Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.

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By Joyce Carol Oates

Publisher Description

“Timely, monumental. . . . Yet another piercing examination of American culture by the writer this reviewer considers our country's greatest living novelist. . . . It is brilliant. How blessed we are to have her as a novelist in our chaotic, confusing times. Night is spot on for these times of racial divide, as well as in portraying the fractious family dynamic that many of us know all too well. . . . Night deserves the top spot on your quarantine nightstand. Here's a fervent salute to Oates, our finest American novelist, for this one.” -- Star Tribune

The bonds of family are tested in the wake of a profound tragedy, providing a look at the darker side of our society by one of our most enduringly popular and important writers

Night Sleep Death The Stars is a gripping examination of contemporary America through the prism of a family tragedy: when a powerful parent dies, each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways, and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all.

Stark and penetrating, Joyce Carol Oates’s latest novel is a vivid exploration of race, psychological trauma, class warfare, grief, and eventual healing, as well as an intimate family novel in the tradition of the author’s bestselling We Were the Mulvaneys.

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74 Reviews

3.0

Endaf Roberts

Created 9 minutes ago

Lisa smoot

Created about 1 month ago

“I had very high expectations as this book had been advertised as her next We Were the Mulvaneys and I loved that story. But where there the author explored a series of unfortunate events that occur to a good family after a terrible tragedy, here it was non-stop bad things that happened to a not so great family after the death of the father - who admittedly died after attempting a good deed. None of these characters were likable and behaved atrociously - both to each other and to people outside of the family. It was hard to muster up any sympathy for any of them, and the choppy writing style did not help the pages go any faster; they simply dragged. It was a chore to read the whole thing and, further adding insult to injury, the abrupt ending left a lot to be desired. Sigh. Terribly disappointed. Three (meh) stars. Buzzword Readathon: Books with “Night” in the Title”

Heather Black

Created 5 months ago

Casey Shelton

Created 5 months ago

Ashwin Glittus

Created 6 months ago

“A family patriarch dies. The family mourns. The world moves on. A stray cat moves in, for some, it is a stray hope of companionship while for some, it is an omen. Doom clouds the skies, clouds loom towards the horizon, a storm is brewing, would light break through the overcast curtain? Joyce Carol Oates populates NIGHT SLEEP DEATH THE STARS with people, but the central character here is a theme, grief. Through the eyes of a family, we see grief reflect and refract on its existence. Grief becomes a stray cat who becomes a stray hope for companionship. Prowling in the shadows of one's existence, grief is in the hunt for crumbs of the detritus left in the wake of the battle scarred terrain bombed out by the supreme despot holding all by a leash, the merciless ticking of time. The span might lead to raised eyebrows. The initial pages might lead one to a certain direction. Pages play out as expected. It might lead the reader to ask "What was Whitman doing in the epigraph?" As one moves on, these doubts grow profound. It takes a trek to the halfway mark and the introduction of a pivotal someone where Oates reveals the ace up her sleeve. It is both the arch drawn and definition rendered to this character that helps the thematic crux of the novel coalesce. From intentional cardboard to glorious flesh and blood, Oates makes us both despise and root for her characters and this dichotomy renders them with humanity. In the span of a sentence, there is a deft switch in tone from gloom to levity. Laughs, hiccups, heartbreak, joy, sorrow, grief, hope, all find room here, just like life itself.”

About Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.