Wonderland

This is the final novel in the Wonderland Quartet. Over the past couple of years I have read all of these novels and have relished each of these works from early in JCO’s career. I think this book is one of her best novels, if not the best. I was immediately immersed in the intensely emotional and internal world she created and the characters who lived there. Periodically I surfaced for air and time to reflect. This book resonated with me in so many ways.

Joyce Carol Oates is brilliant, and this novel portrays the full depth of her writing talent. It begins with a boy, Jesse, witnessing the aftermath of his father's killing spree on his own family and then committing suicide. He is shuffled from one place to another, abandoned by his strange grandfather and an even stranger adoptive family. Somehow he manages to finish medical school with honors, marries, has two daughters and is an acclaimed surgeon. The tragedies in his life are myriad and the ending is horrific. It couldn't have ended any differently and remained true to the essence of Jesse's life. It is beautifully written as only JCO can write.

Reading this, I thought of Updike's Rabbit Angstrom from time to time, probably due to the time period. This was different in many ways though, in a horrific sort of way that Oates shoves our faces into reality.

Ugh! Why such good reviews. Very disjointed and downright painful to read.

From Publishers Weekly
Our review of Oates's 1971 masterpiece starring Jesse Vogel, reissued here with a new afterword, concluded: " 'Wonderland' is not a place from which one escapes unscathed but for those who care about the best in American fiction it must be visited.' "
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Library Journal
The greatest of Oates's novels.

Book Description
Originally published in 1971, the gripping story of Jesse Vogel, a neurosurgeon whose boyhood has been shattered by the tragic loss of his family.