Black waterbyJoyce Carol Oates

Black Water (1992) is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates. The novel deals with gender politics in America. It is one of the series of novel Oates authored around this time that deals differing aspects of American society.

Others were American Appetites (1989), on affluence;  Because It Is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart (1990), on racism; I Lock the Door on Myself (1990), about alienation; The Rise of Life on Earth (1991), dealing with poverty; and Heat (1992), on class.


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Product Description
The Senator. The girl. The Fourth of July party on the island. The ride through the night. The accident. The death by water.

Joyce Carol Oates has taken a shocking story that has become an american myth and, from it, has created a novel of electrifying power and illumination. The point of view is that of the girl herself, Kelly Kelleher. We enter her past and her present, her mind and her body, in a brilliantly woven narrative that transforms and transfigures this young woman fatally attracted to this older man, this hero, this father figure, this soon-to-be lover. Kelly becomes the very embodiment of a woman's longing and vulnerability—a t a party that takes on the quality of a surreal nightmare; in a car ride that we hope against hope will not end as we know it must end. Her voice echoes with the dimension of classic tragedy as she seems to speak for women drawn to the power that certain men command, drugged by romantic dreams no matter how bright and brave these women may be.

Joyce Carol Oates is one of the acknowledged masters of American fiction. In Black Water, she has written her boldest and most brilliant novel yet. More than a roman a clef, more even than the tour de force it most certainly is, it parts the black water to reveal the profoundest depths of human truth.