Little Bird of Heaven

by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates returns with a dark, romantic, and captivating tale, set in the Great Lakes region of upstate New York—the territory of her remarkably successful New York Times bestseller The Gravedigger's Daughter.

Set in the mythical small city of Sparta, New York, this searing, vividly rendered exploration of the mysterious conjunction of erotic romance and tragic violence in late-twentieth-century America returns to the emotional and geographical terrain of acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates's previous bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and The Gravedigger's Daughter.

When a young wife and mother named Zoe Kruller is found brutally murdered, the Sparta police target two primary suspects, her estranged husband, Delray Kruller, and her longtime lover, Eddy Diehl. In turn, the Krullers' son, Aaron, and Eddy Diehl's daughter, Krista, become obsessed with each other, each believing the other's father is guilty.

Told in halves in the very different voices of Krista and Aaron, Little Bird of Heaven is a classic Oates novel in which the lyricism of intense sexual love is intertwined with the anguish of loss, and tenderness is barely distinguishable from cruelty. By the novel's end, the fated lovers, meeting again as adults, are at last ready to exorcise the ghosts of the past and come to terms with their legacy of guilt, misplaced love, and redemptive yearning.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Romance, Audiobook, Novels

442 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2007

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

[Jayson · Rating 1 out of 5]

(C) 60% | Unsatisfactory
Notes: Painfully dull beginning, a nearly interesting middle, and a flat and banal ending. Rambling, boring and purposeless.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really don't understand why this book is so highly rated by so many people. Maybe they just read the book jacket. I would have liked to read the book described there. But in reality it's just empty. It repeats things over and over - the trite expressions that Zoe said, the fact that "Krissy loves her Daddy". And oh yeah, Zoe was murdered. Got to mention that again every other page, or the reader might forget. It's just lazy writing. Instead of constructing characters with depth, Oates just repeats the bare facts and mantra-like thoughts of the characters. I understand that repetition can be powerful if thoughtfully executed, but here it just seems like padding to get the book up past 400 pages. I felt like these characters had the potential to be interesting, but I just didn't get anything out of this book. There were no surprises - just a cliched drunken father, doting daughter, rough, misunderstood macho boy. I thought it might get better when we switched to Aaron's point of view, but I honestly couldn't tell the difference between his stream of consciousness rambling and Krissy's. I tried reading a page at random to see if I could guess who's "voice" it was in, but it all sounded the same to me. I know that Oates has a reputation for being a good writer, but that doesn't mean that every book she cranks out is automatically brilliant. To everyone who started the book but couldn't bring themselves to finish it, go ahead and read chapter five and the last paragraph. That should pretty much do you for.

[Dagio_maya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fragilità

★★★½

Come il “dolore fantasma” di un arto amputato, Krista e Aaron sopravvivono ai traumi di un delitto.
Lei, figlia dell’indiziato numero uno: l’amante.
Lui, figlio della conturbante Zoe: la vittima.

Un filo narrativo che salta nel tempo avvolgendo e riavvolgendo il nastro di un dramma che continua a ritornare.
Ogni volta che ascoltiamo un episodio di cronaca nera dovremmo pensare a quante vite si distruggono: spesso e volentieri i figli pagano le colpe di genitori.
Ferite su cui ogni giorno cadono manciate di sale.

Ancora una volta Joyce Carol Oates mette in scena uno dei tanti drammi della provincia americana e dimostra la sua maestria nello scavare nella psiche di vittime e carnefici.

Se, tuttavia, cercate un romanzo dal ritmo serrato Uccellino del paradiso non fa per voi soprattutto nella prima parte del romanzo dove si entra in un vortice rindondante che ci porta direttamente nel dolore di una ragazzina la cui vita si è distrutta in un attimo.

"Una famiglia si disgrega una sola volta, lo capisci di colpo cosa significa."

Una storia di sopravvissuti, di fragili ali come quelle di un uccellino...

------
Little Bird of Heaven - Reeltime Travelers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-80jQ...

🎵🎵"A Charlie Gross Well love they tell me is a fragile thing.
It's hard to fly on broken wings I lost my ticket to the promised land Little bird of heaven right here in my hand Little Bird of Heaven" 🎵🎵

[Simona · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ma sapevo affrontare il dolore. La sofferenza era una eredità che conoscevo, e accettavo. In pratica tutta la mia vita - privata e professionale - era una strategia per affrontare il dolore, vi ero allenata".

"Uccellino del paradiso" è pregno di dolore. Il dolore di due famiglie che ci vengono presentate dai ragazzi protagonisti. Attraverso la voce di Krista e di Aaron, entriamo nel mondo di Sparta, una cittadina americana immaginaria. Il mondo di Sparta ci viene raccontato dalla voce di Krista. È lei che ci descrive i personaggi, la sua famiglia e il rapporto un po' particolare con il padre. La Oates è brava a caratterizzare i personaggi, a farti entrare nelle loro vite tenendo alta la tensione permettendoti di appassionarti a loro.
In "Uccellino del paradiso" c'è davvero tutto. C'è rabbia, dolore, brutalità, crudeltà combinata a dolcezza, tenerezza proprio come la storia d'amore che sboccia tra i due. Per i personaggi della Oates non c'è liberazione, ma solo disperazione, sono aggrappati al loro dolore. Per loro sembra non esserci pace, soluzione e proprio come l'uccellino del titolo diventa difficile "volare con le ali spezzate".

[Carol Storm · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not finish-- the writing was awful, the story never goes anywhere, and I didn't like any of the characters. It was a good set up, sort of like:

"Eddie Dugan was a psychopath, but to me he was my daddy. With his flashy cars, and his toothless grin, and his sudden flashes of meaningless violence, he made me feel that I was the most special little girl in the whole world. But who was Daddy, really? Why did he kill that truck stop waitress? What really happened that night?"

But then, NOTHING happens. I mean, there was FIFTY PAGES of nothing at all, the girl gets to ride in Daddy's car, they go for ice cream, and she just keeps taking nasty little cheap shots at everything and everyone in town. And it never goes anywhere! What I hated most was the fake emotions at the core of the story. I mean, the girl obviously hates her father, thinks he's total trash, but she keeps putting on this weird "daddy's girl" voice and breathlessly confiding that he's cruel, but fascinating, but dangerous and out of control, but loving and sad. Talk, talk, talk, no show. And you really can NOT believe that this lunch bucket slob would have the nuts to do even half the stuff that's being hinted at. This guy makes Homer Simpson look like Atticus Finch!

If you read HORSEMAN PASS BY by Larry McMurtry you will see that Hud is a very similar guy. Except you can BELIEVE that women are absolutely fascinated by him. You can BELIEVE he is mad enough to murder his father -- and smart enough to get away with it! McMurtry's voice can sell you anything. That is one reason he's a great American writer. "There would be a trial, but I had watched a few trials in Thalia, and I had seen people a lot dumber than Hud get away with a lot worse than what he did."

For heaven's sake, don't read THIS book. Read HORSEMAN PASS BY by Larry McMurtry!

[Mariano Hortal · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ave del paraíso" de la gran escritora norteamericana Joyce Carol Oates. Y me encanta empezar con ella porque no paro de recomendarla, no hagáis caso a los intentos de la editorial actual que la publica de hacernos ver que es un libro romanticón a lo "noraroberts" o cosillas al estilo... no tiene nada que ver. La muerte de una chica en un pueblo pequeño de Estados Unidos es el pretexto que la escritora utiliza para mostrarnos al mismo tiempo una crítica a la sociedad, la justicia y la incapacidad de olvidar además hace evolucionar a unos personajes que tienen que seguir un camino de expiación en sus vidas por las consecuencias de dicha muerte. Es un relato gótico, bello, aún con la violencia y el sexo en muchas ocasiones explícito. Finalmente conmovedor, tierno y lírico y con un estilazo propio de ella. Una joya más de una de las más grandes actuales.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of two American families - the Crullers and the Diehls, living in Sparta, New York. Their lives will be intertwined by the brutal murder of Zoe Kruller which will have two suspects: her husband, Delray and one of her lovers, Eddy Diehl. As one the consequences of this mysterious death, Aaron Kruller and Krista Diehl will become obsessed withe at other, trying to find the Zoe's killer.

In this novel, the author magnificently describes the American style of living in a small town which is troubled by this unsolved crime. By the end of the book, a final revelation will show the real criminal and this fact will join Aaron and Krista once again.

3* Missing Mom
4* Carthage
4* Little Bird of Heaven
TR Marya
TR Bellefleur
TR Jack of Spades
TR We Were the Mulvaneys
TR The Falls
TB Blonde
TR The Accursed
TR Black Water
TR The Virgin in the Rose Bower
TR A Garden of Earthly Delights

[Jaksen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read about halfway but just couldn't get into it, and I love this author. Love Joyce! I should have known, after reading the first forty pages or so and constantly being reminded of basic facts about the main characters. Repetition upon repetition! How many times can one say the same thing?

Not one of her best, imo.

[notgettingenough]

This book has done the unforgivable. It has put me off my porridge.

[TALITA · Rating 2 out of 5]

que decepção

[Stefania · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Che mistero è l'amore. Si può essere innamorati di una persona che non sa nulla di te. Forse la massima felicità si raggiunge quando si ama qualcuno che ignora la nostra esistenza."
•~•
Krista e Aaron, i protagonisti di questa storia, non potrebbero essere più diversi. Ma un tragico evento li legherà indissolubilmente e le complesse dinamiche psicologiche e fisiche che ne derivano vengono raccontate dalla Oates con la sua solita meticolosità ossessiva. Così come ossessivi sono i ricordi strazianti e i traumi della vita, ossessivi sono la narrazione, l'analisi dei sentimenti e dei punti di vista sugli eventi. Io amo questa scrittrice e amo come e quanto sia capace di farmi estraniare da me stessa rendendomi più propensa a capire gli altri.

[Jody · Rating 5 out of 5]

God, I love Joyce Carol Oates. I was wavering between a 4 or a 5 star but I have to give her my top rating. She's up there with Margaret Atwood for me.
This is a very raw and brutal portrayal of a memorable cast of characters who want to escape the small town despair that hangs over their heads like a chemical haze of toxic gloom. It's almost Shakespearean as the saga unwinds in dark twists and turns.
Krista is just a young teen when her dad is accused of murdering the one bright light of Sparta-the charismatic and attractive Zoe Kruller. The fact that he's having an affair with her makes him a prime suspect. This is partly Krista's story of what it's like to be a devoted daughter torn to pieces by her father's descent from family man and good guy to a suspect that's shunned no matter where he turns.
The other suspect is Zoe's estranged husband, Delray, who is known for having a temper. Their son, Aaron, plummets into a very dark world as his story parallels Krista's. Their destinies are irrevocably intertwined. Gut wrenching stuff.

[Joan Colby · Rating 1 out of 5]

When one is as prolific a writer as Oates, there are sure to be hits and misses. Little Bird of Heaven, unfortunately, is one of the latter. A disappointment, as when Oates centers her tales in upstate New York, she usually evokes both setting and character effectively. This novel fails particularly in creating sympathetic and convincing characters. Oates device of repetition which normally works well, is intrusive here. The magic she oft-times operates in immersing the reader in the story, is absent. Compared to hits like Because it is Bitter and Because It is My Heart or The Gravedigger’s Daughter to cite a couple, Little Bird of Heaven joins My Sister, My Love and Man Crazy as failures

[Estibaliz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Más de una vez he leído por ahí que Joyce Carol Oates es una de esas eternas candidatas al Premio Nobel. ¿A qué están esperando? Está claro que esta mujer sabe escribir y domina la narrativa como pocos... y ello sin caer en el tedio.

Este 'Ave del Paraíso' es ciertamente cautivador y absorbente, lo que algunos llaman un pasapáginas, y las voces de sus dos narradores y protagonistas principales están muy logradas. Una gran historia que no deja indiferente, y tan nutritiva que ni siquiera el final, un tanto abrupto, importa. Todo en su justa medida... 4 y medio.

[Michael Lindgren · Rating 4 out of 5]

With "Little Bird of Heaven," Joyce Carol Oates returns again to depictions of life in Sparta, N.Y., "the doomed city on the Black River." In this latest offering, the fading blue-collar burg has been rocked by the grisly murder of one Zoe Kruller, a troubled but charismatic country singer with a taste for seedy pleasures.

Zoe was found beaten and strangled in her bed in a run-down apartment on the wrong side of town. Estranged from her husband, she had been living in squalid semi-prostitution, and the feeling among the shabby-genteel townspeople, who are a little too close to Zoe's milieu for empathy or compassion, is that she somehow got what she deserved. The police investigating the crime are certain she died at the hands of her lover or her ex-husband. When the investigation stalls over lack of evidence, however, the murder remains unsolved, effectively casting the families of those involved into an endless purgatory of suspicion.

The fallout from the unhappy woman's demise falls largely on the shoulders of Aaron, her anomic son, and Krista Diehl, the daughter of the local roustabout with whom Zoe was having an affair. Both children believe that the other's father is responsible for the murder, setting up crosscurrents of sin and stain that reverberate throughout the narrative, which jumps back and forth across the passage of two decades in the lives of these death-haunted characters.

This is a powerful novel. Oates's feel for the rhythms of hardscrabble life and its sour mix of alcoholism, suicide, drug abuse, adultery and murder is as keen as ever. In Sparta she has created a fictional universe to stand beside Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County or Cheever's Shady Hill. Her descriptions of the geography of urban decay -- the rusted bridges, tangled back alleys and trash-strewn lots -- are as vivid as any naturalist's portrayal of more felicitous scenes. Her unsentimental language makes a high-lonesome kind of poetry out of otherwise sordid and unremarkable circumstance.
ad_icon

This is not to say that "Little Bird of Heaven" is without flaws; its pacing is, shall we say, stately, and at times the author lingers over descriptive passages that could have been dispatched more crisply. A book that starts out as a standard police procedural but fizzles into uncertainty and stasis may be realistic, but it will frustrate readers with more conventional expectations.

By now, however, most readers probably have settled ideas about Oates anyway, and "Little Bird of Heaven" is unlikely to change any minds. Despite her long and prestigious career, in certain circles she suffers from the perception that her superheated realism is not sufficiently literary or experimental. There are three reasons for this canard:

The first is the staggering volume of Oates's output. While some of her work can feel either rushed or recycled, it is worth noting that James, Thackeray, Dickens and Trollope, to name a few, produced an equivalent amount of fiction. But critics, especially male ones, are in love with the idea of the author as heroic artiste, a reclusive mystic whose triumphal verbal artifacts are the product of a decade or more of tortured cogitation. This is a purely 20th-century invention. The idea that writing is a craft, that it is work and, like baking or washing dishes or painting houses, can be done daily and well, is anathema to the hoary "great man" theory of literature.

The second reason for the disdain Oates sometimes provokes is that she eschews postmodernism gamesmanship, and it is difficult to think of a writer less burdened with irony -- the kudzu vine of contemporary fiction. Fashion aside, novels like "Little Bird of Heaven," with its mixture of the Gothic and the fatalistic, mark Oates as our closest contemporary analogue to Hawthorne: lyrical, moral, unforgiving.

And finally, there's the poverty, economic and intellectual, of Oates's subjects. Like everyone else, literary critics enjoy reading about characters who resemble themselves, but Oates's narratives are markedly free of eccentric academics, hipster smart-alecks and entry-level publishing ingenues. For Raymond Carver or Cormac McCarthy to write scenes with unshaven characters drinking from the bottle in boardinghouse rooms with stained and faded floral wallpaper registers as noble and bitter and true. To do so as a woman, as a spiritual descendant of Austen and Woolf and Wharton, however, looks to the inflexible-minded as slightly out of focus, as though she were slumming or trying to be something she's not. But Oates's refusal to write soggy family sagas or dating-life confessionals is its own form of toughness. What else would you expect her to do? She's the original Girl From the North Country.

From the Washington Post, September 13, 2009

[Bonnie Brody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Little Bird of Heaven is inimitably Oates. It has all her signatures - -the stylization of her writing, the focus on family narrative as destiny, and the mixture of pain and love. The stylized writing in this book is more pronounced than in some of her others. She repeats some things multiple times for emphasis and for varied affect. Initially, this bothered me but as the book progressed, I was so caught up in the narrative that nothing could deter me from wanting to turn to the next page.

As in her other books, love is closely mixed with pain, sexual and emotional longing, cruelty and betrayal. The family narrative is examined as destiny. She explores the theme of wanting to rewrite our narratives with the hope that this time it can turn out differently. The characters are drawn to people and events that remind them of their pasts, painful as they were. However, they hope that by reliving the past, they can change the outcome. Oates asks the reader, `Can we really change our destinies?' She acknowledges the fact that life is ever-changing but people are caught up in the current of family destinies.

This novel is about the murder of a young woman named Zoe Kruller. She is a singer in a local band, mother of Aaron and estranged wife of Delray. There are two persons of interest, suspects in this murder - - Delray Kruller, Zoe's estranged husband, and Eddie Diehl, Zoe's lover. Eddie is the father of Krista and he has been having an affair with Zoe for quite some time. Once the murder occurs he is shunned by his wife and made to leave their home.

The story is told in two parts, from two viewpoints. The first half of the book is told from the vantage point of Krista Diehl, Eddie's daughter. She is close to her father and loves him unconditionally. She believes with all her heart that he could not have murdered Zoe. She believes that Delray Kruller is the murderer. Krista becomes obsessed with Aaron Kruller though at the time of the murder she is in grade school and he is a middle school student, about four years Krista's senior. She believes she loves him and begins to shadow him, appearing at places he is known to go.

Aaron's story is the second half of this novel. He is the one who finds the murdered Zoe and this breaks a part of him. He is aware of Krista but has no idea why she is appearing at places he frequents. He believes that Eddie Diehl, Krista's father, murdered his mother. Aaron and Krista come from different sides of the track. Aaron is part Seneca Indian and there is a lot of prejudice against his people in their small town of Sparta, N.Y. There is one scene where Aaron finds himself Krista's savior and the profundity of love, cruelty and pain is described in a poignant and almost revolting manner.

Oates does a wonderful job of describing the pain that children endure when they grow up in addicted families. Both Eddie Diehl, Zoe and Delray Kruller are alcoholics and drug addicts and their children live with shame, secrecy and silence as they harbor a loyalty to their parents - - no one must know what goes on inside the home. At the same time, they become what is known as `parental children', children who parent the adults. As Aaron says "He'd been an adult for as long as he could remember, before even Zoe had died. Only vaguely could Krull recall a boy - - a little boy named `Aaron' - - on the far side of Zoe's death as in a shadowy corner of the house on Quarry Road". (p.357) . Not only do Aaron and Krista lose their childhoods to the ravages of addiction, Aaron feels that this has become his legacy.

"Headed to hell after her. Drinking beer till his head buzzed and his gut
was bloated like something dead and swollen in the water thinking how
it was so, Zoe had plunged into hell and was pulling them after her like
dirty water swirling down a drain. The kind of family situation, you
could call it an inheritance, you'd naturally need to get high and stay
high as long as you could." (p. 364)

This is a powerful book, not a light read. It is a book about despair, pain, longing, betrayal, addiction and cruelty. It is a book about life on the edges of the precipice where the characters are holding on by the mere strength of their fingertips. It is a book with brilliant insight and a riveting narrative.

[bookworMyra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not going to lie, somewhere along the way, I confused Joyce Carol Oates with James Joyce, so when I picked up Little Bird of Heaven, I may or may not have been under the impression that I'd be greeted with something similar to Dubliners.

A little embarrassing, but moving on.

I was once told by one of my favorite English professors that Oates isn't likely to disappoint and she certainly delivered with Little Bird of Heaven. Based on some other reviews I read, it seems like Oates deviated from her usual tone of narration in this book, but I think that her dark and moody style of writing in this case fits perfectly with her characters and plot.

Zoe Kruller's gruesome murder sets in motion a chain of events from which the characters can never turn back. Krista Diehl's life changes forever when her father, Eddy Diehl, is targeted for murdering his mistress. Aaron Kruller is forced into adulthood when he finds his mother's body and his father, Delray Kruller, is also suspected for the murder of his estranged wife.

Oates delivers the story in split narration, with the first half focusing on Krista's perspective and the second half shifting to Aaron's viewpoint. Upon first glance, Krista's narration seems choppy...almost annoyingly so. Fragmented sentences that forced me to read backwards to see if I missed anything. Dashes inserted in the middle of a thought to show how jumpy Krista's thinking is. But that's the thing, as I learned more about Krista's character, her unsurprising uncertainty as a girl her age added with her family name being smeared, her growing insecurities and desire to simply blend into the background, the style of narration began to make more sense. Oates isn't telling you how desperate Krista is to be truly seen and loved by someone, she's showing you by placing you directly in her head. I think that's easier said than done. There's also evidence for this when we meet Krista again in the end, all grown up and established as a successful paralegal. The style of writing is just as established, fully thought out and complete sentences with no dashes in sight. This reflects on Krista's maturity and development as a character.

When Oates shifts to Aaron's perspective, we encounter a different voice. It's slightly similar to Krista's unresolved tone, but different in that he is more aware of who he is and more rooted in his identity than Krista. His thoughts are still presented in fragments, but lack the dashes that indicate flighty thinking. Introduced with Aaron is also the undertone of dangerously violent sexuality. I think the book harbors the undercurrent of aggressive sexuality from the beginning and it is presented as a thing of curiosity, as young Krista dapples with the unnatural relationship between her father and Zoe. However, Aaron's sexuality is presented with a desire to dominate women. This may as well stem from a possible need to dominate his mother, whose own flightiness and faltering love, even before her murder, left him with a gaping hole in his life and a crippling distrust of women.

"Why you can not trust women. Even young girls. Can not know what the fuck they are thinking, can not know what they are feeling, can not know how they will surprise you except you know it will not surprise you."

As Aaron's sexuality develops from male dominance and anger toward his mother, Krista's sexuality grows from her need to be recognized and loved by her absent father. Perhaps her own desires come from her increasing urgency to feel truly connected with someone as she becomes further isolated by the unique events in her life. All those in her life, her mother and brother, seem to grow distanced the more this urgency for connection amplifies. This might explain her obsessive love with Aaron, the only other person who might understand her suffering.

“How mysterious it is, to be in love. For you can be in love with one who knows nothing of you. Perhpas our greatest happinesses spring from such longings-being in love with one who is oblivious of you.”

Sex is certainly used as a facilitating factor in Little Bird of Heaven. It seems to portray the coming of age for both Krista and Aaron as they grapple with the sequestering events of their young lives. Oates also appears to be using the theme of sex to comment on the stark differences of womanhood and manhood. As both kids are forced to age through this trauma, they each enter man/womanhood in their own right. Whereas Aaron's sexuality is dominant, Krista's appears to be submissive. Aaron's destructive behaviors seem to imply an inner desire to overshadow the mark his mother has left on him. On the other hand, Krista's search for a fulfilling relationship is a direct result of her father's inability to provide one. This is may be why Krista submits herself to terrible treatment from others looking to take advantage of her, including Aaron in the bathroom scene. The tool of sex in the story is crucial to the ending, when Aaron and Krista finally consummate their relationship as adults. The focus is not on the ultimate consummation, rather it is on the finality of the struggle born from Zoe's death. Their coming of age is sealed, with Krista determined to put it behind her while Aaron's fate appears to disallow the healing of his open wound left by his mother's death.

"Nobody had hurt me. This was so....Didn't see who it was, who hurt me. Never knew his name."

Joyce Carol Oates does a wonderful job weaving together the dark tale of Zoe's brutal murder and the consequential coming of age story for Krista and Aaron. She pairs pain and love in a haunting way that sticks with you even after you've read the last word.

"If you don't want to be hurt Krissie, maybe you shouldn't be playing at all."

[Kimberly Tomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es el primer libro que leo de Joyce Carol, y me ha encantado. Tengo que ser sincera, me ha costado leer la primera parte del libro, se me hizo un poco lento que tuve que dejarlo por semanas, tal vez muchos detalles de las escenas o pensamiento circunstancial de la protagonista. Sin embrago, al llegar a cierto punto la lectura se hace más ágil, la narrativa es única tocando temas que muy pocos escritores se atreven a plasmar en sus libros. La trama es increíble cómo un hecho puede marcar por años, no solo a familiares o conocidos de la víctima, sino también a todo un pueblo y un poco más. Definitivamente deseo leer un poco más de la escritora.

[Christina Stind · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joyce Carol Oates has been one of my favourite authors for years now. Blonde was my first book by her and it was such an eye-opener for me. Her writing totally blew me away - and still does to this day. Her books are never easy, they are never nice and pleasant but they are important and interesting - and oh so well-written. She does this things with italics, telling us things her characters don't know, letting us know what the characters think when they look back etc.
This is not her best book - but it's still very good. This is a book about a murder. A woman in town is strangled in her bed - the general opinion is that it's either by her husband or her lover. No one is able to prove that either man did it so the whole town just suspects one or the other - or both. These two men are actually really similar. Both are men who are used to getting what they wanted, laying down the law - and putting people in their places if anybody dares speaking up against them. Both men have kids.
And these kids are the protagonists in this book. The woman's lover has a daughter and the husband has a son - who is also the son of the murdered woman. The books are split into three parts. The first part deals with the girl. We follow her from she's a young girl till she's a young woman. How it is to grow up under this suspicion, how her mother and father are divorced and how much she suffers from this. She loves her father - her drunken bullying father - even though she's scared of him. Oates details this so well.
The second part is about the boy. He is a big boy, part Indian. He's the one who finds his mother lying killed in her bed. He's the one who has to live with the entire town suspecting that his father did it. He's the one who covered for his father and told police that he was home that night.
Both kids have rather similar lives. They go through much of the same stuff and they know of each other, and later get to know each other under rather unfortunate circumstances.
These separate but intertwining stories take up most of the book. We see how devastating the suspicion is for both children, how their and their families lives are ripped apart because of this - even though neither man is convicted.
Then for the third part, the two go together to see an old acquaintance. A woman who might be able to shed some light on what happened all those many years before.
Oates does what she does so well. She tells most of the events in the book in the first few pages but then she tells it again and again, each time with a little more depth, a little more detail - or from another point of view so we with each new retelling get a better understanding of what really happened - and who did it. The book jumps back and forth between the now and the then, with the added bonus of the characters' gained knowledge over the years.
You have to be a really great reader to keep your readers captive when you basically reveal all in the first few pages - and she is. I would have been okay with never knowing who did it because the rest of the book and the writing was that good - even though I've read better by Oates. But of course, when you write at least a new novel each year, sometimes the books only get four stars.

[Katsumi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Little bird of heaven is a definitely a mystery type of book. This book takes place in Sparta, a fictional town in upstate New York. The novel is based off of the unsolved murderer of Zoe Kruller, a bluegrass singer with a reputation for sleeping around. After she was strangled in bed, the police repeatedly detained and interrogated her estranged husband, Delray Kruller, and her married lover, Eddy Diehl. The two men are names "prime suspects" in the local paper, but are never taken to trial. But Eddy Diehl's son, Aaron insisted that his father was with him the night of the murderer, making this Diehl's alibi. But the book isn't primarily about the murdered, it is between Eddy's daughter, Krista, and Delray and Zoe's son, Aaron, both try to make sense of what really happened and trying to prove each of their fathers innocence.
Throughout the book, Krista is persistent on her father's innocence but sooner than later she starts remembering things and putting pieces together that make her realize that her father could have possibly committed this crime. She starts remembering times she came home early from school and found her father and his mistress alone. But Krista loves her father too much to admit anything bad about him. She is blinded by him and his charisma. At one point in the book her father goes to Krista's high school interrupting her basketball practice and steals her away in his car. At first of course Krista is just naïve about it and thinks nothing of it, but then he points a shotgun at her.
On the other side there is Aaron, who is a heartbreaking character. When his mother left his father she left him too. He's big and angry and dark. He had the bad luck to find his mother's strangled corpse, her skull pounded. When Zoe's killer is finally revealed, the truth is useless. As a turning point in a mystery, it falls flat. But for Aaron and Krista, who have been waiting so long to know whether their fathers were murderers, it matters deeply. In the final chapters there is a completely new Krista. She is now a paralegal working on behalf of incarcerated men, trying to establish their innocence. Like her father, her clients are killers by reputation, strong and tough but poor and inarticulate. In some ways, what happened to Krista's dad still defines her. But she has also left town, made something of the tragedy. Her voice has matured as well, grown more controlled, less naïve. When she reunites with Aaron, while their physical pull is as intense as ever, she recognizes "something impersonal, anonymous" and predatory in the way he touches her, and knows she should get out while she can.
I liked this book, but at the same time I didn't. I thought it was a little too much. There is a very disturbing scene about Aaron saving Krista from being raped but then he sexually assaults her himself. Which was a little weird? But overall it was a book filled with mysteries and excitement. For example her father definitely did not come off as a murder in the beginning of the book, at least to me he didn't and then he ended up kidnapping his own daughter at one point. So the major change in characters was good I liked that.

[Krista · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think that I should say bluntly This was the time in my life, I fell in love with Aaron Kruller.

There would be a way of composing this that would allow the reader to understand She is in love with that boy. She will be so humiliated, she will make such a fool of herself, can't anyone stop her! -- a way of indirection and ellipses, not blunt statement; but I want to speak frankly, I want to say something that can't be retracted Yes I was in love with Zoe Kruller's son, the first time in my life I was in love. And there is no time like the first.

I don't know if this passage was purposefully metafictive, some kind of postmodern irony, but this entire novel was written in indirection and ellipses and with frustratingly few blunt statements. At its core, Little Bird of Heaven is a crime story, a murder mystery, it tells you so right at the beginning. It sets up two likely suspects, the murdered woman's estranged husband and her lover, throws in a whole cast of secondary characters -- could she have been killed by her floozy roommate? Another lover? A drug dealer? But in the end: The floozy roommate, Jacky, makes a deathbed confession that she knew all along that Zoe had been killed by the owner of the club where she and Zoe worked. Isn't it the first rule of a murder mystery that the killer must make an appearance before the reveal? So maybe this story wasn't a classic murder mystery, perhaps it intended to be more literary than that, but if it was meant to be an exploration of the character of people affected by tragedy, by a shocking murder, then it simply fell flat for me.

I listened to an audiobook of Little Bird of Heaven and I found it so boooring and so looong (the rain that kept me from my walks might be partially to blame but this took a month to listen to). The two times that Jacky is talking to Krista are needlessly wordy -- the first meeting took over an hour to listen to, and it's 99% Jacky talking. I just wanted something to happen. And rarely does anything happen in this book; it just keeps repeating and circling back, with indirection and ellipses, and I feel robbed of the time. This is probably mostly due to the unsatisfactory resolution of the mystery; I just feel so cheated.

I remember being very affected by We Were the Mulvaneys, but this is the third JCO lemon for me in a row, and I don't think I'll be giving her another try anytime soon.

[Laurel-Rain · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Joyce Carol Oates's latest novel, "Little Bird of Heaven: A Novel," the brutal slaying of Zoe Kruller, a young wife and mother, forms the central core to the story, with two major suspects: her estranged husband, Delray Kruller, and her long-time lover, Eddy Diehl.

Diehl's daughter Krista and Kruller's son Aaron become obsessed with each other, as, over the years, nobody is charged with the slaying, the murder goes unsolved, and each young person believes the other's father is guilty.

"Told in halves in the very different voices of Krista and Aaron," this tale shines a light on intense sexual love, the anguish of loss, and tenderness that is barely distinguishable from cruelty.

We meet the characters who play key roles in the underworld of drugs and crime, while glimpsing the vulnerabilities of each.

In the end, the secret of who actually killed Zoe Kruller is revealed, but it is almost anticlimactic. By then, so much misery has consumed and ruined the lives of some of the major players, leaving them empty and washed up. After years apart, when Krista and Aaron finally meet again for the big reveal, they are going through the motions. Krista has moved on with her life and developed into someone with opportunities while Aaron has seemingly stood still, stuck in that same place of bitterness and defeat.

What they had imagined about each other could never be. And the people they had become could no longer exist side by side in their old hometown.

When Krista walks away, finally, she is free at last. She has grown wings and can fly away—perhaps like "the little bird of heaven."

In this story, there was so much depth and intensity that I found it difficult to keep reading for any length of time. I had to take breaks. And as I neared the end, I found myself speeding up, rushing the ending along, so I could escape the darkness of the characters and their sordid lives.

This is a book well worth reading, but not one that I would reread. Perhaps 4.5 stars.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read no writer who can create the feel of Western New York (my home region) with the precision of Joyce Carol Oates. She describes the look and feel of the highways, housing and bleak winter of Sparta, NY, perhaps a typical upstate small town. More importantly, she writes of the people who live there and the lives they make.

Here she tackles the aftermath of a heinous murder. She writes of its effect on the families of two men whom society has judged as guilty. These families had troubles before their big "trouble" began. Both families were severed by drugs and adultery. One family had the added burden of violence and family and societal views of inter-cultural marriage.

There are secrets in small towns. Some are open and others buried way down. There are informal power structures in small towns and there are some people who live above the law. This book describes the wreckage caused by the self preservation of people inside and outside the system.

I have to admit, were this not JCO, I would not have stayed with it. Somewhere before page 158 I started to wonder if I really cared about this story. It was a relief when in Chapter 17 a new element is introduced and the story really begins.

There are parts I'd have preferred were pruned. The basketball games, or Krista's phone call and French fries in the bar with Dad, or the much later the episode with Claude Loomis are examples of parts that would have been better had they been shorter. The ice cream cone with the weevils in it just did not make sense (where would a proper ice cream bar, as this one seemed to be, have easily available weevils?). It did not seem to fit the other characteristics attributed to Zoe.

Despite the wordiness in some parts, is a very good book, by a very good author.

[Kolleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was such a disappointment! We Were the Mulvaneys is one of my favorite books and I've avoided reading any of Oates' other books because I knew they couldn't compare. I saw this one in my book club and thought it might be as good as the other. Wrongo!

The book is about two families that are torn apart when they become suspects in the murder of the town prostitute. The book shifts from each suspects family and the implications that came from this murder. Although this sounds like a great plot, it isn't. The book was sooooo slow, and by the time I decided maybe I should just give up, I was already on page 100 and figured I should finish it out. Krista acted like such a baby- no 15 year old acts like that with their father, and Aaron was so sexually perverted that it made the book seem not only slow but unrealistic. Not to mention who the murdered actually turns out to be, which I won't spoil for you here (A.) saw it coming, and B.)disappointing)!

The only thing this story had going for it was the suspense of who the killer was, which you don't find out until 10 pages before the book ends. Overall, not a terrible read, not a book to quit on, but not a good one either.

[Ann Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am simultaneously reading a short story collection by the same author (I Am No One You Know and Other Stories). What struck me, as I finished this novel, is what similar worlds Joyce Carol Oates and Stephen King write about. I'm sure some people will be shocked that I wrote that because Oates is a much more literary writer than King, but, when you consider the subject matter that they write about (deeply troubled souls who often meet with grim fates and/or lead tortured existances), there is a surprising amount of common ground.

This novel examines the effects on the next generation of having a father who is wrongfully accused of murder. The theme of being wrongfully accused is also picked up again in Krista (the female protagonist's) choice of career in adulthood. (She defends the wrongfully accused.) The story reeks of injustice and missed opportunities. Even the end of the story provides a less than happy ending for both characters, but one that is strangely satisfying to the reader because it is realistic.

The novel is intriguing and complex; and the writing is lyrical and multi-layered. Highly recommended.

[Eve Kay · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book could have been good. The premise is intriguing and some of the characters and their descriptions aren't bad. The whole story line and the plot itself are interesting and are the kind that can eventually go any which way. Also, Oates started out writing really well in a kid's voice and everything from a kid's perspective but it went south when she just kept going with the same stories over and over.
I just don't like Oates' style: the constant repetition gets on my nerves and describing things like that god damn boring music event years ago like five times is ridiculously boring. She keeps telling about the kids going to the ice cream store like ten times and it is not that powerful that you need to repeat it over and over and over.
Once I got past the half way mark I was hoping that now the story would really get going, would get some fire under it's butt, really fly off. But no. We get the same god damn music event and ice cream store but from another character's perspective.
Jesus.

[Pippicalzelunghe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Il libro racconta l'omicidio di Zoe Kruller, e come questo condiziona tragicamente la vita di due famiglie. Sono proprio i figli di queste due famiglie a raccontarlo in prima persona, che crescono segnati da questa tragedia.
L'autrice è molto brava a presentarci la psicologia dei personaggi, con le loro miserie e le loro ossessioni, e la città Sparta negli anni settanta/ottanta, troppo piccola, in cui c'è chi resta perchè non sarebbe capace di vivere in un altro posto e chi invece sente il bisogno di evadere, di trovarsi una propria strada, di fare successo.
Di per sé sarebbe stato un buon libro, se non fosse per alcune parti che a mio parere erano ripetitive e di troppo. E' il primo libro che leggo di questa prolifica scrittrice, quindi non so dire se è un suo modo di scrivere oppure è questo libro che non le è riuscito pienamente, ma di certo a me ha rallentato la lettura e infastidito. Peccato.

[Simone · Rating 2 out of 5]

when i was in high school i read a lot of joyce carol oates. as one of my professors commented: "that's young for most of her stuff. i've come to think i was probably too young to appreciate a lot of it, and living in syracuse i'm especially interested in her books about upstate new york.

however, this book was not for me. the repetition and stream of conscious writing bored me. the first part is told in first person from the girl's point of view, and the second section told in third person point of view from the boy, and i think the story was much more suited to third person writing - and i found that section more enjoyable. slightly.

eh, just not a fan of this one. oates is so prolific, doesn't she have a book out every year? i think i need someone to recommend me the cream of the crop.

[BiblioGeek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joyce is still one of my favorite authors, mostly due to her ability to give voice to some of our deepest, most private feelings. I don't know how she does it, but it leaves me breathless every time. (spoiler alert) There's a scene near the end of the book where Krista is washing up in the bathroom after a night (or two) of drunken sex with Aaron - I read that scene as if in a trance. It was perfectly visualized. Such a painful, gritty, shameful scene and she nailed it. Wow...

[Blue Lee Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

He dudado entre 3 y 4 estrellas porque realmente la historia atrapa. Es oscura, brusca, angustiosa e intensta. Pero ha habido momentos en los que se me ha hecho eterno, así que tres estrella está bien. Es mi estreno con Oates y me ha dejado con ganas de repetir.