Daddy Love: A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates

From the author of A “psychologically incisive” glimpse into the mind of a deranged predator and the boy he abducts to be his son (Booklist).   Robbie Whitcomb is five years old when he’s taken from his mother in a mall parking lot. In her attempt to chase the kidnapper, she’s left badly injured and permanently disfigured. Such are the methods of the man who calls himself Daddy Love—a man known to the rest of the world as charismatic preacher Chester Cash.   For the next six years, Robbie is to be Daddy’s son. That means doing whatever Daddy says—and giving him whatever he wants. Soon Robbie learns to accept his new name, Gideon. He also learns that he is not the first of Daddy Love’s sons. And that each of the others, after reaching a certain age, was never seen again.   As Robbie’s mother recovers from her wounds, her life and marriage are a daily struggle. But as years go by, she maintains a flicker of hope that her son is still alive. Meanwhile, Robbie approaches the “bittersweet age” with no illusions about his fate. But somewhere within this tortured child lies a spark of rebellion. And he knows all too well what survival requires.   “After all these years, Joyce Carol Oates can still give me the creeps.” —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review   “A lean and disturbing tale that reverberates after its ending.” —The Columbus Dispatch   “Oates makes us squirm as she forces us to see some of the action through Love’s twisted and warped perspective.” —Kirkus Reviews   “This unsettling tale showcases Oates’s masterful storytelling.” —Publishers Weekly

Genres: Fiction, Horror, Crime, Thriller, Audiobook, Mystery, Suspense

290 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel Them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).
Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Oates was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.

Reviews

[Beata · Rating 4 out of 5]

The evil that touches a child is most terrifying in whatever form it comes ... I read it within two days with some breaks I had to take to calm down and restore my breathing to a regular pace ... I cannot give five stars as I will not reread this book again but it will stay with me for a long, long time.

[Mark Porton · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to describe Daddy Love by Joyce Carol Oates?

JCO has this remarkable ability to take the reader to the precipice, she then takes pleasure watching us wobble and teeter, and with a wicked smirk she nudges us over the edge with her little finger.

Just like that.

See, with this book (and her other uber-confronting tale Zombie ) we know what’s coming, we know she is leading us down a very dark, ever narrowing path, but we persist. Then she delivers – and boy does she deliver – WHAM!!

This story begins with a young mother walking back to her car in a shopping mall parking lot, holding the hand of her 5-year-old boy. An everyday, innocent event. Then, everything changes forever. We see stories of abduction on the news, we read about them, the whole idea is suffocatingly horrid. But what we never know (thank heavens) is what is happening to the poor child, after been snatched. This book changes that. The third person narrator, all knowing, describes the feelings, thoughts, and motivations of all involved – we see things we shouldn’t see.

I was repulsed, horrified and heartbroken.

We are not only exposed to these atrocities, we also witness the suffering of the mother and father, the impact this crime has on them as individuals, and their relationship. I could not imagine a scenario that exposes one’s soul so openly and raw nerves so vividly.

Horrible. What a journey. An amazing author.

5 Stars

[Fabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Zombie, this one is pretty horrific--about an abduction & a sick individual (o so very Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) named Daddy Love. (No, this was not as I had previously thought, a hardcore gay porn novel, alas.) The prose always borders on sublime... with the atrocious goings-on constantly spattering mud all over the place. It becomes clear how to love J.C.O. is to appreciate all modern American Literature.

[Rachel (TheShadesofOrange) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars
This was a difficult but fascinating read. While the author did not shy away from the reality of this situation, I appreciated that she did not make it unnecessarily explicit. Instead it explored the psychology of the victim. It's a difficult book to recommend but I appreciate author's who are open to addressing these uncomfortable topics.

[Lori Anaple · Rating 3 out of 5]

And the plot sickens.

JCO is the master of taking a loathsome topic and eviscerating it. You know when you pick up one of her books that it is going to rock you to your core.

But this one, I don't know how to rate it. On the one hand, it's a creepy subject, child abduction. She drives her theme home; explores how it is that children get conditioned and how families fall apart. She gets into the mind of the pedophile and shows that it is an ugly place to be. She kind of gets into the head of the abducted child, but not really and that, I think, is my biggest complaint.

I get how Gideon/Robbie doesn't remember his early life with his real parents. I get how the "love" and "punishment" of Cash controlled him. I get how this started manifesting with Gideon/Robbie starting fires. What I don't get is the inner workings of Robbie turning into and accepting being Gideon. That would have been more compelling for me.

Also, the repetition in beginning of the book irritated me. All I really got from it was the Dinah's self loathing (which I understand. If I were to have my child abducted, I would self loathe too). But I don't understand the purpose. With Whit and Dinah we have parents who we never really get to know, and I wanted to know them. I wanted to know more about everyone except for the person we do get to know, which is Cash/Daddy Love. And even then, we don't get to see him develop, we just have to take him as he is. And that is fine, I understand that. We don't always have to see how evil develops to know that it exists.

JCO usually doesn't disappoint me, but I feel ripped off here. She could have done better. Deep End of the Ocean and The Kid did this topic more justice (with the exception of the ending of The Kid...that just blew). Speaking of endings, this ending left much to be desired. Are we being set up for Robbie to be abducted AGAIN? Of course the boy is going to be altered. The circumstances that he lived through would have to alter someone, especially a young child.

I guess I wanted and expected more. And JCO is certainly capable of delivery it.

[Lisa Guidarini · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought sleeping on it, holding off writing my thoughts would help them gel and, to some extent, it did. It was too stunning reading the last page to plunge immediately into my impressions, too soon to digest what had just happened. I knew, from reading other novels in Oates's oeuvre she'd leave me reeling but still she managed to catch me by surprise, ending on the most harsh note, showing no mercy.

True criticism of a book involves discussing both the positives and negatives, rating a book not on how much it upset you but, rather, how the author succeeded or didn't in writing the book she set out to write. It's not based in how much the book upset you.

Did JC Oates provoke emotion, stay true to her theme? The answer's yes, indisputably. She is a master, a modern genius. Not one word in this book is wasted. Not once does her prose slip from her purpose of maintaining the voice of an objective narrator, no matter what the scene, where the plot took the reader. Is the subject matter distressing? It's unnerving, horrifying and uncomfortable. Daddy Love the character provokes disgust and outrage, as he should. Robbie/Gideon's experiences punch us in the stomach. Oates is relentless, as always. Does our disgust lower our estimation? It should do the reverse: impress with its mastery.

The events in the book are perverse and the plot sickening. Oates takes an innocent child, puts this innocent into the hands of a pervert. What happens is what has transpired all too many times in real life stories of kidnapping and abuse. And back home his parents's suffering, their differing reactions to the grief, feel genuine. The book is - with only very minor flaws I may decide weren't so, in a re-read - classic Oates and as near perfection as it's possible to be.

The book should not be judged on its harshness, to repeat how criticism works. Rather, the question is, what was her intention and did she achieve it. The answer is a resounding yes. She did. My pulse pounded, my stomach constricted in disgust, my heart broke. For all this, five well-earned stars.

[Carl Alves · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read another book written by Joyce Carol Oates and I absolutely hated it. Despite that, I thought I would give this novel a try. As it turns out, this was way worse than the other book I read from Oates. I absolutely hated every aspect of this novel. For starters, the writing style was so irritating, I couldn’t handle it. Whether in Dinah’s perspective or Daddy Love’s perspective, the narration grated on me to the point where I couldn’t take reading it for another second or I would have to find the closest window to jump out of it. The characters were awful and one-dimensional. They did not resemble real people. Also, the novel, although short in word count, is long-winded. The narration goes on and on and nothing happens. It’s as if Oates is writing words for the sake of writing words. I only made it about a third of the way through this novel, and I almost always finish novels that I start, no matter how bad they are. This is one of the worst I’ve read.

Carl Alves – author of Blood Street

[Laurie (barksbooks) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this audiobook up blind at a local library sale because I recognized the author name and, well, I’m not one to leave a cheap audio sitting on the sale table. Maybe this experience will teach me because right about now I’m feeling like I’ve been punched in the heart.



For those who remain unaware, as I was, and would like to remain that way, you may not want to read any further (though I don’t at all recommend this unless you want to send yourself into a debilitating state of depression). I thought I was tough enough to handle anything. Turns out I was not.



This book is about child abduction and does not flinch away from the pain, brainwashing, torture and tragedy inflicted on an innocent five year old for six years by a man who is a monster posing as a preacher. It’s also about the fallout that emotionally ruins the boys’ parents, who at the beginning of the story are deeply in love and very happy, but slowly begin to drift apart from the despair.

If you are feeling just a wee bit too happy with your life and want to tone it down, oh about a zillion notches, this story will do the trick. It is awful. Not the writing but the subject matter. I can almost guarantee that when you finish, you’ll feel worse than this:



I think I am traumatized. I honestly do not know how to rate this story. Devastating things happen in it that will haunt me forever but the writing and the emotions it evokes force me to give it a four and ½ but I can’t really recommend it. If you have children, dogs or a heart you may want to steer clear of it.

[Snotchocheez · Rating 1 out of 5]

Even if I didn't have a four year-old daughter whose actions (twice!) prompted Amber-Alert-esque "Code Adam" lockdowns at Walmart, and didn't live in the same state where, very recently, a freak decided to kill a bus driver, abduct a child from that bus and steal him away to an underground tornado shelter/bunker, Joyce Carol Oates' pedophilia yarn Daddy Love  would probably offend me, simply because of the casual,  off-handed way of introducing the pedophile in question, his actions portrayed, or the explaining away the actions of the titular pedophile as a product of societal failings.  I thought maybe I'd might, at first give JCO the benefit of the doubt, thinking she might be exorcising a demon or two, but as the (rather lean, by her standards) 240 pages progressed, I soon came to the conclusion she  had no real point to make, that this was hastily tossed off, and foisted upon her fans (some of whom, including a niwit at the NY Times, seem to believe this is just an example of JCO taking a sensitive topic and eviscerating it). Um, no. This is an unapologetic, sorry piece of crap from someone who really should know better. In comparison, this made me deem similarly themed works by Jodi Picoult as high art. Simply gawdawful.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story has all the trademarks of the great writing that Joyce Carol Oates has been known for, first person narrative with uncomplicated sentences that put you in the shoes of characters in a visceral fashion.
The characters she has chosen for this story is a boy whose is abducted over a six year period and his family that have to live with his missing and a man who refers to himself as Daddy Love who is a sadistic child abductor/sex offender.
This story when told through the eyes of the criminal can possibly make the reader uncomfortable due to the intentions and his actions but she successfully immerses you in the web of an evil crime that is headline news everyday around the world. The author is no stranger to writing about dark and stark realities as she regularly writes about crimes that you would like to think do not exist but are sadly occurring increasingly She incorporates this darkness successfully in her works, where other authors are afraid to tread or fail to and as a female writer she holds plenty of voice, punch and hook.
Joyce Carol Oates is quite similar to the author Flannery O'Connor in many ways in her writing.

http://more2read.com/review/daddy-love-by-joyce-carol-oates/

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like any good Joyce Carol Oates story (which is, um, most of them), Daddy Love leaves one drained and hopeless and wondering what the hell we’re living for anyway, when human monsters eerily like the ones she’s created exist in real life?

This is Oates in the real-life horror zone. No one’s safe: kids (especially kids), grownups, caring widows, dogs.

Like after finishing Zombie and Pursuit, I finished this book disgusted, a little enraged. Oates’ detractors could find a lot of material to work with here: she doesn’t shy away from the gore and icky shit. She’s almost voyeuristic. She knows what her readers really want—why we read this sort of book in the first place.

Those sensitive to psychological torture, and child abduction, and repetitive rape should avoid this. It’s bleak as hell, and just when the reader thinks they’re getting reprieve Oates twists the knife once more on the final page. This account of extreme trauma and the process of recovery feels blisteringly true. Not for the faint of heart.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I finished the last page of this book, it hit me that JCO has become a zen mistress of storytelling and of the dark side of humanity. It hit me that she presents us with the outward manifestations of our darker impulses, maybe even with the top layer of introspection that accompanies them, but, not unlike Jim Thompson, she avoids trying to give a provenance and lineage to those impulses. It hit me that the ZOMBIE of her novel by that name was not the mindless sex slave the killer hoped to create but the killer himself. And the last page of this book, which will leave most of you suspended in mid-step, confused and unsatisfied, is her way of telling us that the darkness does not go away, and that no matter what you live through you can never yet claim to have survived.

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another Goodreads member introduced me to this author in the form of this book. As a mother, the subject appalled me, but, against my better judgement, I went in... The writing is good, and the characters brilliantly drawn. It is a horrific tale, and not for the faint hearted, but is also an examination of the fallout from such a terrible occurrence for those involved, and sensitively done.

[Douglas Wickard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whatever Joyce Carole Oates writes - I read. I'm an author. I write about disturbing human behavior, so when I saw JCO's new fiction DADDY LOVE, I couldn't wait to download it onto my Kindle, not knowing, exactly, what the subject matter was about. Nor, did I care. I recently finished BLONDE, her triumphant fictionalized version of our failed female icon Marilyn Monroe. Psychic damage erupts like wildfire in our culture, in our homes, in our communities in a multitude of forms. Victimization occurs and emotional scars are pervasive, the memory posts of this trauma erected, like tombstones. We drive by, daily, slowly, take in the damage, turn our heads at the abuse, the horror, the mistakes. We refuse observation, to witness that it's there, it's happening, ongoing and, in our own back yards.
DADDY LOVE delivers! It rivets us, the reader, to get in touch with the arterial pulse of our cultural damage. Disturbing? Yes! Well written? Of course. The nuanced voice of Chester Cash is so horrific in nature it's almost legerdemain, as if JCO was channeling his arrogance, his Godly grandiosity, his ability to break down `green' boys and make them his. I hated him for who he was, what he did, what he wanted, but I could also understand the pathological depravity that bonds the boys to him emotionally. Robbie, i.e., Gideon, psychologically splits, destroying the old self, that young boy that suffered and cried and received punishment, and creates a new self, a vessel, a hollow shell that performs, on demand, good boy behavior and receives praise.
Also, it is not by chance, I'm sure, with Oates's writing, that the mother comes out of the abduction scene disfiguered, a 'jack-o-lantern', deformed and ghoulish. Subtext abounds.
We don't need a Chester Cash to show us what's happening in closeted, unlocked bedrooms across our country, although it's much easier creating a monster like Cash, particularly a Godly man, one we hate and despise and get sickened by, actually repulsed physically with his actions. I believe JCO exhibits freely the innocuous, innocent man/woman as always there, always waiting, always ready to scoop up our innocent, take procession of that bristly clean untapped target and make it an analogy for our destructive need to blemish. Destroy. Pollute.
The brilliance of Oates shines through.

[alexis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not much closer to understanding Joyce Carol Oates’ literary ouevre, but I did really like how the first couple chapters revisit one person’s guilt-ridden memory of the same horrific event over and over again, zooming in on different details, interrogating every moment, trying to figure out where they went “wrong”. For a second it felt like JCO might sustain that parent’s nightmare across an entire book, and I guess in some ways she did.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well done. I don’t understand why these books of JCO are rated rather poorly. Perhaps it is the subject matter that disturbs readers.

[Alisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not at all sure how to rate this book, so I'm going straight down the middle with three stars. However, if you're the kind of reader who's easily disturbed by violence, particularly psychological violence, Daddy Love is NOT for you.

Daddy Love, by Joyce Carol Oates, is a novel of identity and how it is formed or reformed in crisis.
Robbie, Dinah, and Whit Whitcomb have a nice life. Sure, they have some issues (Dinah's mom is a big one), but all-in-all, the Whitcombs are a happy family. Dinah and her son five-year-old son Robbie are enjoying a day at the mall, but as they're searching for their car in the parking lot, a man crashes a hammer into Dinah's skull and wrenches Robbie away from her. Dinah, staggering from a severe head injury, tries to stop the van, but the driver simply runs over her, dragging her 50 feet. Here commences a parent's worst nightmare--a child kidnapped, a parent helpless.

Dinah has years of difficult physical recovery ahead of her, and she persists only because she believes her son is still alive. Yes, Robbie is alive, but he's in the clutches of Daddy Love, an itinerant preacher who likes little boys. Little boys, not even pre-pubescent boys--those he finds disgusting. Robbie, at five, is his youngest victim, and Daddy Love is looking forward to years of enjoyment. The greatest trial of Robbie's life begins--can he survive? Can he adapt to the vacillating moods of Daddy Love? Can his body grow and stay healthy on a diet of fast food? Can his brain learn and think? Can he develop an independent identity? As both Dinah and Robbie struggle to survive in the most obvious ways, Whit, too, is struggling. His ordeal is not physical, but emotional. He has lost his son, he has nearly lost his wife (and he's certainly lost the woman Dinah once was), and he is seeking to form a new identity that includes all this loss. These characters are broken.

The most broken character, however, is Daddy Love, aka Chester Cash. Chester has a long record of past violence, beginning as a child. He spent many years in a juvenile facility for murder. It's not clear whether he is a product of nature or nurture or a combination of the two, but he's definitely a product of evil.

Daddy Love reminds me of Emma Donoghue's The Room--only creepier, more disgusting, and more ambiguous. Both Oates and Donoghue explore the theme of identity, especially identity forged under horrific circumstances. Both authors examine the role mothers play in protecting their children. But where there's hope in The Room, Daddy Love leaves the reader not just unsure of future, but terrified for it.

It's hard to "like" a book that's as out-and-out creepy as Joyce Carol Oates' Daddy Love. You'd have to be some kind of sociopath to enjoy the violence and terror that enter the lives of Robbie, Dinah, and Whit. However, if you like to feel utter revulsion toward a character, Oates certainly provokes it with Daddy Love. This is why it's difficult to rate the book. If you like realistic horror (kind of hard to name what genre Daddy Love fits), Oates does it well. If you're easily disturbed, you won't want to read this. Reader, beware--this is not for everyone.

[Bonnie Brody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Daddy Love is the worst book I’ve ever read by Joyce Carol Oates. It is about a young boy, around 5 years old, who is abducted for 6 years. His abductor is a serial sexual predator who has multiple personalities. He presents himself as an artist, a minister, an advocate for causes, etc. His name is Chuck Cash but he has the boy, Robbie Whitcomb, call him Daddy Love. Robbie is called ‘Son’ by the man.

There have been a slew of other boys brought to Daddy Love’s home and then murdered after they have gotten too old for his liking. He is a monster in every way.

The main problems with the book are that it reads unevenly, the story line is not clear, the story jumps from place to place and the characters are not constant.

I could follow the book. That is easy because it is so repetitive. However, it is repetitive in a fallow and shallow way. When Robbie is abducted, his mother is badly harmed as Daddy Love tries to kill her with his van. She is left for dead and her face and body are a wreck. Ms. Oates’ focuses on this repeatedly along with the story line not acknowledging any attempts by Robbie to try and escape.

Despite horrific torture and heinous abuse, Robbie does not try to leave his abuser. He is a ‘good boy’ and remains at his abuser’s beck and call. One might say this is due to Stockholm syndrome but I just don’t buy it. It just doesn’t read like that.

Joyce Carol Oates is a writer’s writer and she fails badly here, leaving her ‘stuff’ behind her and writing as an amateur. It is a shame because this story has a lot to work with and Ms. Oates just doesn’t know what to do with the whole story.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dinah is out with her five-year old son Robbie when he is snatched: the rest of the book follows the life of Robbie with `Daddy Love' focusing on him as first a five year old child and then as an eleven year old.

This is a book which should definitely come with a warning, especially for parents of young children - it's dark and nasty and brutal, and is often a difficult (as it should be) book to read. Oates is a highly-intelligent writer and she doesn't pull any punches here, but the unredeeming cruelty of the story, in both physical and psychological terms, does make this a hard read.

So definitely not a book to while away your lighter moments - this is unflinching, unapologetic in that it doesn't strive to make excuses or `understand' what makes a paedophile and rapist the sadist that he is.

This is, mercifully, a fairly short book and one which is difficult to put down in a twisted kind of way. And we're left haunted by the worry of what will become of Robbie after his early life...

So this is hard-hitting and intelligent fiction, but a book which should be approached with caution by sensitive readers.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A child's worst nightmare! A parent's worst nightmare!
Dinah Whitcomb has the perfect life. A loving and successful husband (Whit) and a smart, wonderful young son named Robbie. One day their world is destroyed when Dinah is attacked and Robbie is taken in a mall parking lot. Dinah, critically injured, slowly recovers as her world and marriage struggle to exist every day. Seemingly hopeless, she keeps a flicker of hope that her son will be found alive.
"Daddy Love" the kidnapper, a part-time preacher named Chester Cash has kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered young boys for years. He has to be one of the most horrific villains I have ever witnessed between the pages and he now has Robbie.
I could feel the anguish of Dinah, Whit and Robbie as Joyce Carol Oates did a superb job of writing about such a difficult topic.

[Roxane · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciated the dark intensity but this book is an incomplete mess. My goodness! What on earth happened here?

[Etienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5/5. Je m'attendais a un roman plus dure, plus profond. Le sujet est difficile, l'enlèvement et la captivité d'un enfant, et certains passages sont dures, mais on n'en ressort pas traumatisé comme certaines critiques semblaient le laisser sous-entendre. J'ai trouvé très bien dosé le rapport entre scène difficile et le «gore» ou la violence gratuite. Par exemple, la présence de viol est claire, sans qu'on ait à décrire en détails une série de scène où cela se produit. Le ton est très très juste et le tout est très bien écrit. Par contre, l'histoire est assez classique et n'offre pas de grande surprise, on y explore cependant avec brio le côté de l'enfant, de la mère et du père, autant dans le avant, le pendant et le après avec les défis de chacun. Un auteur que je découvre avec ce roman et que je relirai sans le moindre doute, car au final, il s'agit d'un très bon roman!

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a terrible story filled with the most vile human behavior. Yet, by the masterful pen of JCO she makes it readable and facilitating. Not for the faint hearted. 3.5 stars

[Abigail Padgett]

A chronology of Oates' titles will provide future sociologists with a blueprint for the years in which they were written, as defined in various literary genres. Daddy Love reflects the contemporary awareness of, and fascination with, child sexual abuse.
The book may be described as The Last Word on the topic, so graphic and detailed is its presentation of an extreme case. ("Extreme" because the perpetrator is a clever psychopath of grossly pathological habits, where much child sexual abuse is performed by otherwise ordinary men. The result is, however, the same. Robbie [the abused boy in Daddy Love]is damaged beyond repair, and every child victim of sexual predation will to greater or lesser extents share aspects of that damage.)
The mother's body, smashed and broken by the perp during the kidnapping, may reflect the psychological state of all mothers whose children have been violated, or may symbolize a deeper assault on motherhood/women as a concept, that assault embodied in the annhiliation-of-self herein described.
Whatever its symbolism, Oates here hands over to posterity a most graphic and gruesome look at a particular facet of our time. Sadistic sexual abuse of women, children and animals is nothing new, but large-scale public awareness of child sexual abuse IS new. Oates documents this social fact to its absolute limit in Daddy Love, obviating the need for any further fictional treatment of the subject.

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you remember that old song, Runaway Train? When I was a child, I was listening to this song, shocked by its video: There are over one million youth lost on the streets of America. Even now, I do not know exactly what I felt … pity, angriness, sorrow, for all the lives that were/are destroyed by some of us. Literature has always been a mirror of reality, and in its history we discover themes like love, war, family relationships, friendships, religion and many others. Why wouldn’t abduction be one of its themes? A theme which is molded from our own dark reality of the 21st century, which we hear on the news or in some crime films or TV series. But is Literature – with capital L, the one that is worth reading – entitled to depict such a theme? Why should a writer write about this, when there are so many other things to be talked about?

http://raysithaca.blog.com/2012/12/28...

[Mysterious Bookshop · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deeply disturbing novel not for the sensitive, Oates' new novel is about child abduction. A horror story set firmly in the real world, the text opens with mother Dinah Whitcomb being savagely attacked by a stranger who, after taking her son from her, runs her over with his car. Disfigured, pained, and filled with grief, Dinah and her husband try to keep their relationship alive while their young son is isolated and tortured by a monster who is somehow simultaneously inconceivably evil and all too human. Dark, yes, but what drives Daddy Love (and provides its most disturbing passages) is Oates' capacity to render human reactions and responses so realistically that the reader empathizes immediately, pushed forward by the emotional narrative as well as the events of the text. A fine work from one of America's great living authors. --Alex

[Sana Abdulla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've only read Zombie for the writer, when I started this I sighed with disappointment, for it was a similar story from a different angle, but little by little, I was captured, I even peeked at the end to calm myself down.
Their is an abduction of a little boy, something that the reader knows right at the first sentence. Reading the undescribable horror of what he and his family goes through is no picnic and to me it is more scary than ghosts and vampires and zombies put together because it's real and happens everywhere, everyday at the blink of an eye.
A very good read but a painful one. It not only covers the perverse nature of the perpetrator and the anguish of the child, but, all the spectrum of feelings and reactions that the parents get as they break and pick themselves up as they live through their hope and grief. 4.5 stars

[wade · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have read many books about child abuse and pedophilia and many we quite good. This one is not. If you have the content for a one hundred fifty page book and want to make it into one with over one hundred more pages here is what you do. Repeat the names of the characters over and over again. There must be over a thousand Daddy Loves in the text. I read Mommie, Robbie and Gabriel so many times I want to scream. It it just wasn't people's names - subjects were rehashed to a fair thee well. Then after all the repetition and with 2/3 of the book about Daddy Love and this young boy - you drop him like a hot rock and go back to the parents lives. Reading this book was like listening to fingernails on a chalk board.

[Cleopatra Pullen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am a big fan of Joyce Carol Oates but I simply can't finish this book. The first few chapters were repetitive with a young child Robbie,being abducted in a busy car park at a mall, this appeared to be a lecture on good parenting skills with the 'Mommy' describing how she educated her mature five year old boy.

The next part was equally unappealing; meeting Reverand Chester Cash as he preaches.... and preaches. There was nothing in the writing that engaged me and after slogging through the first quarter I have decided that it is simply not for me.

[K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why hadn’t he tried to run away? Six years.

There was no answer to this question. Dinah did not allow herself to think of any answer. She and Whit did not discuss this.

Unless you’d lived the hell that Robbie had lived, you could not know. And you could not judge.

Review to come.