Book Review: "The Gravedigger's Daughter" by Joyce Carol Oates

“Three days later on October 29, 1959, the Pontiac registered in the name of Niles Tignor would be discovered, gas tank near-empty, keys on the floorboards beneath the front seat, in a parking lot close by the Greyhound bus station in Rome, New York.”

- The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates

Usually, I am absolutely in love with Joyce Carol Oates novels and I cannot fault them. I have to admit that this is one of those times where I really enjoyed the story because of its nature to be raw and emotional. Like her novel The Book of American Martyrs, this book deals with one horrific problem after the other and a woman at the centre of the action, in a world of terrible men, must seek out to make her own life and her own way after brutality happens.

One thing that Joyce Carol Oates does consistently well is give you everything and then some in her writing. Unfortunately though, I started finding The Gravedigger's Daughter a little bit bloated and overwrought at times. It seems like Oates has given us all and then some, but she's then added about five more pages of borderline nonsense to the end as well. There was definitely some editing that could have gone into this author's 37th novel.

The novel is about a young girl who's family has escaped Nazi Germany. Her father, no longer a respected intellectual due to the fact he is from another country, must become a gravedigger in order to make ends meet. Giving up on his dreams creates a volatile atmosphere for his wife and daughter and eventually, yes he kills his wife and almost kills his daughter before committing suicide. As this girl grows into an adult, we start to see her life take a bit of a turn and she adopts an entirely new persona, she marries a brute who beats her but in this case, there is very little she can do. With her son in tow she decides to do the only thing she can and honestly, it is pretty shocking for a woman in her position. The events that follow are a mixture of many different things including confusion as Joyce Carol Oates keeps this story going for a little bit longer than its welcome to.

One thing I liked about this book was the fact that it was actually really depressing. The book had this undertone of just one problem after another and even though it might sound like a bad thing that a book is really that saddening, it can do wonders for adding tone. Joyce Carol Oates gives this book an undercurrent of suffering which pulls the reader in emotionally and we become part of this main character's life, her words and her actions. She becomes more intensely relatable through the realism that surrounds her and she does not try to hide any action, word, movement etc. from the reader. Written in third person but told in an incredible third person limited style, the main character's journey is nearly always the best thing about a Joyce Carol Oates novel.

The one thing I didn't like about this book was the way it was written at times. Sometimes, the descriptions seemed a little bit overloaded with words and more than once, the weird phrasings kind of took me out of the story. This book could have done with being edited down by about fifty or so pages because of the fact it often felt like it was getting bloated with ideas that weren't really being fleshed out as much as in her other books. I blame this on the safety of the structure. More often than not, Joyce Carol Oates deploys an interesting structure which, alongside the overloaded descriptions and bloated narrative, make for one of the most immersive reading experiences you will ever have in your life. But, when she employs a structure as simple (but also as jittered) as this one, it makes the story drag on a bit. It didn't sit that well with me at all.

All in all, I think that this might be in the middle of my ranking of Joyce Carol Oates novels. The story is beautiful, the main character is incredibly effective at connecting with the reader but the style and structure kind of let the whole thing down at times. I could not help but think about the negative - it appears a little too much in this book.