Solstice review

Solstice, by Joyce Carol Oates, is a look into the life of a recent divorcee, Monica Jensen, who moves to Bucks County, Pennsylvania to start anew as a teacher at the Glenkill Academy for Boys. She has high hopes for her fresh start, surrounded by new people in a relatively remote location. Monica is introduced to Sheila Trask, a widowed, eccentric painter of some renown-- famous if not for her artwork, but more for her life, or what has been assumed, both currently and previous to her famous sculptor husband's death. Monica is a young professional, blonde and pretty, leaving Sheila to be, of course, the mysterious dark-haired antagonist.

Instead of the characters actually interacting conversationally, most of the book is written by describing their interplay, therefore, at least for myself, there is a detachment from the characters from the reader, making it difficult to fully understand or relate to them (for the most part, Monica and Sheila), which is something I usually need in order to read and absorb a story. I can't honestly say that either is particularly likable, or that either elicits much sympathy (or empathy) in the long run. Oates has an almost frantic way of wordplay, however, and she's so good at digging-in deep to interpersonal relationships, to the root emotion, so that I could forgo my usual literal needs in order to finish the book.

There is always something disturbing that lingers after reading an Oates work, be it a short story or a novel, and her writing can catch the reader off-guard because of her writing style. Sometimes one doesn't know if a character is speaking or thinking, though this realization might not strike until later on; is the character dreaming or awake? Does it matter? Happiness is also not something that figures prominently in Oates's writing, and the culmination of this 'friendship' (it's more like codependency, frankly) is no different.

With the closing line, the book leaves one wondering, taking into account their considerable ups and downs, what could possibly be left for their 'friendship' aside from dissolution or death. Sheila says to Monica as the latter is spirited away in an ambulance after a period of illness:

'You shouldn't have done this-- you shouldn't have doubted me-- we'll be friends for a long, long time', she says, '--unless one of us dies.'


/ [Ms. Steel]

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