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Title details for The Tattooed Girl by Joyce Carol Oates - Available

The Tattooed Girl

A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates
Anna Fields
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

Joshua Seigi is a celebrated but reclusive author. Young but in failing health, he reluctantly admits that he can no longer live alone and launches a search for an assistant. He is dissatisfied with everyone he meets until he encounters Alma. A young woman with synthetic-looking blond hair and pale, tattooed skin, she stirs something inside him. Unaware of her torturous past and the hatred that seethes within her, he has no idea that he is bringing an enemy into his home: a virulent anti-Semite who despises him. With her unique, masterful balance of dark suspense and surprising tenderness, Joyce Carol Oates probes the tragedy of ethnic hatred and challenges accepted limits of desire.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    May 1, 2006

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780792743866
      • File size: 254259 KB
      • Duration: 08:49:42

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Oates's novel about an intellectual and his barely literate assistant provides a narrator with a huge built-in advantage: The central characters couldn't be more different. Joshua Seigl is an acclaimed 38-year-old writer in upstate New York who suffers from a mysterious degenerative illness. He hires Alma as his new assistant, projecting on her an idealized nobility that couldn't be further from the truth. The book shows people so locked into their own points of view that they are blind to the essence of others. Kate Fleming certainly delineates the two characters--who couldn't? Her Alma is affecting, barely verbal but never without a hint of menace. But Fleming ages Seigl far beyond his age in the book, causing listeners to continually do mental calibrations. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 21, 2003
      When a reclusive, 38-year-old writer hires a near-illiterate young woman as an assistant at his suburban home in Carmel Heights, near Rochester, N.Y., he's unaware that a vehement anti-Semitism seethes beneath her tattoo-branded exterior. Renowned for The Shadows—his great early success, a novel based on his grandparents' experiences in Germany during the Holocaust—Joshua Seigl confuses his friends and sparks the anger of his hypomanic sister, Jet, when despite their objections he refuses to fire the young woman. A full portrait of the amiable, disillusioned Seigl emerges as he translates Virgil's The Aeneid, makes excuses for his failing health (he has recently been diagnosed with a debilitating nerve disease) and interacts erratically with his concerned friend, Sondra. Meanwhile, the mentally hollowed-out Tattooed Girl comes to seem a more realistic victim of persecution than any character in Seigl's historical fiction. Her soft, fleshy skin is defaced with ugly tattoos burned beneath her eye and on the backs of her hands by a mysterious group of abusive males. With scarcely a shred of self-esteem, she mumbles "Alma" to those who ask her name, "as if she had no surname. Or her surname wasn't important, as Alma herself wasn't important." She continually tries to impress her abusive, Jew-hating boyfriend, Dmitri, with little treasures stolen from her employer. Yet as she learns more about Seigl and his heritage, she can no longer ignore the dignity and respect with which he treats her. With her usual cadenced grace, Oates (We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde; etc.) tells a mesmerizing, disturbing tale—though the little that is revealed of the Tattooed Girl's past may leave fans wanting more. Like the readers of Seigl's The Shadows, those who look for more meaning beneath the surface will be "forced to imagine what the writer doesn't reveal." (June 20)Forecast:In May, Oates's acclaimed second novel,
      A Garden of Earthly Delights (originally published in 1967), will be reissued by the Modern Library. The author's unusual decision to substantially revise and rewrite this work will prompt discussion and may boost general Oates sales.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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