-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A Novel
The bonds of family are tested in the wake of a profound tragedy, providing a look at the darker side of our society by one of our most enduringly popular and important writers.
Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. is a gripping examination of contemporary America through the prism of a family tragedy: when a powerful parent dies, each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways, and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all.
Stark and penetrating, Joyce Carol Oates's latest novel is a vivid exploration of race, psychological trauma, class warfare, grief, and eventual healing, as well as an intimate family novel in the tradition of the author's bestselling We Were the Mulvaneys.
"With precise, authoritative prose that reads like an inquest written by a poet, Oates keep[s] the reader engaged throughout the sprawling narrative. This is a significant and admirable entry in the Oates canon." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"While Oates purposefully plumbs the depths of each family member's agonizing loss, her perceptive study of Jessalyn's widowhood stands out as an impressive and impassioned portrait of this distressing life journey." - Booklist (starred review)
"[A] brooding, thoughtful study of how people respond to stress and loss, which is not always well and not always nicely. Yet, somehow, everyone endures, some experience unexpected happiness, and the story ends on a note that finds hope amid sorrow and division. Long and diffuse, but, as with all Oates, well worth reading." - Kirkus Reviews
"A poetic meditation on psychological trauma and a complex and nuanced portrait of a grieving family." - Library Journal
This information about Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo by Dustin Cohen
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of a National Humanities Medal awarded by President Barack Obama, the National Book Critics Circle's Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award, the National Book Award in Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina, the Cino Del Duca World Prize, and is a five-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the bestsellers Blonde and We Were the Mulvaneys. She is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Distinguished Professor of the Humanities Emerita at Princeton University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2024 she won the Raymond Chandler Lifetime Achievement Award given to "a master of the thriller and noir literary genre."
If you liked Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars., try these:
The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac
by Louise Kennedy
Published 2024
Brilliant, dark stories of women's lives by "a very major talent" (Joseph O'Connor, Irish Times)
by Edwidge Danticat
Published 2020
From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of Brother, I'm Dying, a collection of vividly imagined stories about community, family, and love.
How to Make Friends with the Dark
by Kathleen Glasgow
Published 2020
A novel about love and loss and learning how to continue when it feels like you're surrounded by darkness.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
