Them.byJoyce Carol Oates

Them (1969) is the third novel in The Wonderland Quartet by Joyce Carol Oates. It won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1970. It is a chronicle of a blue-collar Detroit family from the Depression through the Detroit race riots.

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From the Dust Jacket - by Celestial Timepiece
Loretta Wendall, her daughter Maureen, and her son Jules are "them"—three characters held together by corroding hatred and mute love.

"Them" are also the forces that tear at their happiness—ignorance, intolerance, the loneliness of being a part and yet apart; the differences between rich and poor, white and black, the loved and the lover.

Through a complex field of time and space—Detroit and its environs between 1937 and 1967—the three Wendalls experience their everydays in the midst of ominous history, trying by almost any means to cope with the "thems" they cannot understand, each seeking desperately to placate a driving restlessness with a freedom of abandon, to find his own identity, to define his unique, invulnerable self. From the Depression of the thirties to the violence of the sixties, Miss Oates penetrates the point of view of each character to show the impact of events upon him, the subtle relationships of each to the other, the innermost feelings and emotions that spur each to his own dream and action.

THEM is an extraordinary novel, a work that once again reveals Miss Oates's remarkable and compassionate insight, her true narrative skill, and her high artistry.


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Product Description
A sprawling novel about the sparkling grit of post-war urban life, them (please note that the title is not capitalized) is the story of Maureen Wendall, daughter of working class parents, and her struggle to survive the economic and social straits into which she is born. Written with the passion and psychological insight for which Oates is known, them ranks as one of her greatest novels, as well as one of the great works of fiction of the second half of the 20th century. With its sweeping view of a particular time and place (Detroit, the 1950s and 60s), and its vast emotional perception of both male and female characters, them, upon its original publication, confirmed to the literary world that Oates's vision of a fictional America weighs in as forcefully as those of Updike, Roth, and Bellow.