'Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars' by Joyce Carol Oates

I love audiobooks, in particular long audiobooks. ‘Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars’ by Joyce Carol Oates is an incredible 30 hours long – the book is nearly 1,000 pages.

A family portrait it begins with the violent death of the father and patriarch. Police brutality and ensuing cover-up is one of the many themes in the book.

Whitey, business man, former mayor, staunch republican, patriarch who adores his wife. Whitey who knew what is right and wrong. Jessalyn, his wife, who at some stage discovers that she did not decide anything, life just happened to her.

With Whitey’s death all family members lose their certainty; lives unravel. The chapters follow one of the characters for a period of time. We are privy to actions, thoughts, interactions with each other and their mother. The children who seemingly grew up in a loving safe household are dysfunctional and unhappy; they are petty, racist, not characters I’d want to have anything to do with. They demand that their mother remain unchanged, to be the woman they know, to not do anything their father would not allow. Their behaviours are unsettling.

Jessalyn behaves oddly. She stops dying and cutting her hair. She adopts a vicious stray one-eyed cat. She dismisses the house keeper. She connects with a Puerto-Rican photographer. The older children are dismayed, and try hard to control – there are plans to murder the cat, to buy off the Latino communist.

The children’s lives unhinge, change; certainties are questioned and unraveled. While Jessalyn first starts to explore who she might be without a strong man to please, she soon gives in to Hugo Martinez. A man unlike Whitey as he’s an artist, wears sandals and a large mustache, he’s a poet and activist, a man with empathy. A man like Whitey as he is sure of himself; he adores Jessalyn, and she falls into this relationship because there seems no other option. While she was clear that she was NOT going to fall for the widower her children would accept, the growing relationship with Hugo Martinez seems to just happen. Life continues to happen to Jessalyn – a man to love, to care for. 

The Mclaren family were part of my life for a while. At times I wondered why I spent time with people I so wholeheartedly disliked. Yet, I listened to their stories while cooking meals and doing the dishes, while sitting on the couch with  my crochet project. It felt a bit voyeuristic, this close insight into other people’s lives and thoughts.

 Jessalyn marries Hugo Martinez while on holiday in Ecuador. The book ends with nothing resolved – we don’t know how Hugo and Jessalyn are going to solve the challenge of where to live. How to deal with the hostile older children. Will Thom and Beverly get a divorce? Does Virgil come out, and form a relationship with his dear friend? The book finishes, nothing is resolved – as life does not resolve, it just continues, we’re just not watching any more…

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/books/review/joyce-carol-oates-night-sleep-death-stars.html