Broke Heart Blues

Author:   Joyce Carol Oates
Publisher:   Akashic Books,U.S.
ISBN:  

9781636141145


Pages:   446
Publication Date:   24 October 2024
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained
The supplier is currently out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out for you.

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Broke Heart Blues


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Overview

IN THE HEART OF A LANGUID JULY, ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD JOHN REDDY HEART drives a traffic-stopping, salmon-colored Cadillac into the quiet upstate town of Willowsville, New York. His mother, Dahlia Heart, a blackjack dealer, has brought her family east from Las Vegas to claim the rambling mansion left to her by a wealthy suitor. But it is John Reddy-already growing into a heartbreaking hybrid of James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Elvis Presley-who will claim the town itself. It is John Reddy who will arouse the desire of Willowsville's teenage girls and the worship of its boys, the fear and envy of its men, and the yearning of its women. And it is John Reddy who will capture the town's soul forever on the night a prominent citizen is shot dead in Dahlia Heart's bedroom-and a statewide manhunt sweeps Willowsville's rebel outlaw into the realm of living myth. Over the course of thirty years, Broke Heart Blues charts the rise and fall-and the ultimate call to reckoning- of John Reddy Heart, through the myriad voices of those who find him their whipping boy, savior, dream lover, and confessor. At once a scathing indictment of the cultlike nature of fame and celebrity in America and a deeply moving mediation on human need and longing, the novel explores loneliness, and the profound price we pay for our desires and dreams.

Full Product Details

Author:   Joyce Carol Oates
Publisher:   Akashic Books,U.S.
Imprint:   Akashic Books,U.S.
ISBN:  

9781636141145


ISBN 10:   1636141145
Pages:   446
Publication Date:   24 October 2024
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained
The supplier is currently out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out for you.

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Reviews

"A sharp, funny look at how memories can warp reality . . . heart-wrenching and beautifully written.-- ""Wall Street Journal"" A sparkling comic hit.-- ""Boston Sunday Herald"" Densely layered, meticulously imagined . . . [a] shared coming-of-age tale fraught with the absurd comedy and uproarious sadness of adolescent obsession . . . among the most entertaining of Oates's novels.-- ""Miami Herald"" Funny and playful . . . displays great inventiveness and a justified belief in its relevance to our emotional lives.-- ""New York Times Book Review"" Huge, humorous, manic, and multilayered, Oates's twenty-ninth novel will rank high among the best work she has produced in her prolific career.-- ""Publishers Weekly, starred review"" It's hard to think of another writer with as fecund and protean an imagination as the eighty-five-year-old Joyce Carol Oates, who is surely on any short list of America's greatest living writers.-- ""New York Times Magazine"" Oates uses her astonishingly plentiful imagination to paint the portrait of . . . virtually an entire generation of a town . . . Rife with life.-- ""Washington Post Book World"" Joyce Carol Oates's stunning novel about one town's ramped passion for a boy accused of murder, Broke Heart Blues, feels more resonant than ever in this reissue with a thoughtful afterword.-- ""Shelf Awareness"" With Broke Heart Blues, Oates does for high school reunions what Huckleberry Finn did for the Mississippi . . . Great authors have a way of rendering common things extraordinary . . . This dry satire of America's thirst for scandal is perfectly calibrated.-- ""Christian Science Monitor"""


A sharp, funny look at how memories can warp reality . . . heart-wrenching and beautifully written.-- ""Wall Street Journal"" A sparkling comic hit.-- ""Boston Sunday Herald"" Densely layered, meticulously imagined . . . [a] shared coming-of-age tale fraught with the absurd comedy and uproarious sadness of adolescent obsession . . . among the most entertaining of Oates's novels.-- ""Miami Herald"" Funny and playful . . . displays great inventiveness and a justified belief in its relevance to our emotional lives.-- ""New York Times Book Review"" Huge, humorous, manic, and multilayered, Oates's twenty-ninth novel will rank high among the best work she has produced in her prolific career.-- ""Publishers Weekly, starred review"" It's hard to think of another writer with as fecund and protean an imagination as the eighty-five-year-old Joyce Carol Oates, who is surely on any short list of America's greatest living writers.-- ""New York Times Magazine"" Oates uses her astonishingly plentiful imagination to paint the portrait of . . . virtually an entire generation of a town . . . Rife with life.-- ""Washington Post Book World"" Joyce Carol Oates's stunning novel about one town's ramped passion for a boy accused of murder, Broke Heart Blues, feels more resonant than ever in this reissue with a thoughtful afterword.-- ""Shelf Awareness"" With Broke Heart Blues, Oates does for high school reunions what Huckleberry Finn did for the Mississippi . . . Great authors have a way of rendering common things extraordinary . . . This dry satire of America's thirst for scandal is perfectly calibrated.-- ""Christian Science Monitor""


Author Information

JOYCE CAROL OATES is the author of many works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. She is the editor of New Jersey Noir, Prison Noir, A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers, and Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers. Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award, PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Humanities Medal, and a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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