Son of the Morning, Joyce Carol Oates
Son of the Morning, Joyce Carol Oates
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

Son of the Morning

Author: Joyce Carol Oates

Narrator: Mike Ortego

Unabridged: 14 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 07/03/2018


Synopsis

The latest Ecco reissue of Joyce Carol Oates’ early classics: a fiery gothic tale of doomed fates and demons of biblical proportions in rural New York state.Nathan Vickery came into the world amid unfortunate circumstances. His mother, Elsa Vickery, daughter of an agnostic small town doctor and his pious wife, was brutally assaulted at the age of seventeen. The son she gave birth to in the wake of this event is brought up by his grandmother as a devoted Christian. At the age of seven, Nathan begins to see visions of Christ and embarks on a path as a prodigy boy-preacher, hurtling toward enlightenment while increasingly falling under the dangerous spell of power.Nathan becomes the leader of an evangelical church, accumulating vast riches from donation. Each year, his visions grow more elaborate and grandiose. When he suddenly feels that God has forsaken him, is it punishment for indulging in the sins of lust, pride, and greed that he has long preached against?Joyce Carol Oates’s talent for searing psychological inquiry and her eye for detail as well as her knack for indelible character portrayals and unflinching social commentary are fully on display in Son of the Morning. Fans of her work will be thrilled to see this early novel, the influences of which can be observed in later tour-de-force works like A Book of American Martyrs and The Sacrifice.

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 Conor on August 27, 2018

Joyce Carol Oates can sure write vernacular, but this book needed editing. It was just way too long, and had way too many strange side plots. I suppose as with all shooting-star, schizophrenic, half-cocked prophet types, there's bound to be a lot of chaos and excitement without much coherence to the......more

Goodreads review by Alyson on August 26, 2008

This is pretty much the scariest book I have ever read. It's about a child prodigy preacher-turned radio evangelist in the sticks of upstate New York. Read it. Hicks and religous zealots are terrifying. Pair them with the scariest literary depiction of Jesus EVER, and we have a winner.......more

Goodreads review by Stephen on January 14, 2019

This is the third novel by Oates that I have read, and she always rewards the reader with a good story. The book is long (409 pages), and drags just a little bit at the end, but does hold your attention. The story focuses on Nathan Vickery, a boy born out of difficult circumstances who becomes a boy......more

Goodreads review by Stacy on October 05, 2019

Interesting......more

Goodreads review by Naomi on October 09, 2011

I really did not like this book that follows the life of an evangelist who was identified as such as a young boy. Not sure whether the topic itself bothered me--the rigidity and potential for corruption of extreme religiousity. Could have been that I'm just not familiar enough with some of the nuanc......more