plays a major theme in a couple works: disorientation, the past, lost. 

They were not that sort of parents. Not that sort of people. Not ever.
But words too can lash. Words too can sting.

The last story is the only one that doesn't contain women. While the first half is strongly focused, the stories begin to evanesce away in the second half to themes of time and political issues, war and abuse. After writing this review I realized that I liked this book more than I thought. Intellectually, at least.