two thirds were about as subtle as a two by four and the last third was inscrutable. an unsatisfying read. ( )

Can Joyce Carol Oates Disappoint?

Sadly, the answer is yes. When it seemed all these years that Joyce Carol Oates had few limitations, that she could tackle any number of topics, from race relations to neuroscience, we discover she has one. What Margaret Atwood terms speculative fiction seems to have stumped her.

Her newest, The Hazards of Time Travel, has little to do with time travel other than as a plot device to set up a pale tale of loneliness, self-discovery, and romance. Yes, time travel is a tricky business, what with all of its inherent pitfalls, and, true, some authors have successfully dispensed with any logical or illogical rationale (think the very successful and appealing The Time Traveler’s Wife, or the wondrously rewarding Life After Life). However, these stories offered the reader something else to hold their interest, like plot, characters, family, and locale.

As for the dystopian bits, these really are either poorly thought out, or JCO failed to include her background sketches for the near future, twenty years hence, totalitarian USA. We certainly get her riff on current affairs and the scary tolerance of, and by some desire for, authoritarian government, as well as her pointed observation that affairs can head south in a mere political blink of the eye. She, however, aside from the current situation, gives us little context, and, let’s face it, readers of dystopian fiction adore fleshed out context. For certain, the little she reveals of our near future is scary, but there isn’t enough of it, what there is feels a tad ridiculous, and worst, sorry to say, cartoonish and clichéd, as in “This will make your head explode.”

As for her characterization of the protagonists, Adriane/Mary Ellen and Wolfman, the former strikes a reader as engaging as brittle glass and the latter as too self-absorbed to be the target of anybody’s affection, even a disoriented seventeen-year-old girl’s. The strongest emotion readers, other than those thoroughly attuned to the pining heart of a naive child and an unhappy adult, is indifference.

If all these were not sufficient, JCO has employed a few of her more irritating writing tendencies, in particular here the distance she creates between narrator and subject that stimulates little more than an emotion of boredom, combined with a very annoying constant repetition of a character’s full name that, in a word, is maddening.

Even JCO’s most faithful and forgiving readers may have a problem with this effort. In the novel, Oates includes a nod to virtual reality and virtual worlds (partly in an unsuccessful attempt at introducing ambiguity, something perhaps better left to the real master of this technique, Philip K. Dick). This will lead readers to wonder where the real JCO lurks, for The Hazards of Time Travel must have been authored by an imperfect avatar. ( )

Can Joyce Carol Oates Disappoint?

Sadly, the answer is yes. When it seemed all these years that Joyce Carol Oates had few limitations, that she could tackle any number of topics, from race relations to neuroscience, we discover she has one. What Margaret Atwood terms speculative fiction seems to have stumped her.

Her newest, The Hazards of Time Travel, has little to do with time travel other than as a plot device to set up a pale tale of loneliness, self-discovery, and romance. Yes, time travel is a tricky business, what with all of its inherent pitfalls, and, true, some authors have successfully dispensed with any logical or illogical rationale (think the very successful and appealing The Time Traveler’s Wife, or the wondrously rewarding Life After Life). However, these stories offered the reader something else to hold their interest, like plot, characters, family, and locale.

As for the dystopian bits, these really are either poorly thought out, or JCO failed to include her background sketches for the near future, twenty years hence, totalitarian USA. We certainly get her riff on current affairs and the scary tolerance of, and by some desire for, authoritarian government, as well as her pointed observation that affairs can head south in a mere political blink of the eye. She, however, aside from the current situation, gives us little context, and, let’s face it, readers of dystopian fiction adore fleshed out context. For certain, the little she reveals of our near future is scary, but there isn’t enough of it, what there is feels a tad ridiculous, and worst, sorry to say, cartoonish and clichéd, as in “This will make your head explode.”

As for her characterization of the protagonists, Adriane/Mary Ellen and Wolfman, the former strikes a reader as engaging as brittle glass and the latter as too self-absorbed to be the target of anybody’s affection, even a disoriented seventeen-year-old girl’s. The strongest emotion readers, other than those thoroughly attuned to the pining heart of a naive child and an unhappy adult, is indifference.

If all these were not sufficient, JCO has employed a few of her more irritating writing tendencies, in particular here the distance she creates between narrator and subject that stimulates little more than an emotion of boredom, combined with a very annoying constant repetition of a character’s full name that, in a word, is maddening.

Even JCO’s most faithful and forgiving readers may have a problem with this effort. In the novel, Oates includes a nod to virtual reality and virtual worlds (partly in an unsuccessful attempt at introducing ambiguity, something perhaps better left to the real master of this technique, Philip K. Dick). This will lead readers to wonder where the real JCO lurks, for The Hazards of Time Travel must have been authored by an imperfect avatar. ( )

A Very Boring Book

As always my reviews are based off of my opinion only. I do try to keep any spoilers hidden in spoiler tags and whether I enjoy a book or not I would not wish to discourage anyone from reading a book they think interesting. We all like different things.

I listened to this on audiobook. So maybe the written book was better. However I did not like this at all. Outside of the narrator who sounded like a robot throughout the entire book. I found it very boring. I love psychology but this book was at least halfway filled with science and psychology talk. Talk, talk, talk. I thought that at LEAST a third of this book could have been written out and not effect the plot in the slightest, and I was so very disappointed in the ending. This book I felt had a lot of promise and I thought was going to be good, but for me at least, it did not deliver. ( )

I was beyond excited when I heard that one of my favorite authors Joyce Carol Oates had a new novel out. And not only that, it was dystopian, one of my favorite fiction genres! The only thing to make this better would have been if she chose to co-author with Stephen King! ⁣
Quite simply, I loved this book. It was thrilling (I had to know what happened next and this was a hard book for me to have to put down), there was a good dose of romance involved, and it was overall captivating. I know most readers are going to pre-judge this book once they hear the description “teen protagonist” and “dystopian setting”. Fear not, this is not another Hunger Games/Divergent wannabe! ⁣
The setting & brief history of events describing the dystopian setting is eerily reminiscent of today’s political and cultural climate(s). Unlike some dystopian stories, the future in this one is one that doesn’t seem far fetched or hard reaching to imagine happening. ⁣
My only complaint about this book is the ending. I so wanted this book to be heftier as Miss Oates’s other works tend to be. I felt there was much more to be told in the protagonist’s story, and wished that certain events would have happened that didn’t come to fruition. ⁣ ( )