Book Review Outside Reading: February 21

Book Review Outside Reading

“Joyce Carol Oates’s Widow’s Lament” by Ann Hulbert

A Review of A Widow’s Story by Joyce Carol Oates

The New York Times February 17, 2011

            In “Joyce Carol Oates’s Widow’s Lament,” Ann Hulbert commends Joyce Carol Oates’s memoir entitled A Widow’s Story.  This memoir largely encompasses Oates’s thoughts after her husband of forty-seven years passes away unexpectedly, and also what she learns about herself and their relationship after his death.  Because Hulbert’s review is so praiseworthy, the reader is left admiring Oates and wanting to read the memoir for themselves.

            Hulbert is able to add a sense of clarity to her review by describing in detail the stages of grief that Oates went through while writing her memoir.  Hulbert donates a good portion of her review to characterizing Oates and portraying her as a grieving widow.  Hulbert includes a quote from Oates herself, and in so doing is able to depict the extent of her sorrow.  “But now- I am not a writer now.  I am not anything now.  Legally I am a ‘widow’- that is the box I must check.  But beyond that- I am not sure that I exist” (1).  Hulbert’s inclusion of this quote and others similar to it help the reader to get a glimpse of what Oates experienced, and are vital to the reader’s understanding of the review.  Hulbert also uses diction to accomplish the clarity of the piece.  She chooses words such as “echoes,” “hauntingly,” “chattering,” and “sweaty-clammy” to instill a sense of sympathy in the reader, and thus helps the reader to understand how deeply the loss of Oates’s husband affected her.  As her memoir is entirely about that experience, it is vital that Hulbert introduces Oates’s emotions to the reader.  The long sentences that Hulbert employs as well reflect Oates’s longing for her husband and further the extent to which the reader connects with the piece.  This is Hulbert’s biggest strength.  Without understanding Oates’s loss, the reader would be left unconnected with the review and unconcerned with the memoir.

            After explaining the grief that Oates experienced, Hulbert next begins to discuss the memoir itself.  Writing the memoir was largely a revelatory experience for Oates, and Hulbert praises her for her efforts and compares her to writers such as Joan Didion and Emily Dickinson.  This helps the reader to connect with the piece even further.  By introducing other novelists and poets that the reader may be familiar with, Hulbert is linking Oates’s work directly to what the reader can sympathize with.  This is another of Hulbert’s strengths.

            As Hulbert’s piece focuses almost entirely on the life and experiences of Oates, she employs mostly New Historicism in her review.  However, I also would consider this to be Hulbert’s weakness.  She focuses so much on Oates and only assigns one paragraph of the whole piece to the subject of Oates’s memoir: her husband.  Despite this setback however, Hulbert is able to construct her review in a clear way that allows the reader to connect and sympathize with Oates, and the reader is thus left admiring Oates as a person and thirsting to read her memoir.