Carthage - by Joyce Carol Oates (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

New York Times Bestselling Author

A young girl's disappearance rocks a community and a family, in this stirring examination of grief, faith, justice, and the atrocities of war, the latest from literary legend Joyce Carol Oates

Zeno Mayfield's daughter has disappeared into the night, gone missing in the wilds of the Adirondacks. But when the community of Carthage joins a father's frantic search for the girl, they discover instead the unlikeliest of suspects--a decorated Iraq War veteran with close ties to the Mayfield family. As grisly evidence mounts against the troubled war hero, the family must wrestle with the possibility of having lost a daughter forever.

Carthage plunges us deep into the psyche of a wounded young Corporal, haunted by unspeakable acts of wartime aggression, while unraveling the story of a disaffected young girl whose exile from her family may have come long before her disappearance.

Dark and riveting, Carthage is a powerful addition to the Joyce Carol Oates canon, one that explores the human capacity for violence, love, and forgiveness, and asks if it's ever truly possible to come home again.

From the Back Cover

A mesmerizing novel that examines grief, faith, justice, and the atrocities of war through the story of a young girl's disappearance in a small adirondack town

Zeno mayfield's daughter has disappeared into the night, gone missing in the wilds of the Adirondacks. But when the community of Carthage joins a father's frantic search for the girl, they discover the unlikeliest of suspects--a decorated Iraq War veteran with close ties to the Mayfield family. As grisly evidence mounts against the troubled war hero, the family must wrestle with the possibility of having lost a daughter forever.

Carthage plunges us deep into the psyche of a wounded young corporal, haunted by unspeakable acts of wartime aggression, while unraveling the story of a disaffected young girl whose exile from her family may have come long before her disappearance.

Dark and riveting, Carthage is a powerful addition to the Joyce Carol Oates canon, one that explores the human capacity for violence, love, and forgiveness, and asks if it's ever truly possible to come home again.

Review Quotes

"Oates is the most agile and effective of poets, able to pin down a moment while never compromising on pacing or atmosphere....Oates is a dangerous writer in the best sense of the word, one who takes risks almost obsessively with energy and relish. For a writer in her early 70s, she continues to be wonderfully, unnervingly anarchic, experimental, angry. As if her aim were not to satisfy or entertain--though she always does both--but to do the vandalistic prose equivalent of spray-painting or setting fire to bins in public parks." - New York Times
"There is no mistaking a Joyce Carol Oates story for anyone else's....Not just their virtuosity but also their aura of menace makes them hers....We think of Oates, like Poe, as a master of terror, but her real mastery is in almost never depicting a strong emotion in isolation....Oates [is]...a fearless experimenter forcing the reader ahead of her at knifepoint." - Los Angeles Times
"In this extraordinarily intense, racking, and resonant novel, a giant among Oates's 'big' books...chilling archetypal mysteries vie with ringing indictments of war, academic and corporate malfeasance, and environmental destruction. Master- fully enmeshing nightmare with reality, Oates has created a resolute, incisive, and galvanizing drama about our deep connection to place, the persistence of the past, and the battles of a resilient soul under siege from within and without.... A major, controversy-ready novel from high-profile, protean Oates." - Booklist (starred review)
"Irresistible page-turner and heady intellectual experience... Oates continues to make her mark as one of the greatest American writers of our time." - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Emphatically and artfully explores the subject of physical and emotional distances between loved ones, the various expanses between who individuals are, were, or could be, and the often barely perceptible gaps between guilt and innocence." - Philadelphia Inquirer
"...one of America's greatest writers..." - Roanoke Times
"Joyce Carol Oates has outdone herself." - NPR
"Joyce Carol Oates is known for richly detailed portraits of American families asunder. CARTHAGE is a stunning contribution to her storied canon." - Kirkus Reviews
"...Oates shows how perilous it is to assign guilt, and how hard it is to draw the line between victim and perpetrator in a blurred moral landscape in which every crime, on the battlefield or on the home front, is a crime of conscience." - New York Times Book Review
"Oates, working at the top of her formidable game, handily won over more of our readers with this raw, suspenseful, 'real and immersive' stream-of-consciousness tale." - Elle, Lettres 2014 Readers Prize
"a well-told tale of family, grief and faith" - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Knotted, tense, digressive and brilliant." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Joyce Carol Oates never ceases to blow my mind. In her mid-70s Oates continues to turn out a book a year -- meaty, thoroughly researched, deep novels and collections of equally dark short stories. Recently I told a good friend about Oates' new book CARTHAGE, which was just released, urging her to read it, despite its hard-hitting, depressing subject matter. 'Her books are so disturbing, but they just suck you in, ' she said. I couldn't agree more. . . . Early on, Oates' gut-punching, descriptive voice is hard to take, but I was hooked. Oates refuses to let go, entrancing readers like a snake charmer -- what a storyteller." - The Missourian
Oates (The Accursed) returns with another novel that ratchets up the unsettling to her signature feverish pitch... Once again, Oates's gift for exposing the frailty--and selfishness--of humans is on display. - Publishers Weekly (starred review)