Angel of Light
by Joyce Carol Oates
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Maurice Halleck, Director of the Commission for the Ministry of Justice, is accused of wrongdoing and then dies in a suspicious car accident. A suicide note and confession are found. But are they legitimate, or was he coerced into writing them before he was taken out to be killed?Tags
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Political heritage - death of Maurice Halleck
A story of the American political scene is one of loyalty and betrayal, revenge and forgiveness. It's the old two-men-in- love-with-one-woman tale but this time with a twist: save a life and share a love. When Maurice Halleck dies in disgrace his children vow to kill his betrayers -- their mother and her lover. It's a thriller that takes a good, hard look at the alienation of youth.
A story of the American political scene is one of loyalty and betrayal, revenge and forgiveness. It's the old two-men-in- love-with-one-woman tale but this time with a twist: save a life and share a love. When Maurice Halleck dies in disgrace his children vow to kill his betrayers -- their mother and her lover. It's a thriller that takes a good, hard look at the alienation of youth.
another fabulous book from Joyce Carol Oates, one of my favorite authors of all time. History, family drama, love and betrayal are hallmarks of an Oates novel. Two disturbed young people seek justice for their father's death. The father was a high official in the US government who was accused of wrongdoing and subsequently committed suicide. His children, Kirsten and Owen, are convinced that he was framed and that his death was not suicide. They enter into a blood pact to avenge his death. Convinced that somehow their mother and her supposed lover, Nick Martens( the father's closest friend and second in command) are responsible leads them to investigate their parent's friends and colleagues, all leading lights of Washington high society.
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'Angel of Light,'' is a political novel, though one less interested in the practice of politics itself than in its power to evoke certain deep human impulses toward violence. The story is very generally based on the fall of the House of Atreus; once again a brother and sister seek to avenge the killing of their father by murdering their mother and her lover. But here the myth is updated, and show more altered, by the terms in which power is now exercised in America - the shadowy intersections of government, business, finance, ideology and organized crime.... I'm much impressed by Miss Oates's ability to enter and explore the personal sources of the high-minded violence that's now such a familiar fact of public life. I'm impressed too by how clearly she remembers that her first duty is not to judge but to understand. show less
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Author Information
476+ Works 62,267 Members
Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16, 1938 in Lockport, New York. She received a bachelor's degree in English from Syracuse University and a master's degree in English from the University of Wisconsin. She is the author of numerous novels and collections of short stories. Her works include We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, Bellefleur, You Must show more Remember This, Because It Is Bitter, Because It Is My Heart, Solstice, Marya : A Life, and Give Me Your Heart. She has received numerous awards including the National Book Award for Them, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Literature. She was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with her title Lovely, Dark, Deep. She also wrote a series of suspense novels under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith. In 2015, her novel The Accursed became listed as a bestseller on the iBooks chart. She worked as a professor of English at the University of Windsor, before becoming the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University. She and her late husband Raymond J. Smith operated a small press and published a literary magazine, The Ontario Review. (Bowker Author Biography) Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most eminent and prolific literary figures and social critics of our times. She has won the National Book Award and several O. Henry and Pushcart prizes. Among her other awards are an NEA grant, a Guggenheim fellowship, the PEN/Malamud Lifetime Achievement Award, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Literature. (Publisher Provided) show less
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Otavan kirjasto (10)
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Valon enkeli
- Original title
- Angel of Light
- Original publication date
- 1981
- Epigraph
- What we call Evil in this World, Moral as well as Natural, is the grand Principle that makes us sociable Creatures, the solid Basis, the Life and Support of all Trades and Employments without Exception: That there we must loo... (show all)k for the true Original of all Arts and Sciences, and that the Moment Evil ceases, the Society must be spoiled if not totally dissolved.
―MANDEVILLE, The Fable of the Bees, 1714 - Dedication
- The novel is for Robert Fagles, in honor of his service in the House of Atreus; and for our lost generations--
- First words
- It is on a windy morning in early March, a day of high scudding dizzy clouds, some nine months after their father's ignoble death, that his only children, Owen and Kirsten, make a pact to revenge that death.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I won't ever attempt to find you, he tells her, I see that our exiles can never touch, I can't even imagine you now: and this letter too, badly stained by the salt spray, he seals, and stamps, and lays on the windowsill, to contemplate.
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.54
- Canonical LCC
- PS3565.A8
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- ISBNs
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- UPCs
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- ASINs
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