Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart

Vi er i USA på 1950-tallet og alle livstema er der;oppvekst, samliv, bedrag, rus, fasade, vekst og fall. Rase, et drap, frykt og skam er tråden gjennom boken. Vi følger ungdommene Iris og Jinx sine ulike veier fra et ulykkelig møte til liv som kan lage størst mulig avstand, men som alltid følger dem. Tiden tar alle igjen, livet treffer, livet åpner og lukker. Når vi i 2019 møter rasismen i nyheter og grufulle hendelser, er det som om tiden i boken har stått stille i 70 år og frykten og hatet har bestått. Ingenting har drept mer enn uenigheter om religion og heri har mange hatende blandet inn såkalt rase. Før vi erkjenner hatets rot som er frykt, vil intet endres. Så også for Iris og Jinx og i deres liv.

I almost gave this book 5 stars. After taking a while to warm up to the story and almost putting it aside a few times, I found that after about 150 pages, I couldn't put it down. During those first 150 pages, I couldn't relate to or find anything I cared about in the characters. I found them a little tiresome and confusing. I only kept reading because of Oates' prose style, which I find fluid and very appealing, and my experiences with Oates' work in the past, which have so far never disappointed (and also because I really dislike leaving books unfinished). Maybe I just had to get to know the characters, because I really connected with them by the end. The progession of the characters through their lives made sense to me, even as their show more lives took turns that weren't quite what I expected. But caring about and understanding the characters is part of why I ended up giving the book 4 stars.

Reading Oates' stories, I find myself really understanding the appeal of the unrealistic happy ending. Oates gives an accurate representation of the confusion and disappointment that comes when life doesn't live up to expectations. But sometimes when I willingly suspend my disbelief to delve into a novel, I want the story to not seem so true, and to be a little less ambiguous than life often is. Maybe it's not fair to give a 5-star quality book a 4 just because I'm in the mood for a rainbow in my rain storm, but that's what I've done. show less

'No one is so close to me as you. No one is so close to us as we are to each other', 19 Sept. 2012
By
sally tarbox

This review is from: BECAUSE IT IS BITTER, AND BECAUSE IT IS MY HEART [Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart ] BY Oates, Joyce Carol(Author)Paperback 30-Mar-1991
The book opens with the brutal murder of a 'trailer trash' youth in 1950s upstate New York. Two people know something about it: teenagers Iris Courtney (white) and Jinx Fairchild (black). The author introduces us particularly to the former: her parents and uncle just come alive with Ms Oates' amazing writing. The racist feel of the era is also constantly with us, affecting every interchange between the two groups.
For me, it kind of fell apart in the final show more third. Iris embarks on a totally different and unrelated lifestyle. She undergoes a traumatic event which I couldn't see the relevance of.
But certainly brilliant and descriptive writing. show less

The first book I've read by Oates where the protagonist isn't upper middle class white. In this case, Iris Courtney, a girl from a lower middle class family in Western New York, is the main character. Her mother and father are a good-looking young couple who live life for today, and never worry about tomorrow.
Iris is a girl who never fits in, and learns early on to be independent, as, after her mother divorces her father, her mother goes rapidly downhill, and Iris must look after herself and her mother.
This fiction is about how a person can force themselves not to feel, when life is too painful, and mold themselves into a walking-talking human with little feeling left inside.

I registered this book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14096627

I first read this several years ago. I remember being affected by the feelings of young Iris Courtney. I felt that Oates expressed the feelings many children have, of being left out, for different reasons. I identified with some of those feelings.

I didn't as much get that feeling this time around. However, I found something different.

Iris is a loner from the wrong side of the tracks. She is about 12 when her story begins here, a good student but not a "participant". She has self-absorbed parents: Persia, whose beauty has taken her places, and Duke, whose charm has slid him by some difficulties. Iris is a bit of a dreamer, too. I identified with her show more aloneness, her ability to entertain herself and to imagine a different life.

Her life changes dramatically a few years later, when she is linked with Jinx Fairchild, a popular black boy, through a tragic incident. The link is known only to the two of them, because of the nature of the incident and because of the racism inherent in the population of the town.

Their shared experience follows them both through the years and into adulthood, and affects almost everything they choose to do in their lives, whether consciously or not. It was this effect, and the more pervasive effects of fundamental institutionalized racism, that follow them both unrelentingly. show less

All of her books. Joyce Carol Oates. She is like an aerialist with words. Way up there in the big top, flying, pushing aside gracefully punctuation and sentence structure trapezes and ropes, with no safety net, and a perfect landing every time. Writes so much and with such insight and courage to do the impossible, i prefer to think she does it by alchemy than typing that first letter. its like her characters have a slightly different shade of sky than we are used to.

The novel is set in the late 1950's and early 60's in Hammond and Seracuse, New York. Gracie Curtney is a white girl coming from a dysfunctional household with a gambler father and an alcoholic mother. She lands herself in a soup when she finds herself being chased by the local loony kid, Red Garlock. She seeks help and in turn is helped by the local basketball hero and a black boy, Jinx Fairchild. In the scuffle that ensues, Red is killed and Jinx disposes of the body. This incidence haunts both of them throughout their life. It pulls them together but also pushes them apart partly due to racial considerations and partly due to fear of detection. Both of them go their separate ways in a sort of incomplete, inattentive way.

The story is show more dull and the characters are not well developed. The author leaves a lot of thing to the reader to interpret as he desires. Some novels with ordinary characters and ordinary lives work like [The Chip chip Gatherers] by [[Shiva Naipaul]] which I had recently read but this does not. show less