Carthage: A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates

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.
 
 
 
 

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Thriller, Literature, Contemporary

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 21, 2014

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

[Cindy · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are plenty of plot synopses available at this point, so I'm going to focus my review on just my thoughts about the book.

I really wanted to find another way to describe my feelings about Carthage other than "I hated it", but that is truly the most honest. I struggled to pick it up, read it, and get through it. The only reason I kept plugging away is that I was hoping to get a satisfying resolution to the story, but I felt like it just petered out and I didn't even get that.

The reasons for my dislike are:

1. The writing style itself. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I've never before read a Joyce Carol Oates book, and maybe her writing style is consistent throughout her works so those already familiar with her, and that like her, will not be bothered by it. For the uninitiated, though, the half-sentences, random italics and bold font, choppy paragraphs written as if badly composed poetry, and then sudden shifts to long, drawn-out chapters that feel as if they will never end are more jarring than captivating. I never felt that I could get into a rhythm while reading. I was also bothered that a chapter would be titled "The Father", cover 150 pages, and shift back and forth from the father's perspective to the mother's. The chapter is supposed to be about the father, correct?

2. I'm also a bit of a stickler for good editing, so I was taken out of the story by my annoyance with Oates' habit of finding a word she likes and using it too often within a section (see: wraith, gut-sick, premonition, the habit of describing a man with variations of bear anatomy). It's as if she sat down to write, the word or phrase got stuck in her mind that day, and then she forgot about it during her next writing session, never to be heard from again.

3. The characters, especially Cressida, are wholly unlikeable. I don't mind a good anti-hero or conflicted protagonist, but I honestly wanted to throw Cressida in the damn river myself. One can tell Oates fashioned Cressida (and for God's sake, it's not that difficult a name!!) after herself with her description of being small, child-like, having huge dark eyes and dark, frizzy hair, so I think Oates likes her more than any human being ever could. The fact that Cressida was so self-absorbed, so completely unable to comprehend the feelings of anyone other than herself, so downright cruel to her "friends" and her sister and her parents and mankind in general because she thought herself so special and so different made me not care one iota that she felt she was a victim. The fact that she would take the actions she did because (oh sniffle, oh tiny violin) people don't love her enough (in her own estimation) made me just hate her. All of this resulted in suffering through an entire book about her.

4. Oates repeats the same information over and over ad nauseum, especially during the first 250 pages or so. I desperately wanted the story to move forward, but I was subjected to reading the same. exact. information. for what felt like an eternity before anything happened again in the story.

5. This seems like a minor annoyance, but Oates kept describing the father as if he were some giant, hulking, massively obese man by saying he weighed 199 lbs. She spent much of the end of the book talking about his hands like bear paws and describing his movements as if he were lumbering. Has she never met a normal-sized human male? I understand that she's incredibly small, but it was insulting to me - and I'm just a tall but normal-sized woman - to keep reading how this man was supposedly so gigantic that it's offensive.

Since I do want to say at least something positive because I generally love reading so much, I did find the character of Brett sympathetic, and I was interested in his story. Much of this book is about the atrocities of war and how those who return are affected, and in turn affect others, and I did feel Brett was crafted well to bring this to life. Oates' stream of conscious writing style actually worked well for Brett's character.

Overall, I was very disappointed in this book, and it's certainly turned me off to Oates as an author. Some people obviously love her and have nothing but high praise for this book, but she's just not my cup of tea.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading a long epic novel by Oates is a wholly immersive experience. I became fully lost in this book, grew to love the uniquely individual characters and spent a lot of time contemplating the intellectual and emotional conundrums that the author presents. It’s a dramatic, extraordinary story that explores large subjects like the Iraq war, the American penitentiary system, alcoholism and spousal abuse. Yet, the main thrust of the tale is a deeply personal story of a family that’s been splintered apart and slowly draws itself back together to form anew. In the fictional town of Carthage, a small community in upstate New York, a young college-aged woman named Cressida goes missing. Her respected ex-mayor father Zeno desperately tries to find her. A war-veteran named Brett who is the fiancé of Cressida’s sister is suspected of being involved. Like the drawings of M.C. Escher (whose art Cressida has an intense passion for) the laws of logic/gravity are suspended as the family desperately tries to find out what happened to their youngest daughter and are forced to go around in endless circles while the search is conducted. Time becomes distorted for them “time passed with dazzling swiftness even as, perversely, time passed with excruciating slowness.” This description so perfectly encapsulates the feeling of life in a time of crisis. The truth of Cressida’s fate is surprising and heartbreaking. Over the course of the artfully composed narrative we learn what happens to her and the other compelling characters involved.

Read my full review of Carthage by Joyce Carol Oates on LonesomeReader

[christa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the truth as I imagine it: Joyce Carol Oates, so full of words that they tumble out of her and so she has to just put them places. Into novels, that’s the obvious answer. When they’re coming too quickly to sort, poems. Tweets, that’s healthy, too. Then there are the looped letters in the foggy mirror and etchings with her thumb nail into the soft wood of park benches.

She’s a different kind of person’s Stephen King. Or maybe she’s the same person’s kind of Stephen King, but in a different way. Either way. She’s prolific. A book a year and not ever skimping on pages. Sometimes it’s like, “Wow, JCO. Out of the park again.” And sometimes, like with her latest novel “Carthage,” it’s like, “Hey, JCO. Why don’t we all just calm down for a sec. Take a deep breath. See this person here? She’s an editor. No. EDitor. Can you guess what her job entails? No, no. Of course not. How would you know. Haha.”

“Carthage” starts with a hunt for the body of Cressida Mayfield, the smart -- as opposed to pretty -- Mayfield girl. She was last seen leaving a biker bar with her sister Juliet’s former fiance, Brett, a guy who lost much of himself while serving in Iraq. None of this is in Cressida’s nature, not the bar and not the not coming home. Brett is found passed out in his truck and a bit bloodied. He’s got recollections of what happened, but they are tangled up with recollections of something that happened while he was in Iraq. So when he confesses, he’s confessing to something that makes about as much sense as untangling iPhone factory-brand earbuds that have been in a bag for a year. But the body isn’t in the shallow grave he’s spilling about. In fact, no one ever finds a body.

The plot of public opinion writes itself: the broken war hero returns home to his fiance and gets the heave-ho when the carpool to physical therapy gets to be too much. Distraught war hero ends up murdering pretty fiance’s maybe autistic sister. It’s especially easy to believe after his confession. And, before the breakup, Juliet experienced a violent episode at the hands of Brett, so she’s not necessarily positive it didn’t happen just the way he said.

The latter half of the book finds the characters scattered, both geographically and mentally. The tragedy has altered everyone’s trajectory. They’ve found God, booze, quiet anonymity, comfort and a friend.

Oates gives each character a shitton of space to sort through emotions, identity and contribution to this messy tragedy. It’s too much space. The characters don’t feel developed as much as they just feel like they are being put through paces so that the writer can discover tics and quirks.

It’s too much, friends. It is just too too much. “Carthage” is a lot of words to say very little. It reads like a first draft, the version where you start digging at the character’s skin to see who you’ve got to work with here.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

She was his younger child. She was the difficult child. She was the one to break his heart.

I've seen lots of reviews describe this as a thriller - it's not. As is often the case in JCO's work, it is concerned with violence: both the overt form and the more covert, intimate violence of human relationships. It's also a work with a public face as well as a more inward one: it deals with America's 'war on terror' and doesn't look away from the human costs of modern warfare, both physical and psychological, as personified through the experiences of Corporal Brett Kincaid, invalided out of the army and struggling to come home in any meaningful sense. But it's equally concerned with the home-grown terror of the brutal prison regimes, especially on Death Row and in the execution of capital punishment, and what cultures of institutionalism can become - it feels like no surprise that the high-security prison is on the site of a nineteenth century asylum, another place that JCO has explored with horror (see her Butcher).

So, in lots of ways I'd see this as a quintessential JCO: once again she gives us a family - the Mayfields - who are broken apart and tentatively brought back together, though any healing feels provisional and fragile. It gives us another of those fraught sisterly relationships in Juliet and Cressida - the 'pretty' one, the 'smart' one - and shows us how inadequate and damaging these sort of shorthand family roles can be to both.

JCO's style is intimate as we jump into the heads of the characters, witnessing their confusion, their lies and deceptions, their truths and confessions from the inside out. The trajectory can be diffuse: the long section set on a prison tour (personally I found this horrifically brilliant), Cressida in Florida, and a linear chronology is upset for something more provisional, recalling memories of the past that may be closer to nightmare or, alternatively, moments of luminous emotion. There is an almost lyric concern with repetition, rhythm, that is intentional and purposeful.

And at the heart of the story is Cressida - as difficult and perhaps as hard to pin down as her archetype of Shakespeare's Cressida or Chaucer's Criseyde - and a counterweight to her sister Juliet, more easily defined, though even she might wriggle out of that simplifying classification by the end.

A thoughtful, provocative, in places agonising book: this is JCO at her unsettling best.

---------------Original review--------------------
This is a searing and devastating novel of guilt and redemption, themes often treated in fiction but not always with the cool, perceptive eye of an Oates.

The writing takes us into the heads of characters and gives an emotional intimacy that is as disturbing as it is effective. A brilliant book.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Had a hard time with this one, there were many parts I liked but at the same time I felt this was to wordy. Using stream of consciousness in some places, and a narrative voice in others, this novel is told in many different voices. The father, both daughters, the mother and the war veteran suffering from PTSD. When their 19 yr. old daughter goes missing, the last person seen with her is the vet. Her older sister's ex- fiance, he has come back terrifically wounded from the war, both mentally and psychically. As these characters tell their stories, one realizes how differently family members see each other, and more and more is revealed. Stream of consciousness works very well with the Veteran, one can truly see into his mind, his confusion, his pain and his terror.

Oates is a very prolific writer but her books are not easy to read, there is always so much going on under the surface. I was intrigued enough to keep reading, wanted to see where this book was going, and I did like how it ended. I still do not understand the missing daughters motivation, think she was confused and I know she felt she was misunderstood by everyone. Despite the fact that I found this wordy, it did make me think about how little we actually know of the people we live with . How many things we do can be misconstrued. So in this way the book was a success. I have had a love-hate relationship with this author's books for many years, but I have to give her credit because she writes a wide variety of novels, many different subjects. I look forward to seeing what she tackles next.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cressida Mayfield, a troubled, immature 19-year-old college student, goes missing from the small city of Carthage, New York.



Brett Kincaid, a badly injured, decorated Iraq war veteran who was previously engaged to Cressida's sister Juliet, is suspected of being involved in the disappearance.



Cressida's parents, Zeno and Arlette, are shattered by the tragedy as is Brett's embittered, neurotic mother, who accuses all and sundry of wronging her "war hero" son. We find out about the lives of these characters, what happened to Cressida, and the devastating consequences of her disappearance.





Can't say too much more without giving away spoilers so I'll just say the story points out how much we may not know about people close to us. Good book, worth reading.

You can follow my reviews at https://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot....

[S.A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

At one point, I feared I might end up disliking this book as much as I disliked "The Accursed." The point came mid-story via a switch from upstate New York to Florida, a displacement so jarring I suffered mental whiplash.

Once I understood the reason, I overcame my emotional emergency and settled back into the novel— as much as one settles into a JCO novel. She is not a settling-in writer, not by a long shot. Oates is about as settling as sitting on a porcupine while scorpions dance around your bare feet.

In this novel, at first Oates seems to hate the Mayfield family, her main players in this novel. She peels open their skin, inviting the reader to start spraying acid on them. Arlette, the mother, is basically a cipher married to a controlling man. Zeno, the father, is a well-intentioned do-gooder, the center of attention who secretly thinks the world of himself. He would never see himself as controlling or unkind. Juliet, the oldest daughter, is “the pretty one”, the good one, the devout one—the shallow one. Or is she?

Brett Kincaid, Juliet’s ex-fiancée, a drastically wounded war vet, seems to be the only character who generates any sympathy.

Then there’s the youngest Mayfield daughter, the novel’s center: Cressida, the smart one, the nonconformist, the critical, prickly one, the daughter who feels unloved and unwanted.

Self-destructive Cressida is her own worst enemy. Her unwantedness, unlovesness, leads to a tragic decision which unravels her family. Her awful decision sends Brett Kincaid to prison for murder.

As the novel moves along, Oates shifts the reader’s emotions with amazing skill. By the end, the reader huddles in a corner, ready to forgive everyone, even Cressida, although quite a few times this reader wanted to smother Cressida.

“Carthage” is a powerful novel, one best read in large sweeps for the full sensation of unsettledness. Beware the dancing scorpions.

[Maria Bikaki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ένα αρκετά ιδιόμορφο βιβλίο περισσότερο με κοινωνικές προεκτάσεις θα το χαρακτήριζα παρά αστυνομικό και μυστηρίου με τη συγγραφέα να προσπαθεί να μελετήσει την ανθρώπινη διάσταση και τον εσωτερικό κόσμο των ηρώων. Το βιβλίο χωρίζεται σε τρία μέρη με το πρώτο να αφιερώνεται στην εξαφάνιση της κόρης επιφανούς μέλους της κοινότητας της Καρχηδόνας. Στο δεύτερο μέρος ξεμπλέκεται το κουβάρι της εξαφάνισης ενώ στο τρίτο η ηρωίδα που μόνο νεκρή δεν είναι επιστρέφει μετά από χρόνια στην Καρχηδόνα. Μυστήριο, εντάσεις, ερωτηματικά κυριαρχούν σε ολη τη διάρκεια του βιβλίου. Εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρουσα η πένα της Οουτς αν και οφείλω να πω ότι αν δεν υπήρχε το δεύτερο μέρος η «εξορία» τότε σίγουρα το βιβλίο θα έχρηζε πολύ καλύτερης τύχης και ανταπόκρισης. Κάπου εκεί χάθηκε η μπάλα μου ήταν εξαιρετικά δύσκολο στην ανάγνωση και με παίδεψε αποδυναμώνοντας μου αν θέλετε λίγο όλα τα συναισθήματα που μου δημιουργήθηκαν με το πρώτο μέρος. Αξιόλογη προσπάθεια στο σύνολο της μεν, με ταβάνι στη βαθμολογία δε.

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

What an odd novel.
For one thing, the characters sounded like educated cavemen. I know that sounds oxymoronic, but I don't know how else to capture the stilted, self conscious, unnatural yet often high falutin prose. For another, the most interesting part of the story was not at all handled, and the rest of it was an incredible boring build up to it.
Carthage is about a rather unlikable and strange young woman who goes missing and how the family falls apart. This one had a bit of a twist but the execution was really poor, and I could not tell you at all what the point of this story is. JCO is one of those authors I keep thinking I am supposed to like, and every time I find her almost breathless prose to be pretentious and cloying.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This heartbreaking tale focuses upon a dysfunctional community which morally tears itself apart after a murder takes place. The death of a younger daughter for the Mayfield Family leads to emotional scars that cannot be healed.

The highlights of this novel are the wonderful yet poignant thoughts of many characters impacted by the murder. It helps to understand PTSD or the actions of one of the main characters won't make sense.

Any tale that can bring tears to a generally emotionally controlled person such as myself picks up a good grade.

The audio for this novel was done by a man and a woman. A really nice touch. Voices by Susan Ericksen (who is great with emotional frequencies) and David Colacci.

OVERALL GRADE: B plus to A minus.

[Leo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this is my least favorite book by Joyce Carol Oates at the moment. Maybe the second but it just didn't work for me. Didn't find it engaging at all and didn't find the story to be interesting enough to read a pretty big book about

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strangely I have a tendency to first want to read the books that are not acclaimed - the “lesser children” of otherwise known and appreciated authors … So Carthage was my first book by Joyce Carol Oates and to be honest I didn’t expect much. The lukewarm average review, a thriller… but on sale, so in a way, faith has decided :-). All that has changed completely, when the characters began to take over the story….

A psychological damage can came about in so many ways. Sometimes it is violence or war that can not leave anyone unaffected or undamaged, but sometimes, it is only words. Sometimes, when the individual is vulnerable enough and the person uttering those words trusted or admired - just about anything can get engraved forever.

We can only watch when Zeno who’ s parental position grants him more power and influence that he might wish for, unintentionally sets the scene for his daughter's future. Such innocent words and yet, you think, maybe, he should have known better…? Admiring the old dog Rob Roy, that suffered and died in silence away from his family;
quoting the ancient greeks, whose teaching was “It is better never to have been born”.
calling his daughter, “the smart one”…. as opposed to “the pretty one”…
Unavoidable instances - when something of grave consequence gets said and changes things forever…

Carthage is so much more than you would expect.... It is so much more, and it is all about the characters. The carefully designed chess-game of psychological cause and effect, so human and so unpredictable.

Unhesitant five stars from me, for the mastery in construction and for the deep knowledge of human condition.

[Jo Dervan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, reminiscent of We Were the Mulvaneys, is about how a single incident wrecks the lives of a whole family. This book is set in upstate NY, the scene o other books by this author. The affluent Mayfield family has two daughters, Juliet and Cressida. Juliet, older and the prettier of the two, is engaged to her boyfriend, Brett, who is serving the army in Iraq. However he returns home severely wounded in both body and mind.
Juliet accepts his condition and is willing to help him through his rehabilitation. However the engagement is broken and son thereafter, Cressida disappears after being driven home from a bar by Brett. He is found blacked out at the wheel of his Jeep in a wooded area and Cressida is nowhere to be found.
Each section of the book is told from the point of view of all the family members as well as Matt and his embittered mother and all lead to a startling conclusion.
This is a riveting story that will keep you reading right to the conclusion.

[Martina ⭐ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prima esperienza con la Oates e diciamo che ho trovato la lettura un pò faticosa e prolissa, specialmente nei primi capitoli; avrei preferito una narrazione più "diretta" e meno ripetitiva. La storia di Cressida, una ragazza scomparsa, è intrigante ma in alcuni punti la sua evoluzione è caratterizzata da elementi eccessivi, innaturali. Sono molti i temi discussi: la vita americana, i pregiudizi, la guerra in Iraq ed Afghanistan, la morale, ma nonostante ciò non mi ha convinta molto. Sono interessata a dare altre possibilità all'autrice e curiosa di vedere come sviluppa altre vicende.

[Chaitra · Rating 1 out of 5]

This will teach me to pick up a Joyce Carol Oates book, expecting to like it. I don't actually like her style - too cloying by half. She writes about victims (in their minds they are, at least), and she writes it in stream of conscience style. This lack of plot and half-hearted prose probably explains her high output. But, it resembles nothing so much as verbal diarrhea.

I really HATED the main characters - all of them seem to have one personality trait (or flaw), and they never deviate despite the trauma they seem to have suffered. There's no growth, there's too little depth. The main character, the missing girl - or the girl who was (or they say was) missing (this bears repeating apparently, too many times, to increase word count) - is the "smart" one of the family, but really, all she is, is ugly. Inside out. She's a hopeless character to write 490 pages of garbled text on - I couldn't muster an ounce of sympathy. The worst part is that we see her six years after the main trauma, and she is *still* harping about the same bullshit that she was at 10 years old. There's nothing about her to like, she's too self obsessed and vain for that.

The other main person in the equation is a troubled Iraq war veteran. He is at least marginally more interesting than Cressida, in theory, given all the things he may have (probably) been through in the war and the PTSD that ensues, but his character is given some vague bull to deal with. Compared to Roxana Robinson's Sparta, which is the last book I read about PTSD resulting from Iraq, this is laughable. In any case, there isn't much time for Brett, for either of Cressida's parents or for her sister to air their thoughts, because we need to spend time exclusively in Cressida's shallow brain. Oh, I hate SoC so much. It's rarely done well, and in Oates' case it's an excuse to repetitively circle the same thought, sometimes not even in different words.

I don't think I can stand Oates' writing. Too bad her name starts with an O, and she writes two books a year - I end up choosing her books for reading challenges and regretting it. This might be the last straw though. I don't think I have the patience to sit through yet another self indulgent character whine about the bad things that happened to them for 400+ pages. 1 star.

Edit: Also, what's so freaking hard to remember about Cressida? For heaven's sake! At least choose something sufficiently weird, not something from the title of a Shakespeare play.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joyce Carol Oates is the Cormack McCarthy of the psyche. McCarthy uses his inside voice to explore the existential bleakness of the human condition; Oates uses her outside voice to explore the mind filled with angst, anger, and pain.

It is 2005 and nineteen-year old Cressida Mayfield is missing in a state park near Carthage, NY. In the very beginning, Cressida speaks to us from her lostness. Her older sister’s fiancé is somehow implicated, but his body and mind have been so scarred in Iraq that even he doesn’t know. Is Cressida alive or dead? Is her voice real or someone’s imagination? Will Oates tell us? It’s worth finding out!

The first third of the book reports the thoughts and actions of Cressida’s family as the days of her absence pass. The language is very Oatsian—-snatches of thought and verbiage that leave nothing clear about what happened, why, or even when. Cressida is a smart and difficult teenager who is on the “autism scale.” Her parents, Zeno and Arlette Mayfield, loom large in this section: Zeno is focused solely on finding his daughter and/or the responsible party; Arlette is focused on keeping Zeno together. From the outside, the Mayfields are a solid and strong family; on the inside they—-and particularly Cressida—-are fragile and fearful.

The scene shifts suddenly to 2012. The Investigator is an elderly and mysterious academic specializing in social justice issues, very much like Barry Schenk focuses on criminal justice. Although his work is widely known, he reveals nothing about himself, and his complete commitment to his projects requires him to hire an assistant (intern) to manage his life. Sabbath McSwain, his new assistant, is a student in her mid-20s, wholly committed to The Investigator and his work. A searing portion of this section involves their tour of a Florida prison, given by a sadistic corrections officer. Sabbath is almost literally shattered by the trauma of entering the execution chamber. But what does this have to do with the Mayfields?

Oates has written another compelling novel of pain and loss, crafted, as usual, in glorious prose. To Oates, characters are not flesh, they are thought—-love, anger, self-hatred, and fear. This story is more focused on the enigma that is “us” than her last novel, The Accursed, but it is as enthralling. An easy five stars!

P.S. Joyce Carol Otes IS Cressida Mayfield!

[Mari Carmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ha sido una lectura pausada, una lectura que requiere tiempo y paciencia, pero ha merecido la pena y mucho. Me ha encantado la prosa, las distintas perspectivas, los pensamientos de cada uno de l@s personajes, sus sentimientos ocultos y los que muestran al mundo. Lo que puede desencadenar un hecho concreto, un malentendido, el tiempo,la distancia.
Muy recomendable.

[Malia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't really know where to start describing this book, but here goes. CARTHAGE is an ambitious novel, in terms of subject matter and even language. For me, I am sad to say, it is not successful on either account.
What really disappointed me was the cool distance from emotional connection ever present in the book. The subjects presented - PTSD, trauma, loss, grief, etc. - are ones that should evoke deep feeling and involvement, yet the style of writing, the blandness of the characters (speaking often in chlichees or presented in an unpleasant stream-of-consciousness style) and the general drabness of the setting really hindered me in becoming at all invested in the book. And a real peeve of mine was the incessant use of 'for' when it should have, in modern day dialogue been 'because' or 'wakened' when 'woke' or 'awoke' would be more appropriate. I assume Oates was trying to be elegant, poetic even, but it seemed almost laughable at times and really got on my nerves after the words were repeated constantly. I feel petty even writing it, but frankly, had the book, the characters been interesting or engaging, I could easily forgive small flaws in logic or editing.

I know I should have been invested in the fate of Cressida, but I just found her truly unlikeable, and even Brett with his PTSD seemed a bit of an ass even before he went off to war.
I can appreciate the ideas Oates attempts to bring across, to touch upon; however, I felt throughout, a lack of care or realism. The story, a long one, really drags on at many points, and I had to force myself to continue, having come too far to abandon it. There is a great deal of repetition, too, which added to the tedium.
Certain points are reasonably interesting, yet as I search my mind to find something that stood out to me as particularly good, I come up with nothing. I could not connect to any of the characters, because despite the highly emotional content of the story, they all felt flat, cold, almost like caricatures of people in their situation, dulled down and made inaccessible.
Some time in the future I might realize Oates deeper intent in writing this book, yet at this point I am still slightly frustrated with myself for having wasted so much time on something I got so little pleasure from, when I could have been doing something more exciting . . .like counting my hair or doing the laundry.
Obviously some people rave about this book, so it may very well be for you, however, I cannot say much more good about it than that it was a feat in itself to write so many pages. I don't like to be unkind about any book, because there is a great deal of thought and effort that goes into the writing process, but I have to be honest, and the truth, for me at least, is that this book was a real disappointment and I very much doubt I will seek out others by the same author in the future.

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[Xenja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poiché Cressida non replicava, il professor Eddinger continuò, ma in tono più concitato, seccato. “Signorina Mayfield, è fuori questione che il suo sia un buon lavoro. Anzi, direi ottimo. Brillante. Il suo progetto mi ha davvero affascinato, anche se in un primo momento non volevo nemmeno esaminarlo, visto che era stato consegnato così in ritardo, e senza nemmeno una scusa, chessò, magari che aveva avuto dei problemi di salute.” Eddinger tacque, come per dare a Cressida la possibilità di dire qualcosa - ma cosa? (Soffriva di diselessia? di autismo? di schizofrenia, disordine bipolare, paranoia? di idiozia?)

La Oates, secondo me, è sottovalutata. Viene considerata una scrittrice piuttosto commerciale, quasi una sforna-bestseller, in confronto a colleghe di fama letteraria più prestigiosa come Alice Munro, Elizabeth Strout o Marilynne Robinson. La colpa è sua: è esageratamente prolifica. Ma è un equivoco. I suoi romanzi sono quasi sempre bellissimi, scritti con grande profondità e sottigliezza psicologica, solidamente costruiti, e tutt'altro che commerciali.
Cressida, la studentessa scomparsa, è un personaggio bellissimo. Non è una ragazza normale, e tuttavia non è nemmeno anormale. Tutti conosciamo persone così: magari molto intelligenti, spesso piene di talento, eppure incapaci di vivere in mezzo agli altri, di adattarsi a usi e costumi della società, di fare amicizie, di avere relazioni con l'altro sesso, di affrontare esami, colloqui di lavoro, viaggi, dichiarazioni dei redditi. Finiscono, di solito dopo una giovinezza promettente e problematica al tempo stesso, per restare impantanati in casa dei genitori per tutta la vita. Ma qual è la diagnosi? Io non me ne intendo, ma credo che non esista nessuna diagnosi e soprattutto nessuna cura. Non hanno malattie mentali, né disturbi psicologici come gli asperger o i borderline. Forse sono semplicemente molto, molto sensibili.
E cosa fare con queste persone? Come comportarsi, se si è loro genitori? a chi chiedere aiuto, consiglio? Il mondo fa finta di niente quando non sa che fare - in fondo ci sono problemi ben più gravi, disgrazie ben peggiori. Vero.
Ma la Oates sa che queste persone possono diventare problemi ben più gravi e disgrazie ben peggiori, per se stessi e per le loro famiglie. È il caso di Cressida Mayfield, tanto sensibile e tanto orgogliosa da non poter sopportare d'esser sbeffeggiata da un bambino, d'esser criticata da un professore, d'esser respinta da un ragazzo: tanto sproporzionata è la sua reazione a questi episodi da innescare una catena di sofferenze e tragedie che coinvolgerà più di una famiglia.
La Oates, altro che sforna-bestseller!, scrive dell'essenziale: del modo in cui le persone affrontano e sopportano la sofferenza e la felicità, la malattia, la violenza, la miseria, l'amore, la solitudine, la paura e la morte; e con quanta bravura, con quanta verità.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carthage is not an easy novel, not a story you simply read from beginning to end. The story is gathered from fragments of thoughts and emotion, from brief glimpses into the lives of the Mayfield family and the life of a young veteran of the Iraq war. Oates explores the nature of forgiveness and redemption, the lies we tell to ourselves, and to each other, how we construct our lives and how we project the image of ourselves to our families, friends and community, and essentially how we live with the decisions we make.

[Kurt Reichenbaugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2005, in the village of Carthage NY, a somewhat precocious 19-year-old girl, Cressida Mayfield, disappears in the Nautauga Forest Preserves. She was last seen with her older sister's fiancé, a physically and psychologically damaged Iraq war veteran, Brett Kincaid. Cressida's sister Juliet's attempts to save her relationship with Brett has failed. Brett remembers nothing about Cressida's last moments with him. Finding Cressida is the focus for the first 3rd of the novel and, for JCO at least, it's all related in a straightforward style. More is revealed about Cressida in the process, that she had secrets she kept from the family, that she suffered several unexplained setbacks in school and then again in college. Resentments against "the pretty sister" Juliet festered within her. Their parents, Zeno and Arlette Mayfield, try holding it together but of course, the cracks widen and despair results. It's here that the novel shifts to an interior plot as events jump several years later into Florida in 2012. As a reader we can assume we know some things, but we're kept off-balance by JCO's long passages of flashbacks and memories from Cressida and Brett. We still don't know what happened the day Cressida vanished, and there were times in the book that I wondered if we would ever find out. I finished the book thinking about what it was that JCO was attempting to say. Is it a book about the tragedies of war? the fragilities of families? the psychology of troubled girls? All three perhaps. I'm not sure it's the book for a first time Oates reader. I liked it, but I liked other novels by her better.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carthage by Joyce Carol Oates is a long winded psychoanalysis of a young woman name Cressida, born into a middle class family who is pegged by those who know her the smart sister in comparison to the "prettier" one. She grows an attachment to her sister's fiance, a war veteran, and changes the course of multiple lives, pretty much looking for her own. The first part of this book was amazing, but when the plot reveals itself, I think for type of novel it then becomes, it misses the mark to have made it a wonderful 5 stars. I applaud the philosophical sentiments throughout the novel, as you don't see much of that when reading, but it wasn't convincing of me to either love or hate the protagonist, or understand her, she kinda just bored me after awhile. The wishy washy style of writing in some chapters, I wasn't keen on. Maybe more geographical setting as the title suggests would have helped (such a lovely cover). Or more emphasis on the pretty sister, and what made her so pretty.

Overall a very ambitious novel to take on.

[Μαρία · Rating 3 out of 5]

Δεν μπορώ να πω ότι με ενθουσίασε, από την άλλη όμως με κράτησε η υπόθεση, ήθελα να διαβάσω παρακάτω για να δω τι θα γίνει. Επειδή όμως περίμενα να είναι περισσότερο "θρίλερ-αστυνομικό" , ένιωσα μια απογοήτευση.

[Inés · Rating 4 out of 5]

TEPT, relaciones familiares, violencia contra la mujer, enfermedades mentales, novela muy representativa de Joyce Carol Oates, tanto por los temas que trata ( recurrentes en su obra) como por su estilo muy personal. Un noir americano muy bueno.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books that I feel bad giving 3 stars to because it's well written and well thought out and relatively well characterized. It doesn't really seem right to rate it the same as many of the silly cozy mysteries that I read.

But, I can't really go higher.

It's the story of a family torn apart by the disappearance of the younger daughter, allegedly at the hands of the older daughter's fiancé, a wounded Iraq war veteran. I really can't go into much more about the storyline without spoiling.

What I found most interesting about the book was the author's look into the trauma of the characters' lives, particularly Brett Kincaid and what he experienced in Iraq and the effects, and the younger daughter Cressida, who lived her life misunderstood and unhappy.

Unfortunately, the book dragged on. It was too long for the story it had to tell and spent a lot of time delving into each of the character's lives. As I said, the characterization of each was quite well done. But, while many recent books have very effectively used the voices (1st person) to tell different characters' stories, here Oates chooses to use 3rd person, thereby using a similar style for each, which creates a distance from the characters. Then, annoyingly, in the last two chapters she decides to use 1st person, for different characters in each. Yet, the 1st person narration still sounds like Oates in both cases, rather than like two separate characters.

Finally, I wasn't thrilled by the outcome of the story. The mystery itself is basically resolved about half way through the book, so what remains is just how the consequences of what happened will be resolved with each of the characters. Yet, this bit is really rushed into the last 20 pages (of a 480 page book). (Well, this isn't entirely true, since the whole last section is more or less about these consequences on the various family members, but if you've read the book, you know what I'm specifically referring to.)

I really wanted to like this book, but it was a tough one for me to get through.

[Rallu S. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Έχουμε και λέμε. Προσωπικά κατέληξα πως το βιβλίο δεν μου άρεσε. Βρισκόμουν ανάμεσα στο «δεν μου αρέσει» και στο «δεν μου αρέσει αλλά ίσως κάτι θέλει να πει και δεν το πιάνω» πάρόλα αυτά δύο αστεράκια γιατί ένοιωσα πως η συγγραφέας πάλεψε πολύ με τους χαρακτήρες οπότε δεν θέλω να το ισοπεδώσω, αν και η τόση προσπάθεια τους έκαψε.

Κατα την γνώμη μου πάντα, το βιβλίο είχε συνεχείς επαναλήψεις πράγμα που το έκανε κουραστικό αρκετά (κρατιόμουν να μην προσπεράσω σελίδες για να τσουλήσει πιο εύκολα). Θεωρώ πως στην μέση περίπου πέρα των επαναλήψεων έκανε μεγάλη κοιλιά (ξαναμπήκα στον πειρασμό προσπεράσματος σελίδων αλλά όοοχι, δεν το έκανα). Και ας πάω στους χαρακτήρες, πρωτη φορά ένοιωσα τόση αντιπάθεια και απέχθεια σε βιβλίο για ένα κεντρικό χαρακτήρα, με άφηνε καθόλη την διάρκεια με ανάμεικτα συναισθήματα καθώς ένοιωθα πως η συγγραφέας τον υπερασπιζόταν με τα «μπούνια», σε σημείο που να νιώθω άβολα με την αντιπάθεια μου. Το γιατί ήταν έτσι αυτός ο χαρακτήρας δικαιολογούνταν με υπόνοιες για αυτισμό ή Ασπεργκερ αποδίδντας του χαρακτηριστικά ακραία άσχημα, που γνωρίζω όμως απο πρώτο χέρι πως αυτά στην πραγματικότητα δεν ισχύουν έτσι όπως παρουσιάζονται (σίγουρα όχι για την πλειονότητα των περιπτώσεων), κάτι που με εκνέυρισε επιπλέον γιατί αδικεί και δίνει λάθος εικόνες γι' αυτούς τους ανθρώπους. Δημιουργώντας τύψεις μετά στον αναγνώστη που φτάνει σε σημείο να αντιπαθεί τόσο αυτόν τον χαρακτήρα. Κάτι ακόμα που θεωρώ πως με κούρασε ήταν πως προκειμένου να αποδωθούν καλύτερα οι χαρακτήρες υπήρχαν μεγάλες παρενθέσεις για την ζωή τους με πολλά στοιχεία που θεωρώ πως δεν βοηθούσαν πουθενά και απλά φλυαρούσαν. Τέλος για να πω και για το τέλος του βιβλίου κάτι, επειδή για μένα το ζήτημα της συγχώρεσης έιναι ιδιαίτερο και μπαίνει διαφορέτικά για τον καθένα μας, έμεινα εντέλως ανικανοποίητη απο το κλείσιμο, για άλλους μπορεί να επείλθε η κάθαρση, για εμένα πάντως σίγουρα όχι.

Για να μην φανώ κακιά, μου άρεσε η εναλλαγή ανα κεφάλαιο της οπτικής, βάζοντας σε να ακολουθείς τις σκέψεις και την αφήγηση διαφορετκού προσώπου κάθε φορά.

Αυταα! με το ζόρι 2 αστεράκια λοιπόν.

[Come Musica · Rating 3 out of 5]

In alcuni punti è un po' prolisso, in altri la protagonista è molto infantile e così tutti gli adulti che ci sono in questo romanzo.
Non mi ha soddisfatta appieno anche se riconosco che è scritto bene. È il primo libro della Oates che leggo. Voglio vedere se anche altri suoi libri sono così.

[Dawnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars.

Lets start with the positive:

I loved how deeply this book got into exploring what faith means, both in the religious sense and in the way in what other people believe someone can be capable of. This book is one of the best books i have read so far from any book i ever read in how realistically and honest it discusses faith from all angles.
This is not a religious book, but it discusses religion, it shares both a person that is very faithful religious, that believes and is sure of God, and it discusses the other sides shown from people that are either completely not religious, not believing that there is a God and also someone that is not sure what to believe, that wants to believe but bad things keep happening that make it really hard for her to believe and so it shows those ups and downs of this persons faith and believe in religion... and i LOVED that about this book!

It was wonderfully done.

I also really liked how honest and real it seemed to me in how the "suspect" the war veteran was treated.
Because some people just believed right away that he did something horrible to the missing girl/woman (she's 19, does that count as girl or woman?) and others that are sure that he -a decorated veteran!- could have never done anything but be helpful towards another person.
And while some parts of this particular topic in this book are very word-y and overly long and a bit wide reaching in my option, overall Oates did a fantastic job with this as well.

Because she really shown the difficulties both from the side of a veteran coming home and trying to fit in again, dealing with the issues of having been in an active war zone and at the same time she also shows the other side of people that have been home, waiting for the solider to come back only to not get the person back they expected and having no idea how to deal with that.

I appreciated how Oates tried to find this balance between being completely honest and real and at the same time still clearly writing fiction. And while sometimes words did get a way from her at this point of the book, i do really think that overall she did a fantastic job in describing the difficulties soldiers face coming home and having to deal with a difficult situation like a missing persons case and being the main suspect for that.


I also mostly enjoyed the writing, i already said twice that it became bit overly word-y in the middle section of this book and could have moved a bit faster because of that, but overall i loved how Oates writes.
She finds a beautiful balance between realistic fiction and honest discussion of difficult topics i rarely if ever see in books.


And now the things that i found a bit strange.

At a point in the middle of the book Brett (the war veteran) takes over the narrative for a bit and honestly that confused me bit in the way it was written and i would have preferred the story to continue in the writing style as the first part of the book up until that point had been. Not because i didn't think that Brett would have been an interesting narration to get, but i didn't like how Oates wrote his parts.
They were confusing and while i do see the sense in that since Brett clearly was confused and unsure about what was happening and what he was doing, i personally don't like this type of unconnected and confusing writing. I appreciate it way more if i just get a clear picture painted of what the author wants for me to know, even if it is just that it is to tell me that the character has no clue what happened. Just tell me that. Don't write twenty pages basically -maybe- telling me that.


I also didn't really like the ending?
But honestly i am not sure on that part.

i have to re-read the book in the future and maybe than i can tell you what i actually thought of it.

For now i just honestly didn't like that that was the ending we got.

I understand why she did it.
It is a book discussing the different aspects of people coming home from difficult situations. So it fits? But at the same time i didn't like that she took the story there and i would have enjoyed a different ending more i think.

One where Cressida is not alive, or not run away and than decides to come back but maybe rather having Brett be released for some reason and coming back home?

I did understand -somewhat- why Oates didn't kill Cressida off, but i didn't like that she let Brett rot away for something he clearly didn't do. Clearly that is very realistic and how it actually happens. But still that was just... odd? For me to read and i didn't really know what to do with it.

But as i said, i have to re-read the book to be sure. i did Read those last 200 pages really fast because i wanted to know what happened. So maybe i overread something important that makes it all clear?


For now and this first read through of this book, i have to say i love Oates' writing, i really love her honest view and talk about difficult topics and her very real world view. I appreciate that she shows different view points of the same topic, because how often do we get that in books? I appreciate an author that doesn't shy away from difficult topics or makes them fit into a more "happily ever after" world but keeps it realistic and how it is, even if that is not what the reader wants to see happen with the characters (myself included!).

I will defiantly pick up something else by this author, and i KNOW i will re-read this book in the future.
Not this year. I need a bit of distance from this plot, this story, this book, but in the foreseeable future.

[Kike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cómo siempre Oates nos entrega un libro excelentemente escrito, donde se ve el dominio de su oficio. Y como siempre utiliza un género específico para desentrañar los horrores de la sociedad norteamericana, en el caso de Carthage utiliza la novela de misterio para hablar de los horrores de las guerras estadounidenses y de su pésimo sistema carcelario. Un libro pesimista y asfixiante que no llega a los niveles de Blonde, pero nos demuestra que Joyce Carol Oates sigue siendo de las mejores escritoras estadounidenses.

[Matt Escott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Having never read any Joyce Carol Oates I wasn't sure what to expect. To say that I was massively disappointed is an understatement. I found myself, at numerous times, checking the back cover to once again affirm that this was the same author who had won numerous prestigious writing awards, because the work that I was reading seemed far, far away from worthy of any sort of accolade.

The book is ostensibly about a missing girl and the impact that loss has on her family. But in this it covers a number of other themes: the impact of war, the question of fate, the power of perception, and questions regarding the formation of the self. Unfortunately, I didn't find Oates treatment of any of these themes (with perhaps the exception of war) to be compelling or meaningful.

There are a number of reasons for this. One is the writing style, which I realize is a personal preference. I personally do not prefer her style. The random italics, the wooden phrases, the choppy dialogue (both external and internal) were frustrating to get through.

This book is exhaustingly repetitive. I would think we have all come across people who ruminate on a specific topic or event and only speak about that until in desperation we turn the conversation in a radically different direction, only to have that person somehow bring the conversation back to the initial topic. Reading this book is like that. I lost track of how many times characters said the same thing (whether out loud or, most of the time, internally) over and over and over again. It quickly turned the book from something to be enjoyed to something to be endured.

The combination of these exhaustively repetitive internal monologues with the utter lack of self awareness the characters show is also grating. How the characters can think so much about what they are experiencing, and yet be so self unaware, is maddening. One of the big "reveals" is that Cressida, the missing girl, realizes she never felt loved at home. And yet practically all of her thoughts and actions are about that very fact: how she doesn't fit in, how she is different, how jealous she is of her sister, the "pretty one." It was a frustrating experience to work through the book, watching Cressida reflect on this very fact, only to have her realize at the end something she has known all along, and have the story hinge upon that discovery. I wanted to throw the book across the room. And this is true, to a lesser degree, of all of the characters: the "growth" they show is entirely predictable and is a revelation only to the characters themselves. Anyone paying any sort of attention can see it coming a mile away.

It's also difficult to read a whole novel about a character you despise. I have read reviews where the reviewer sympathised with Cressida, but I couldn't: she is selfish, cruel, whiny, and vindictive. It was like trying to care about a bratty teenager whom biology was not forcing you to care about. Her big change at the end comes far too late and is never really developed by Oates: she just comes back different (as they all are), and...that's it.

Which brings me to my final point (for this review anyway, I could go on). For me, the most interesting question the novel poses is how a family can be brought back together after such an event; if there are things that cannot be undone. And yet we only really get one person's perspective (Juliet, who shows a completely understandable disdain and hatred for Cressida), and glimmers of the other family member's acceptance and forgiveness of Cressida. It rings false, terribly false: the wreckage she has caused deserves a more profound treatment than simply leading us to believe that all (most) is forgiven.