Pretty good ( )

This novel is a fictionalized account of an all-female gang that forms in a working class community in upstate New York. The gang, Foxfire, is founded by a group of girls who've all suffered alientation and lack of parental attention. The girls share a sense of being alienated and restricted from any sort of real social benefits or meaningful relationships becuase of their age, gender, economic status, and family situation. The gang is formed, and begins, by using public humilation and minor violence to bring justice to local men who have abused the privileges of their gender. Quickly, though, their activities escalate, and it becomes clear that the gang is on a path to self-destruction. This book was a bit hard to get into at first because its written in the tone and style of one of the gang's members, but the writing becomes engrossing. Oates truly takes on the tone and spirit of a teenage girl gang. While this is part of what makes the book hard to get into, it ultimately makes for an engrossing story. It is striking just how anti-male Foxfire's violence is, and the book seems to suggest that this is one of the myriad of social responses to a world in which girls are expendable objects, sexualized, and undervalued. Indeed, Oates invites the reader to consider the gang and it's activities as part of a continuum of responses that individuals in a depressed, sexist, and emotionally alienated society might produce. The book is as much a critique of the word that made Foxfire possible as it is a narration of the gang's activities. While Oates does not excuse the violence she clearly assigns broader culpability to the world in which these girls live. ( )

I read this in high school -- about the same age as the characters -- and liked it a great deal. It was probably the "hardest" book I read at that age that wasn't for school. I enjoyed challenging myself and reading about characters that we both like me (age, gender) and yet very different (different era, different values). I'd definitely recommend to a teenager and I think adults may enjoy it as well. ( )

Not as good as I expected it to be
Reading some of the reviews for this book led me to believe that this book would be a good read. I was wrong.

One of my biggest pet peeves is authors who ignore good grammar and proper punctuation, and Joyce Carol Oates is one of those authors. This novel reads like it was written by a kid in junior high. All the switching between first and third person narrative left me confused. The book is written from the perspective of the adult Maddie, but tends to read like someone observing the girls of Foxfire from afar, rather than a member of the girl gang telling how things were.

The characters, with the exception of Legs, get very little development and come across as one-dimensional. As the narrator, Maddie should have gotten more character development, but instead, she is used as little more than the voice of and for Foxfire.

The concept of a girl gang like Foxfire in the 1950's is ridiculous. This book would have been more believable had it been set in a different time frame.

If you've seen the movie, stick with the movie. At least the idea of a girl gang in the 1990's isn't so far-fetched. ( )