Them

Joyce Carol Oates’ Them brings me to 198 out of 1001 books on this list. Though an absolute brick of a book, the story reads quite easily in a very modern and accessible way—still, it’s utterly devastating in every single word that it contains. The way Oates cuts away and skips time immediately after a major event is so jarring. What an absolutely perfect choice she made there to depict the traumas of one’s life into flashback-like fragments.

There aren’t many acclaimed books that use Detroit as a backdrop (at least as far as I am aware of), so as a former Michigander, I was quite excited to pick up a novel centered around the lives of people in places that hit close to “home”. Of course, the lower-class lives of the Wendells are far from what I myself have known, but there was some kind of camaraderie in hearing the names of so many familiar streets and cities that gave me comfort.

The takeaway from this story? Life is devastating, and we are all victims of both ourselves and the environments around us. Still, you pick yourself up and keep going. Despite ourselves, love persists—whether its constant love for those that harm us, or the stubborn love for the places we come from.

Loretta is a terrible mother, and yet we feel sympathy for her. It’s absolutely heartbreaking to watch Maureen get beaten down, slowly having her bright future ripped away from her almost entirely at the fault of her mother. Jules, too, has such a kind heart and so much potential, and yet makes all the wrong choice. That’s the harsh nature of reality, though, I suppose.

Out of everything, the fact that the young Maureen envisioned the stories of romantic English novels to be more “real” than her own gritty life struck me with fascination. How much more real can you get than a life of misery? This book felt more real to me than any Austen novel ever could. But I guess anything that takes you away to another place for a while is “real”.