New Ramsey case novel by Joyce Carol Oates - "My Sister, My Love"

the book

I know I have not posted in a very long time but I felt compelled to today, to add my opinion of My Sister My Love. I bought the book on the 23rd the day before it hit the shelves. I spent the whole day at home yesterday reading the book and can't remember when I have been so entertained. The book is exactly what it claims on the book jacket, a satire, dark and sometimes funny.

The names Oates gives to her characters are a real example of the over-the top description of life in suburbia.... Kruk is a lawyer...Grubbe is a financial wizard...and Baddaxe Oil is the firm that Bix works for. Baddaxe Oil , I laughed out loud over that one.

I am a little further into the book now and it is starting to turn darker... with Betsy...pushing and medicating both her kids in a quest for her own glory and an invite to the best country club in town. Fixing up Skyler (not a typo) on a play date with a kid who shows him a book on becoming pathologist... You can dig a heart out with buzz saw!,... and offers Skyler a host of meds tucked under his bed. Skyler vomits and that is the end of the play date, with no hope for Betsy being invited back to that millionaire's home.

And little Bliss...just think of that name and what it might mean to a dad who is a real hound dog, always on the prowl. And you hurt for the little girl who's mother has changed her name, hair color and teeth in her zeal to be in the limelight herself once again after a failed ice skating career.

But enough, spoilers. Please read the book and judge for yourselves, whether or not you can see some of the Ramsey behavior between the lines of this unconventional, over the top, work of saitrical fiction.

 

I posted before that some would undoubtedly like this book. You are obviously one of them. I'm glad. I,however, feel like I have wasted my money and I feel like it is one of the most stupid and moronic books I have ever sat down to read. And yes, of course I know it's fiction. I hate the way she writes. IMO it's childish and dumb. I hope you enjoy the rest of it and please post your final thoughts. I however am thinking about returning it and possibly getting my money back as I don't feel it is worth even 2 cents much less what I paid for it. I realize it is satire. But it's not even good satire. And that is my opinion about this horrible waste of time book.

 

Well, satire is an acquired taste, and different kinds of satire...same.

So we have one thumbs up, and one thumbs down.

I think it's time for a POLL!! :yes:

 

The mental picture of PR's "creamy breasts" made me throw up a little...

 

I've read several JCO's works and I don't remember any of them being absurd. Very Southern Gothic, but not silly and stupid as this novel seems to be. What a shame that it's more of a parody than a true crime novel.

 

When I have some time later I'm going to post some excerpts from the book. I'll look for the "creamy breasts" paragraph as well as the "blue veined breasts" paragraph. There are a lot of passages I want to share but it will take time and it will have to be done later.

 

Me too DeeDee....me too!!!!!

 

It must have been "Nedra" that had the blue veined breasts. The author seems just a little bit too preoccupied with different kinds of breasts. She sounds a "little" strange. I, for one...will not waste my time or money on her book.

 

I haven't read the book yet, but just a thought: could the "blue-veined breasts" refer to a pregnant woman, or to a mother nursing her child?

 

I'm sorry I haven't been back here with the paragraphs. I'm having a hard time finding them and quite frankly I just put the book down for awhile. I can tell you that the blue veined breasts was Skyler talking about his mother and it was when she was in bed for some reason. This is very "artistically" written and very descriptive, it's not only breasts but the author talks about how Skyler himself looks and of course Bliss and his father Bix. Just very descriptive. IMO you can tell it was writtten by a woman, but she is supposedly writing it through the eyes of a 19 year old Skyler (Burke) and IMO she fails to sound much like a male in any way. Has anybody else read the book yet?

 

Hi Karen and everyone on this thread discussing the new book...

After Amazon zeroed out my order for JCO new book because of a zip code difference, I went down to our local Borders and purchased the book today...A few more dollars but just irritates me when online things get delayed because of details ya know?! :hourglass:

We have our grandaughter staying with us this weekend so will only have limited time to devote to reading the book just now, but did get a chance to read the first chapter...As usual for JCO very distinctive writing style and right to the point emotionally....

No opinion yet Karen and all but will be checking in with bits and pieces over the next week....I truly do want to get an opinion and feeling from this well respected woman author...Nothing definitive just want to see what she is writing, even in fiction about this case...

Thanks to all of you here for pitching in on this fiction opinion thread!

Voyager

 

Denver Post article, ref. JBR book...

http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_9724687

Don't expect insight on JonBenet from new novel

By Bill Husted
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 06/29/2008 01:00:01 AM MDT

Just when you thought it was safe to read, here comes JonBenet Ramsey again.

Prolific author Joyce Carol Oates is out with a new novel, "My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike," loosely based on the murder of JonBenet on Dec. 25, 1996, and its aftermath.

It doesn't come down in "perfect town" Boulder, but in a nice bedroom community in New Jersey. John Ramsey is Bix, Patsy is Betsy, JonBenet is Bliss and her older brother Burke (9 at the time of the murder) is Skyler.

The novel is really about Skyler, now 19 in the book, who is wracked with guilt over his kid sister's death. Conventional and tabloid wisdom says he did it. Then he gets a death-bed letter from his mom telling him what really happened.

KHOW talker Peter Boyles remains our resident JonBenet savant, and he talked to Oates on the air Friday.

"In many ways, I sense the inside of Patsy in this book," he says. "What kind of a perfectionist she was and what kind of perfection she expected from her children."

Boyles likes the book, but he doesn't think it will add much insight to the case. In other words, you can take it to the beach and not worry about learning anything.

 

Thanks for the link and article Greenie

I doubt I will bother to read the book (still waiting for Doc Miller's book to print in English), but judging from the feedback by others, I am not missing anything

Good to see you posting

:hug:

 

Baltimore Sun, July 7, '08

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/bal-al.bk.review06jul06,0,2495218.story


I know that much has already been written here, ref. to this book, but thought you might like to see a "glowing review," ref. same.

Mirroring JonBenet story
Work of fiction tells of young girl's murder from her brother's point of view

By Victoria A. Brownworth | Special to the Sun
July 6, 2008

My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story Of Skyler Rampike By Joyce Carol Oates Ecco / 562 pages / $25.95


Social commentary has long been the hallmark of the best fiction. Many literary classics, among them Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Edith Wharton's House of Mirth and, of course, Tolstoy's War and Peace, are declarative statements on their times.

Last month, Joyce Carol Oates turned 70 and launched her 35th novel, My Sister, My Love. Oates has published more than 100 books - novels, nonfiction, poetry, essays, literary criticism, plays, even children's books (Come Meet Muffin). She won the National Book Award for the first time in 1970 and has won it and a plethora of other awards since, including the Pulitzer and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her only possible competition - outside of the realm of romance writing - for the award for most prolific American writer is John Updike. Some writers keep writing and one wishes they would stop. Others never seem to write enough to satisfy their devotees. But Oates, who publishes one, two or three books a year, always surprises, even when she presents a book that's flawed. But as with her first award-winning novel, them, Oates occasionally strikes a note so pitch-perfect that it's breathtaking to read what she has to say. My Sister, My Love is another such book.

No doubt the controversial nature of Oates' latest opus will push critics into opposite camps - Oates does that sometimes. But the most clear-eyed critics will see My Sister, My Love for what it is: lavish, uncompromising, incisive, poignant, raw, complex, astute.

With only a mild disclaimer stating that this is a work of fiction, Oates has written a roman a clef about the infamous JonBenet Ramsey murder more than a decade ago. Bix and Betsey Rampike are the social-climbing parents of Skyler and Bliss. Skyler is the failed athlete and older brother by three years of Bliss (born Edna Louise), a young figure-skating star. The family lives in the claustrophobic New Jersey suburbs, where Daddy disappears for long stretches and Mommy takes to her bed, ranting below her breath, and life is divided between when Bliss is skating and not skating.

Skyler, Oates' 19-year-old narrator, is a handicapped druggie (he was injured badly as a child gymnast in the first quest for fame by the family) and a storyteller. This is his - and Bliss' - narrative about the events that led to and from her murder when Skyler was 9 and Bliss a few days shy of her seventh birthday. The coming 10th anniversary of Bliss' murder is the occasion for his narrative.

Skyler is an overwrought, emotionally stunted yet deeply introspective mess. His sister's murder in the dead of a January night in their protected New Jersey home altered the family's collective life forever and sent them into the depths of what Oates/Skyler refer to as Tabloid Hell.

The opening salvo sets the tone for the narrative: Dysfunctional families are all alike. Ditto "survivors." The tale Oates tells, through Skyler, is one of the American quest for vicarious fame and celebrity. The details of Betsey's obsessive desire to make her daughter famous (her son having failed her) - the makeup, the outfits, the behavior (she teaches her daughter how to smile in a way that is both seductive and innocent and repeatedly shrieks "no grins, no grimaces!"), the training, the manipulation - are both wearing and horrifying.

What's more, it's clear that the only thing holding the womanizing Bix and the overweight Betsey together are the children - well, Bliss. Daddy comes home when Bliss is skating; Daddy disappears when Bliss is not skating. Oates herself skates perilously close to the Ramsey case. It's difficult to read My Sister, My Love without envisioning the beatific child-woman face of JonBenet Ramsey or the pushy Patsy Ramsey or the distant John Ramsey.

But the media never showed us JonBenet's brother, Burke, and therein lies Oates' trump card - we never saw him the way we saw the parents and the slain beauty queen, and so we are easily and - in our own voyeuristic way, which Oates is counting on - readily lured into the brother's story of a murder, the events leading up to it and the aftermath.

Where critics will no doubt diverge on My Sister, My Love is on whether Oates successfully pulls off this grand caper: She's taken on the role of social deconstructionist and social critic, entered the voice of the teenage brother of a child murder victim; she's taking on the celebrity chasers - which include her readers - and she's solving the crime. It's grand, to be sure, and to this critic, surprisingly successful.

Skyler Rampike is a fabulous character, whether he bears the remotest similarity to Burke Ramsey or not. That Oates has both kept us in the world of the overarching celebrity hounds and taken us completely out of it is part of the brilliance of My Sister, My Love. That we are left with nothing but loathing for people who help drive the kind of celebrity that surrounds Bliss Rampike and surrounded JonBenet Ramsey - even though they may be us - is what great writing does.

My Sister, My Love is an extraordinary novel - controversial, no doubt - but executed with such verve, complexity and harrowing detail that it is both a thriller and a Dostoevskian deconstruction. It's not beach reading, per se, but if you only read one novel this summer, My Sister, My Love should be it.

Victoria A. Brownworth is the author and editor of more than 20 books, including the award-winning history "The Golden Age of Lesbian Erotica: 1920-1940." She teaches writing and film at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she has taught the work of Joyce Carol Oates for years. She is at work on a novel about Trotsky in Mexico.

Excerpt
"Amateurs don't know how to tell stories, even their own life-stories brimming like tears in their brown-doggy eyes. I acknowledge this, for my instinct is to spew everything out immediately, and keep nothing back."

 

Thanks Greenie,

I don't know what to think of this book. I guess, like with all books, some will love it and others will not

Either way, it keeps the Ramsey name on peoples' lips. Perhaps Burke may now come out and SAY SOMETHING!!!!!

 

Thanks, Greenleaf. I hadn't seen this review.

I am going to get the book this week. I've been busy and haven't had time yet, but it's on my list. I'm going to look at it as a work of fiction. You know...like the ransom note....

Barbara, I never expect Burke to say anything about the murder of his sister. I doubt he remembers anything. He's probably buried it deep.

Edited to add: I know the article is simply a "critique" of the fictional book, but it appears to me that the fact that JonBenet Ramsey was not a work of fiction and her murder and suffering were very real seems to have escaped the reviewer. I hope it didn't excape Oates, in her use of JonBenet as a "means" for social commentary.

 

Interesting Review Greenie...

I am about half way through "My Sister My Love" and at this point will only say that it is not an easy read for several reasons....When I finish this novel and have a chance to ruminate on it's full impact, I will post my opinions.
Thanks
Voyager

 

You might thnk she SOUNDS strange - have you 'seen' a picture of her?? Cross between Bette Davis (in "All About Eve" timeline) and Joan Crawford (same timeline)!! My gawd!!!! LOL!

Karen asked if anybody else has read the book yet... Nope! Not yet anyway!! Anyone want to share their copy??!! times are hard out here!! :cry: If so - please pm me!! I would LOVE to read it!

Oh!!! I want to hear 'what' this says!! Anyone reading this book - can you post that letter???!!!

Barbara - I too await an English version of Doc Miller's book... hopefully there will be news on that real soon!!

 

Niner, most city libraries will have a copy of the new Joyce Carol Oates book. You could check it out from them and even save yourself the postage.