The Tattooed Girl [Paperback]

Joshua Seigl is a man trying to hide from his own success, and finding it harder and harder to do so. In the course of the book, you'll find out the many reasons why he is hiding. The time comes to take on an assistant to help him with his papers, correspondence and occasional odd jobs around the house. Seigl rejects all kinds of qualified male applicants due to his own hypersensitive nature. Then, one day he meets an odd young woman struggling to do a simple job in a local bookstore. Despite her lack of qualifications other than being non-threatening, he hires her. Her submissiveness allows them to get along on the surface, but she develops a strong dislike for him that emerges into virulent anti-Semitism. Ms. Oates then takes us on a journey with them as they drop their public faces and begin to connect with one another, and the result is that their views of one another begin to reflect the inner realities of one another.

Ms. Oates's theories are that we usually judge one another rather harshly based on appearances, behavior and our historical sense of what's what. Instead, she encourages us to drop our guard and let others know who we really are . . . and take the time to find out who they are. Think of this as being like "Get acquainted with others as you would like others to get acquainted with you" as a variation on the Golden Rule. Although there's an obvious religious message here, Ms. Oates mostly leaves religion out of her story . . . probably to make the potential lesson more accessible to people of all faiths and non-faith.

This book would make a fine choice for a sophomore English class in high school as a launching pad for many fine discussions about the dangers of categorizing others.

As I finished the book, I began to wonder to whom I had not properly explained myself . . . and to whom I had not properly listened. That was a valuable benefit from reading the fine writing in the book.

Seigl, a partly Jewish academic and one-time novelist employs Alma Bauch, a young woman from the margins of society as his housekeeper. Inured to abuse from men since childhood, even the tattoo's on Alma's neck are the result of a drugged abusive incident. For most of the novel we are let into Alma's virulent anti-Semitic thoughts which she shares with her abusive lover, Dimitri Meatte, a waiter at the local cafe. Seigl is struck down by a neurological condition while simultaneously Alma begins to realise the shaky foundations for her prejudices. As he becomes hospitalised and progressively ill, Alma's former murderous intentions are turned on their back as she waits in vigil at his bedside willing his recovery. The venom stripped away, Seigl's unspoken love for Alma is reciprocated. She rejects the hideous Meatte, who arrives out of the blue seeking money. The ending I found quite shocking, though I wouldn't want to ruin that pleasure for other readers.

The Tattooed Girl challenged me to hold intense dislike for the actions and thoughts of Alma alongside empathy for her. I found this so difficult at one point I didn't think I could finish the novel. However, I am glad I did, as at the endpoint, Alma's outlook and sensibilities undergo a radical shake-up and she emerges a sympathetic character.

The ultimate question this novel raises is: what place does art have in illuminating the past and dispensing with hatred? The answer is not as simple as it appears because fiction does not deal in truth. One can't help feeling that Oates herself is attempting to work out her own feelings over the matter in a heated argument toward the end of the novel where Joshua defends his writing:

"'Alma, I think of myself as writing stories for others. In place of others who are dead, or mute. Who can't speak for themselves.'"

This argument for the exhumation of buried events and people is the same that Oates has used in interviews to explain why she has written some novels such as Black Water and Blonde that reinvent historical situations. Alma's rebuttal is that he pretends to know these things, but doesn't actually know. However, one could argue that the point of fictional writing isn't to get at the "truth" but to convey an "idea" and in these "ideas" we discover the reality that has been hidden. The Tattooed Girl isn't a political novel in any obvious allegorical manner. It does, however, haunt your thoughts in the way it illuminates the divisions (economical, social, racial and religious) between people to such a startlingly intense degree. It is an incredibly important book that ought to be read now.