Vous voulez voir cette page en fran�ais ? Cliquez ici.

Quantity:

More Buying Choices

35 used & new from CDN$ 3.97

Have one to sell? Sell yours here

See larger image

Share your own customer images

Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel (Paperback)

by Joyce C Oates (Author)

4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

List Price:	CDN$ 17.25
Price:	CDN$ 12.59 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details
You Save:	CDN$ 4.66 (27%)
	o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca. Gift-wrap available.

Only 4 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).

Ordering for Christmas? To ensure delivery by December 24 to Toronto, Ottawa, or Montreal, choose Express at checkout. Read more about holiday shipping.

14 new from CDN$ 8.84 21 used from CDN$ 3.97

Frequently Bought Together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Last Night in Twisted River

by John Irving

4.0 out of 5 stars (1) CDN$ 17.48

Not Me: A Novel

by Michael Lavigne

CDN$ 13.10

The Falls: A Novel

by Joyce C Oates

CDN$ 16.05

The Lovely Bones: Deluxe Edition

by Alice Sebold

CDN$ 13.86

The Virgin Suicides: A Novel

by Jeffrey Eugenides

4.3 out of 5 stars (311) CDN$ 13.14

› Explore similar items

Product Details

Paperback: 624 pages
Publisher: Ecco; Reprint edition (Mar 24 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061236837
ISBN-13: 978-0061236839
Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.5 x 3 cm
Shipping Weight: 522 g

Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #69,722 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category:
#8 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( O ) > Oates, Joyce Carol

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. At the beginning of Oates's 36th novel, Rebecca Schwart is mistaken by a seemingly harmless man for another woman, Hazel Jones, on a footpath in 1959 Chatauqua Falls, N.Y. Five hundred pages later, Rebecca will find out that the man who accosted her is a serial killer, and Oates will have exercised, in a manner very difficult to forget, two of her recurring themes: the provisionality of identity and the awful suddenness of male violence. There's plenty of backstory, told in retrospect. Rebecca's parents escape from the Nazis with their two sons in 1936; Rebecca is born in the boat crossing over. When Rebecca is 13, her father, Jacob, a sexton in Milburn, N.Y., kills her mother, Anna, and nearly kills Rebecca, before blowing his own head off. At the time of the footpath crossing, Rebecca is just weeks away from being beaten, almost to death, by her husband, Niles Tignor (a shady traveling beer salesman). She and son Niley flee; she takes the name of the woman for whom she has been recently mistaken and becomes Hazel Jones. Niley, a nine-year-old with a musical gift, becomes Zacharias, "a name from the bible," Rebecca tells people. Rebecca's Hazel navigates American norms as a waitress, salesperson and finally common-law wife of the heir of the Gallagher media fortune, a man in whom she never confides her past. Oates is our finest novelistic tracker, following the traces of some character's flight from or toward some ultimate violence with forensic precision. There are allusions here to the mythic scouts of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, who explored the same New York territory when it was primeval woods. Many of the passages are a lot like a blown-up photo of a bruise—ugly without seeming to have a point. Yet the traumatic pattern of the hunter and the hunted, unfolded in Rebecca/Hazel's lifelong escape, never cripples Hazel: she is liberated, made crafty, deepened by her ultimately successful flight. Like Theodore Dreiser, Oates wears out objections with her characters, drawn in an explosive vernacular. Everything in this book depends on Oates' ability to bring a woman before the reader who is deeply veiled—whose real name is unknown even to herself—and she does it with epic panache. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Some of Oates' novels are tightly focused; others cover a larger social canvas. he Gravedigger's Daughter is a hybrid of the two. Set in Oates country (poor, working-class, rural New York State), it is a first-person tale told from Oates' signature point of view, that of a young woman in peril, and encompasses one immigrant family's tragedies during the Holocaust. Oates' intense narrator is born on the boat that carried her parents away from Nazi Germany, so Rebecca has never seen her parents happy. All she knows is the gloom of their mausoleumlike stone hovel beside the cemetery her father maintains. Oates evokes the bleak horrors of Thomas Hardy in scenes of suffering and denial as Rebecca's increasingly enraged father insists that they are not Jewish, even as her mother grieves over lost relatives. Madness and bloodshed erupt, and Rebecca is left alone in the world, destitute and uneducated. But she is smart and very strong, surviving her passionate liaison with Niles Tignor, one of Oates' most seductive and diabolical outlaws, and finding her calling in caring for her son, a musical prodigy. Oates is supremely atmospheric, erotic, and suspenseful in this virtuoso novel of identity, power, and moral reckoning. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Product Description

Suggested Tags from Similar Products

(What's this?)

Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)

aaron jennings(1)

catherine oflynn(1)

chasing dreams(1)

lost children(1)

What do customers ultimately buy after viewing this item?

	84% buy the item featured on this page: The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel 4.5 out of 5 stars (2) CDN$ 12.59
	6% buy The Falls: A Novel CDN$ 16.05
	4% buy Water For Elephants 4.7 out of 5 stars (46) CDN$ 12.05
	3% buy The Book Of Negroes 4.4 out of 5 stars (57) CDN$ 12.48

Explore similar items

Customer Reviews

2 Reviews

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most helpful customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gripping, Emotionally Wrenching Look at How Women Accommodate Men to Survive, Jul 13 2007

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Gravediggers Daughter (Hardcover)

The Gravedigger's Daughter is the most compelling novel I've read in decades. My emotions were so wrapped up in this book that I could hear the sounds in the story's background, smell the surroundings, feel the clothing, and taste the food and drinks. I doubt if I'll ever read fiction that will move me as much as this book did.

The Gravedigger's Daughter is the story of Rebecca Schwart's life described in terms of how she accommodated men to gain physical security: her father, her employers, men who made passes, her first lover, her son, her future father-in-law, and her eventual husband. Without accommodating those men, she would not have survived. As it was, survival was not always easy. Ultimately, there was an enormous price to pay: She left little room in her day to be herself. Instead, life unfolded as a continual drama in which she had to play set roles or be treated in horrible ways. Worse still, the men wanted to convince her that their way of thinking was the only way . . . and some of their mantras stuck.

At another level, the book explores the question of whether humans are spiritual creatures or simply predators that feed off one another at their convenience. The book suggests that the spiritual realm has a limited reach, if it does exist.

Another dimension of The Gravedigger's Daughter is a consideration of how genes and environment play a role in shaping our choices and our preferences. This aspect of the book is best portrayed through considering how the lives of three generations played out.

Finally, the book has a profoundly dark look at the lasting damage that evil actions create. Throughout this book, Nazi racism continues to create harm.

Beyond those themes, Joyce Carol Oates has a positive view -- life is precious and worthy of nurturing.

The book's epilogue is a masterpiece. Long-separated cousins grope slowly toward one another in a series of letters that you won't soon forget. It's a marvelous expression of the alienation that separates us from each other.

Let me briefly describe the story. As I do, let me caution you against reading reviews that go into very many details. It would be very easy to spoil this story for you.

The book begins with a prologue in which Rebecca Schwart addresses her feelings about her father ten years after his death. Chapter 1 of Chautauqua Falls, New York switches to 1959 with Rebecca walking home from her factory job while being trailed by a man in a panama hat who makes her feel uneasy. In Chapter 2, you meet Rebecca's son, Niles Jr. (Niley). In Chapter 3, there's a telephone call from Niles Tignor, Niley's father. Niles is away a lot and Rebecca is most anxious for him to return.

From there, the book retreats in time to 1936 in Milburn, New York, just after Rebecca was born. Her parents and two brothers had just escaped from Nazi Germany, and her father had taken on the job of caretaker for the township's cemetery, work that includes digging graves. This is quite a change for a man who was once a teacher. His weak English skills limit his choices along with the Depression economy. This is no land of milk and honey for the Schwart family. The job includes free housing, in a hovel that's served by a graveyard-contaminated well. But hope rises when part of her mother's family later attempts to escape from Germany as well.

The story takes you through all of Rebecca's life, with a special emphasis on her early family life, her work, her first lover, her son, and her eventual husband.

Bravo, Ms. Oates!

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

4.0 out of 5 stars "In animal life, Jun 22 2007

By	Friederike Knabe (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Gravediggers Daughter (Hardcover)

... the weak are quickly disposed of. So you must hide your weakness, Rebecca. We must". This opening statement reflects a father's command to his daughter, setting the stage for her life. Rebecca, heroine of the story and daughter of immigrants, grows up in rural New York State during the Depression and World War II years. Her environment is characterized by abject poverty, discrimination and prejudice against those who are different. Denying their German-Jewish background is part of their tragedy. No German language is allowed in the house, but neither the mother nor the two older brothers manage the adopted language adequately. Violence, alcoholism and crime are part of daily life in the family and those living in their neighbourhood near the graveyard.

Oates skilfully evokes the oppressive atmosphere in which the gravedigger's family eke out a living, literally at the edge of human society. Increasingly, the young Rebecca withdraws into herself, drops out of school and tries to escape and to follow her brothers. A violent family drama that almost kills her and leaves her alone, in the end provides her with the opportunity for a much brighter future. However, is she capable of freeing herself from her background? Can changing her name, as she does a couple of times, change her life for the better? Hope, trust and happiness are emotions and experiences that are new to Rebecca and that will have to be learned. Her son, a child prodigy pianist from a marriage that was supposed to bring love and happiness, provides her with new energy and focus. But she has to escape again and, now completely unsettled, is moving from place to place until she finds an environment that offers hope and security for her son and herself. Will she stay? Is a new life possible and how will she be able to adjust to love and comfort? Can she trust enough to reveal the story of her past?

Oates' exquisite use of language to evoke characters and landscapes is well known. This talent comes again to the fore in The Gravedigger's Daughter. As the author depicts the ups and downs of Rebecca's emotional and physical life, her style is, at times, light and almost playful, but mostly, given the subject matter it reflects, it is intense and anguished. Those around Rebecca, who are supportive and caring, even loving, are painted as almost too good to be true. The Gravedigger's Daughter is a complex story that will keep the reader captivated to the end. Questions remain in the mind of the reader that the intriguing epilogue will not answer fully. It is not an easy read but worthwhile, in particular those interested in the social complexities in the pre- and post World War II American society. [Friederike Knabe]

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 2 customer reviews...