Breathe, Joyce Carol Oates
Breathe, Joyce Carol Oates
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Breathe
A Novel

Author: Joyce Carol Oates

Narrator: Cassandra Campbell

Unabridged: 10 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 08/03/2021

Synopsis

A NOVEL OF LOVE AND LOSS FROM BESTSELLING AND PRIZEWINNING AUTHOR JOYCE CAROL OATESAmid a starkly beautiful but uncanny landscape in New Mexico, a married couple from Cambridge, MA takes residency at a distinguished academic institute. When the husband is stricken with a mysterious illness, misdiagnosed at first, their lives are uprooted and husband and wife each embarks upon a nightmare journey.  At thirty-seven, Michaela faces the terrifying prospect of widowhood - and the loss of Gerard, whose identity has greatly shaped her own.  In vividly depicted scenes of escalating suspense, Michaela cares desperately for Gerard in his final days as she comes to realize that her love for her husband, however fierce and selfless, is not enough to save him and that his death is beyond her comprehension.  A love that refuses to be surrendered at death—is this the blessing of a unique married love, or a curse that must be exorcized? Part intimately detailed love story, part horror story rooted in real life, BREATHE is an exploration of hauntedness rooted in the domesticity of marital love, as well as our determination both to be faithful to the beloved and to survive the trauma of loss.

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Eric on August 11, 2021

How do we maintain self-worth when we lose those we value the most? This is one of the arresting questions at the centre of Joyce Carol Oates' heart-wrenching novel “Breathe”. Gerard and Michaela are academics who have temporarily moved from their home in Massachusetts to New Mexico in order to work......more

Goodreads review by Elyse on April 26, 2021

If a prize was given for the saddest book of the year.... “Breathe” ....would be a running contender. In the first sentence of the blurb description—in bold capital letters— reads: A NOVEL OF LOVE AND LOSS FROM BESTSELLING AND PRIZEWINNING AUTHOR JOYCE CAROL OATS..... ....man ‘o man.....or women o’ wome......more

Goodreads review by Chuck on December 25, 2021

First off, I have to say, I respcet the hell out of Rickson Gracie's accomplishments. That being said, I both really liked and was disappointed in his book: Breathe: A Life in Flow. It was "great" getting to see "behind the curtain" a bit- to see how and where he was raised and how that drove his evo......more

Goodreads review by Kasa on May 16, 2021

Joyce Carol Oates is a wonder. Her fiction spans genres, her output, superhuman. In 2011, she broke the fourth wall and shared a searing account of her life as a widow after Raymond Smith, her husband of 47 years, dies unexpectedly from complications due to pneumonia. Now here we have a fictionalize......more

Goodreads review by Michael on June 29, 2021

Reading "Breathe" by Joyce Carol Oates is a staggering experience. Michaela is in the depths of despair, trying to will her husband to keep breathing as he struggles to stay alive in the hospital. Her existence at this point is a nightmare as she tries in vain to grasp how the couple's journey could......more

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