- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd; 1st Edition edition (1 Jan 1900)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0224023128
- ISBN-13: 978-0224023122
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 14 x 1.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,203,065 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Monica surprises everyone, including her husband, when she accepts an offer to teach at a school in Pennsylvania. On moving into her new house she meets Sheila, an eccentric painter whom Monica can't decide if she likes. As the solstice arrives, they make a journey of intense friendship. A VIRAGO MODERN CLASSIC reissued by the author of MAN CRAZY.
About the Author
Joyce Carol Oates was born in 1938. She has written manynovels and numerous collections of stories, poetry and plays. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Hardcover
This is one of Joyce Carol Oates' earlier novels written in 1985. It explores a complex friendship between two complicated women. Monica is a recently divorced woman who works as a school teacher and Sheila is a painter passionate in her art. Both women become friends and their feelings are at times strong and obsessive.
This is a haunting and impressive book!
Joyce Akesson, author of Love's Thrilling Dimensions
This is a haunting and impressive book!
Joyce Akesson, author of Love's Thrilling Dimensions
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
12 reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
tale of a dark and fascinating friendship
20 Nov 2001
Format:Hardcover
This is an intriguing look at an almost obsessive friendship between two women. It's also an interesting commentary on academia, the art world. Contemporary issues such as class and rape are also explored. However, it was the story of the chilling relationship between the two women that hooked me and wouldn't let me put the book down. I think that this book can be read on many levels. I enjoyed reading it for pleasure, but it is dense enough for all kinds of literary analysis.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Heartless and "Sol"ful
7 Dec 2001
Format:Hardcover
I first read this book in 1986 and have read it twice more since then. Joyce Carol Oates is the first contemporary American author I remember impressing me enough to linger with me long after I'd read her work. "Solstice," like other works by Joyce Carol Oates, does not paint a pretty picture. Great fiction is often about complex, sad, scary, bitter relationships. Happy relationships are better left to the Harlequins of this world. Sometimes when you're in a weird, complex mood you want weird, complex reading...catharsis and all that...
"Solstice" lingers like someone's presence after she's left the room. If you look at some reviews written about this book, there is mention of everything from stormy psyches to lesbian subtext. Whatever the motivation behind Monica and Sheila's relationship, fascination and even some kind of subtle hatred works into it. Monica is transfixed by Sheila and Sheila seems to need Monica as some kind of dumping ground. They'd probably just as soon want to walk away from each other with a clean break, but they can't. As Shelia says, "we'll be for friends for a long, long time...unless one of us dies." Probably a normal thing to say, but still sort of creepy.
They behave more like people in love than friends; what they have is not exactly chemistry, but it has drawing power. I always thought this novel was more about hatred than love, but sometimes hatred is love in confusion.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
One burning question remains -- "WHY?"
26 Jan 2001
Format:Paperback
Don't let the fact I only gave this book three stars deter anyone from buying this book. "Solstice" is a good read in the traditional Joyce Carol Oates tradition -- lots of reflection, oblique references to past events leading to current madness, a slightly ironic tone. I enjoyed reading the interaction between Monica and Sheila, how they both seemed to need each other, yet could bring out the worst in each other. However, I never understood why Monica became so obsessed with Sheila and her work. Opposites may attract, but these two women don't even have opposites in common, other than in Sheila's dark looks and Monica's blonde radiance. They are simply two completely different women. I suspect this book is best suited to reading in a college classroom setting, with ample opportunities for discussion and feedback on what this book "means." Or perhaps as a book club selection. I admit defeat -- I alone could not decipher it.
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