Book Review: "A Book of American Martyrs" by Joyce Carol Oates

I truly love reading the works of Joyce Carol Oates. Whether they are simply collated by her or whether they are actually written by her, I seem to not mind since I have put my complete and utter trust in her. I read my first Joyce Carol Oates book about ten to fifteen years' ago and ever since, it has been sort of sporadic until this year. As I have done with previous authors such as John Boyne and Ann Patchett and even Anne Tyler - I have committed myself to read everything that Joyce Carol Oates has written.

This book is aptly named A Book of American Martyrs and opens with a man being shot dead for being a doctor and researcher into women's reporoductive health at an abortion clnic. He is shot by a hardheaded Christian named Luther Dunphy. In a book that rips a country right down the middle, Joyce Carol Oates explores the irony of the fatherless age in two very different circumstances - both with American blood on their hands in some way.

The first part of the book is narrated by Luther Dunphy, a no-good young man who, at 22 was baptised for a second time and turned into a hardheaded Christian. He begins with in the middle of the action with the shooting and goes back, further and further as to how he got there. We get to see how his daughter died without his knowledge in the backseat of a car when he crashed it. We get to see how he entered the church after leading a life of such horrors including things like committing acts of rape and battery. We get to learn about all of his transgressions and the one thing the reader is left thinking is: I may not be all that religious, but there's no God who could forgive this man for anything. Luther Dunphy is a nightmare in human form.

As the book continues, we learn that he wants to study to be a minister and, on the whole isn't very good at it. A man who thinks he is smarter than he is: he tells us he is a good public speaker and then stutters over his lines in preaching, he is sure he is a good Christian man but cheats on his wife whilst she is suffering a miscarriage and he also believes for some reason that he is desired by other women (which is clearly not the case). Joyce Carol Oates has managed to create one of the most loathsome protagonists I have read in a long time and that is exactly how she wants her female readers to feel about him.

The second part of the book is about Gus Vorhees, the abortion doctor who was brutally slaughtered in the madness of Luther Dunphy. It is narrated by his daughter in a sort of interview style and broken into much sharper chapters than the lengthy dronings of the murderer of part one. However, this does not mean that Gus Vorhees is not also a hypocritical piece of shit. He's more hypocritical in the sense that he works at a women's clinic but still manages to treat women like crap - including his wife, Jenna who is being forced into something she didn't sign up for. One thing I do love about this part however is how it goes back and forth from first to third person. It may not be as 'honest' as part one and not as fluid in its storytelling, but it works overall.

We learn about how there is an adopted daughter from China called Melissa and how their father treated Melissa like she was better than his biological children. We learn about the fact that he put his own needs and job before anything else in his family, essentially ruining the lives of his children by forcing them to move schools and cities so often that it became mind-numbing. We learn that he often lashes out at his wife, sometimes even implying that there are kinds of affairs going on (but it doesn't say too much about that). There is something desperately wrong with this sort of man who plays on instincts in order to push his way into the spotlight. In most respects, we can draw massive similarities between Gus Vorhees and Luther Dunphy. It's actually frightening.

The next sub-section (sort of) is about the trial and we get a third person narrative from the shady perspective of standing next to the widow: Jenna. This seems to be the boiling point of the whole book so I will not say too much about what happens during the murder trial, but I will say that it isn't what you think. There's a lot of politics, there's a lot of religious fervour and there is a lot of anger swelling up everywhere. This is also the first time we see Edna Mae (Luther's wife) and Jenna (Gus's widow) in the same room at the same time. This then blends into the next section which sees us back to Luther.

In the further sections we see people brought together by grief and loathing, we learn of things that make pasts paradoxical and we see new sides to people whom we initially thought were one-sided. It is a beautiful but scathing book that you will probably never forget. It has this grand retirbution running underneath it that reminds us that there may be death, but that death doesn't really end anything at all. There is no real closure even if we want there to be.