A Fair Maiden, Joyce Carol Oates
A Fair Maiden, Joyce Carol Oates
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A Fair Maiden

Author: Joyce Carol Oates

Narrator: Angela Goethals

Unabridged: 5 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/01/2010

Synopsis

Sixteen-year-old Katya Spivak is out for a walk on the gracious streets of Bayhead Harbor with her two summer babysitting charges when she's approached by silver-haired, elegant Marcus Kidder. At first, his interest in her seems harmless, even pleasant; like his name, a sort of gentle joke. His beautiful home, the children's books that he's written, his classical music, the marvelous art in his study, his lavish presents to her: Mr. Kidder's life couldn't be more different from Katya's drab working-class existence back home in South Jersey, or more enticing. But by degrees, almost imperceptibly, something changes, and posing for Mr. Kidder's new painting isn't the light-hearted endeavor it once was. What does he really want from her? And how far will he go to get it?

About Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

About Angela Goethals

Angela Goethals is a young actress who appeared in the films Home Alone, Jerry Maguire and Storytelling.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Come on May 13, 2020

"Un inizio innocente. Quando Katya Spivak aveva sedici anni e Marcus Kidder sessantotto." Poche parole danno avvio al romanzo e già da subito si coglie che quell'inizio e questa storia sarà tutto fuorché innocente. Siamo nel New Jersey, è estate, e Katya si guadagna da vivere facendo la babysitter. S......more

Goodreads review by Lisa on November 13, 2014

I'm pretty sure that whatever JCO wanted to say with this novel was not what I heard. If it was, that's even worse. Elaborating on this would be disclosing too much... Both Katya and Marcus Kidder were pretty unsympathetic characters in my opinion. Their relationship was disturbing, based soley on m......more

Goodreads review by Salma on January 30, 2011

At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I think Joyce Carol Oates had Little Red Riding Hood in mind when she wrote this. Fairy tale references are scattered throughout the book like breadcrumbs. We meet sixteen-year-old blond, tan-legged Katya (aka Cinderella or Snow White), who is working as a nanny......more

Quotes

“What keeps us coming back to Oates Country is…her uncanny gift of making the page a window, with something on the other side that we’d swear was life itself.” New York Times

“For forty years, Joyce Carol Oates has maintained a creative dialogue with the roiling cauldron of contemporary American culture, writing unflinchingly about the oddities that bubble up into the headlines.” Washington Post

“Fans of Oates’ gothic stylings will not be disappointed…the prose [has] plenty of punch.” Booklist

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