First sentence:
"'In animal life the weak are quickly disposed of'"
Description:
"In 1936, the Schwarts, an immigrant family desperate to escape Nazi Germany, settle in a small town in upstate New York, where the father, a former high school teacher, is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. After local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty result in unspeakable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca, begins her astonishing pilgrimage into America, an odyssey of erotic risk and imaginative daring, ingenious self-invention, and, in the end, a bittersweet--but very 'American'--triumph. 'You are born her, they will not hurt you'--so the grave digger has predicted for his daughter, which will turn out to be true.
In The Gravedigger's Daughter, Oates has created a masterpiece of domestic yet mythic realism, at once emotionally engaging and intellectually provocative: an intimately observed testimony to the resilience of the individual to set beside such predecessors as The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys." - from the inside flap
My thoughts:
This is a book that will probably stay with me for a long time. I admired Rebecca and the way she found strength and purpose in her life. Despite, or maybe, because of her early years, she made sure she was always there for her son, and, most importantly, knew when to drop back as he found his own way in the world.
Date read: 4/4/2025
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 5*/5
ISBN-10: 0061236829
ISBN-13: 9780061236822
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2013
# of pages: 182
Binding: Hardcover
LibraryThing page
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