Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Racial disharmony from the mid-'50s to mid-'60s propels this tale of the love that binds a black man and a white woman in an upstate New York industrial town wracked by violence and murder. Protagonists Jinx and Iris are ``brilliantly portrayed,'' said PW. ``Oates is a master at realizing the social forces that twist the fates of her characters.'' 50,000 first printing. (Mar.)
Library Journal
The ever-prolific Oates is on familiar ground in her newest novel, which treats the seedy side of a working-class city in upstate New York in the 1950s. Her heroine will be familiar to Oates fans, too: Iris Courtney is the only child of a broken home, gambling father, and alcoholic mother; she's waif-like, intelligent, and sensitive and carries with her the air of a victim. When a black classmate--handsome, academic, athletic Jinx Fairchild--murders mean ``white trash'' Little Red Garlock to protect Iris from Red's lewd advances, Iris carries the secret through her adolescence. The Courtney, Garlock, and Fairchild families are here used to explore racism at a time of awakening social consciousness, but Iris alone seems fully imagined. A large, significant work that will please Oates fans. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/89.-- Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Marilynne Robinson
Fiction of extraordinarily imaginative power.
-- The New York Times
From the Publisher
Praise for Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart
“Fiction of extraordinary imaginative power.”—Marilynne Robinson, The New York Times Book Review
“An impressive performance...fearless....There seems to be no erotic passion, no violence of act or language, no addiction, no fatal failure of nerve that is beyond Oates’s reach when it comes to rendering it in fiction.”—Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer
“Oates is a master novelist....Thrilling momentum...it’s hard to stop reading.”—USA Today
