them by Joyce Carol Oates (1969)

I can't remember the last time I was this annoyed with a book. The author, Joyce Carol Oates, has been on my radar for some time. She has written 40 novels, and I've even seen her mentioned as deserving of the Nobel Prize for Literature. When I finally decided to read something of hers, I chose the one which had been awarded a major literary prize (the National Book Award) and which she once commented was her best book. If this is her best, I would hate to have to read her worst.

The first reason for my annoyance--In the Forward to the novel, Oates states that the book is based on facts imparted to her by a former student about her life and the lives of her family members. Oates says that the letters quoted in the text were written to her by the student and that the other information came from their frequent conversations. OK, so I should believe that the seemingly endless catalog of violent and tragic events depicted here could really all have happened. But then, I read on Wikipedia that in an Afterward to the novel, Oates admitted that all the events depicted were entirely fictional and that the letters supposedly from the student were written entirely by Oates. This Afterward was certainly not present in the hardback copy I bought, so I read reviews on Goodreads and Amazon and it was apparent that almost all reviewers believed that the story was based on truth. Evidently their reading copies did not have the Afterward either. I have tried to research when and in what editions the Afterward was published, to no avail. Anyway, I feel annoyed that Oates tried to trick me into believing the unbelievable.

The second reason for my annoyance--While this would present itself as a naturalistic/realistic novel, telling the dispassionate story of poor whites in Detroit, Oates stretches reader belief past the breaking point with her account of the mayhem all happening to the members of one family. Multiple murders and attempted murders, rape, vicious beatings, prostitution, thievery--it's all here. These are admittedly present in the Detroit of then and now but surely not all in one small family over the course of a few years. In addition, almost all the characters, both the family members and those with whom they come in contact, appear to be mentally unbalanced, as in full-on loony tunes. Nobody reacts to anything in what would generally be considered as a normal manner. Their thoughts as presented by the omniscient narrator are irrational. They seem to be in an incoherent daze most of the time. The novel reads more like surrealism than realism.

Still more reasons for my annoyance--them is damned depressing, too long, and has too many extraneous details, which are designed, no doubt, to lend verisimilitude to the story.

I really dislike this book. I'm not even going to summarize the plot points. I advise you not to read it.