My Sister, My Love: Book summary and reviews of My Sister, My Love by Joyce Carol Oates

My Sister, My Love Summary

"Dysfunctional families are all alike. Ditto 'survivors.'"

So begins the unexpurgated first-person narrative of nineteen-year-old Skyler Rampike, the only surviving child of an "infamous" American family. A decade ago the Rampikes were destroyed by the murder of Skyler's six-year-old ice-skating champion sister, Bliss, and the media scrutiny that followed. Part investigation into the unsolved murder; part elegy for the lost Bliss and for Skyler's own lost childhood; and part corrosively funny exposé of the pretensions of upper-middle-class American suburbia, this captivating novel explores with unexpected sympathy and subtlety the intimate lives of those who dwell in Tabloid Hell.

Likely to be Joyce Carol Oates's most controversial novel to date, as well as her most boldly satirical, this unconventional work of fiction is sure to be recognized as a classic exploration of the tragic interface between private life and the perilous life of "celebrity." In My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike, the incomparable Oates once again mines the depths of the sinister yet comic malaise at the heart of our contemporary culture.

My Sister, My Love Reviews

"Starred Review. [T]he novel is long,...and apt to indulge in verbal excess ...Oates's psychological acuity, however, ranks this novel as one of the best from a dark observer of our lives and times." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. Oates is in top form as she creates a narrative voice that is bitter and humorous yet sympathetic, building to a dramatic and satisfying resolution. Highly recommended." - Library Journal

"A bad idea, poorly executed. Where will Oates take us next? One wonders, and fears." - Kirkus Reviews.

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Joyce Carol Oates Author Biography

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. In 2003 she received the Common Wealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature and the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement.

Partial Bibliography
Memoir
A Widow's Story (2011)


Novels
With Shuddering Fall (1964)
Wonderland...

... Full Biography
Author Interview

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