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 Solstice
by Joyce Carol Oates
New York: Dutton, 1985
243 pages
Dust Jacket Blurb
Two women meet. One, Monica Jensen, is in her late twenties, vulnerable and insecure, not yet over the shock of her recent divorce, a teacher at a boys' private school in rural Pennsylvania. The other, Sheila Trask, is in her mid-thirties, the widow of a world-famed sculptor and herself a painter of stature, dominating, fascinating, restless in her need for what or for whom she seems unable to define, even to herself.
These two women meet. Drawn to each other, they become friends. Imperceptibly, hardly aware of what is happening to them at the deepest level of feeling, they move, or are moved, toward love, and ultimately beyond it, arriving at last at a near-fatal obsession with each other.
Solstice marks Joyce Carol Oates's return to the contemporary scene after her three famous novels set in the nineteenth century, Bellefleur, A Bloodsmoor Romance, and Mysteries of Winterthurn. Very different from those in scale and subject, Solstice resembles them only in the power to capture the reader early and never let go until the final page. It is hard to think of another author, save perhaps D. H. Lawrence, who explores, as Joyce Carol Oates does here, the lives of her characters with so uncanny a response to their erotic tension and psychological entanglement. The result is vivid and disturbing, a signal achievement from one of the most gifted writers of our time.
Excerpt
 Sheila said defensively, avoiding Monica's gaze, "Look: in my family suicide isn't that significant. My mother allowed herself to die in a way that wasn't altogether 'natural' yet wasn't a melodramatic gesture of any kind, it was in fact ruled an accidental death, sparing us a good deal of nuisance; and no suicide note. One of my uncles died by simply blowing most of his brains out at the age of forty-nine, and two of my cousins killed themselves, no, please, don't look so distressed, as you can see it isn't that significant, it's simply a way of asserting control at the proper time. When you've lived through all there is for you to live through, when you're burnt out, thoroughly, and the mere notion of returning to life, and doing it all again, the seasons, the years, the decades, O dear Christ. . . . When you're balked, nullified, stalled, it isn't a significant gesture, it isn't at all emotional, it's just something, you know, you do. And then it's over."
"Except of course it isn't," Monica said in a low trembling voice.
Sheila made an irritated dismissive gesture.
Sheila slouched out of the room, and refused to discuss the matter further.
Sheila did not trouble to reply when Monica called after her: "Except of course it isn't—you know very well that it isn't."
Other Editions
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Reviews
- Booklist, October 1, 1984, p147
- Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 1984, p1016
- Library Journal, November 15, 1984, p2161
- Publisher's Weekly, November 16, 1984
- Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 6, 1985, p3
- Washington Post Book World, January 6, 1985, p3
- New York Times, January 10, 1985, p19
- USA Today, January 18, 1985, 3D
- New York Times Book Review, January 20, 1985, p4
- Newsweek, January 21, 1985, p71
- Wall Street Journal, January 30, 1985, p24
- Mademoiselle, February 1985, p84
- Christian Science Monitor, February 21, 1985, p23
- Quill & Quire, March 1985, p77
- Saturday Review, March 1985, p61
- West Coast Review of Books, March 1985, p27
- Commonweal, March 8, 1985, p150
- People, March 18, 1985, p16
- Times Literary Supplement, March 22, 1985, p327
- New Statesman, March 29, 1985, p71
- Observer, March 31, 1985, p26
- Women's Review of Books, April 1985, p14
- Punch, April 17, 1985, p7
- Listener, May 2, 1985, p27
- Observer, May 11, 1986, p24
- Ms, June 1985, p65
- Books & Bookmen, August 1986, p27
- World Literature Today, Autumn 1985, p595
Awards
- New York Times Notable Books of the Year
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Page address:
http://jco.usfca.edu/works/novels/solstice.html
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