I think Joyce Carol Oates has turned into a very self-indulgent writer. You can almost tell that she writes from the knowledge that she's a big enough name and considered literary enough that she doesn't have to be compelling anymore.

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars was such a wonderfully engrossing book about family love. Based on the relatively simple idea of how a family reacts when one of its members dies, this book was just fascinating to me. It is quite long, but the characters and the emotions in it are well worth the long read. Joyce Carol Oates is definitely an author to reach for with a gift for breathing life into her stories and her characters.

Any chance to read Oates is a gift. One that may take a while to unwrap. The pleasure of her words ring true in this story of a family unmoored with the death of their father. A wife becomes isolated and unpredictable. Sons and daughters descend into controlled substance abuse. Each child reacts in ways that suggest this was a long time coming. Death was just the catalyst. It’s depth will beguile you. It’s prose will enchant. A pleasure to experience.

DNF. Was not able to read before title was archived. Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC.

This was my first Joyce Carol Oates and she lives up to the hype. What a masterpiece! Gripping from page 1, this compelling family saga had it all. I will absolutely read another by this author!

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher!

In a recent review, “The Unruly Genius of Joyce Carol Oates,” New Yorker critic Leo Robson said, “In an era that fetishizes form, Oates has become America’s preeminent fiction writer by doing everything you’re not supposed to do.”

Her latest book, Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars certainly demonstrates that goal. It picks up more or less where We Were the Mulvaney’s ended, in an intensive-care unit, with the death of a patriarch. The opening scene takes place on an afternoon in 2010, when Whitey McClaren, a 67-year-old businessman and onetime mayor of Hammond, New York, pulls off the freeway near his home to approach a pair of patrol cops in the process of attacking a “dark-skinned young man,” and is severely beaten and tased.

From this brutal scene, Oates spins a 780-page portrait of the consequences for the victim’s wife and children. The book title Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars comes from Whitman, and becomes an epilogue drawn to epic length, showing us what happens to a group of people robbed of their “lynchpin” or “anchor. The novel is written in Oat’s favored roaming third-person, and it’s told from more than half a dozen perspectives. There are tow McClaren sons: Thom, in his late thirties, the second in command at t Whitey’s business; and the runt of the litter, Virgil, a 31-year-old artist and dropout. There are three daughters: Beverly, prom queen turned bored housewife; Lorene, the local high-school principal; and Sofia, a pharmaceutical lab assistant. Then there’s Jessalyn, their beloved “mommy.”

whitey’s death sends every family member into crises. Sophia, for example, reexamines everything she previously knew. She no longer feels comfortable killing animals for lab test. Lorene veers toward alcoholism and nervous collapse. Thom attempts to get legal justice for Whitey, while also attempting to run off his mother’s new boyfriend, Hugo Martinez, a photographer and poet the some of the McClaren children view as a gold-digger.

To Oates, the reality of family life is often social reality in extremity, and in showing this she is agonizingly thorough (hence the nearly 800 pages). The novel is so packed with nuances and details and run-on sentences that it’s hard to register it all, and I found that irritating. I like nuance. Also details. Not so much run-on ramblings that mire me in words to the point that I completely miss the nuance. For example, I barely had time to register that Whitey died in the course of defending a victim of racial profiling, despite having been soft on police violence during his time as town mayor.

At times, I felt lost. But then, why should the reader be afforded the sense of terra firma denied to the characters? Poor Jessalyn reflects that “a widow’s life is a posthumous life; a left-over life you could say.” She sees the widow’s condition as “a diminishment, like a wizened pea or a crumped.” Shades of J. Alfred Prufrock perhaps, but as a woman of Jessalyn’s age, this was one of the nuances I slowed down to savor.
I took nearly a year after reading this book to formulate these ideas for a review. I’m still thinking about these characters. I absolutely hated the run-one sentences. Still, I loved the deep honesty of the prose. The author’s micro-lens writing style made me squirm. Yet, even if it was a page long, each sentence told me something new about a character. And every person was unique. Just like our families.

The book felt like 800 pages. Not sure it had to be. But I’m not about to suggest Joyce Carol Oates write it differently. She knows what she’s doing, whether you like her style or not.

3.5 stars. Despite being an 800-page book, this story kept me decently engrossed and I enjoyed the saga it took me through. This is a fantastic view of grief and I feel like it came to me at the perfect point in time. However, it tries to tackle some pretty huge topics of race and police brutality that I felt fell short. The characters are judgemental, flawed, and often express racist ideals, but I couldn't tell if they were ever learning from their mistakes or from the instances of brutality that they faced. Especially considering that this is a white family dealing with police brutality, I didn't feel like the characters ever truly understood their point of privilege, and the story read like it was written by a white author. Overall it's a compelling story - I just wished that the characters learned a little more among an 800 page monster of a book.

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars by Joyce Carol Oates covers one of her most treasured subjects - how the family meets controversy and its members either thrive or dive. This novel has the ripped-from-the-headlines vibes, covering police brutality, racism, wealth inequality, snobbery of every kind. The focus is on a powerful father figure who dies while trying to question the roadside detaining & roughing up of a man of color. The resultant response of his perfect wife and disparate adult children is filled with confusion and anger at each others' handling of the crisis.

Oates' storyline is a brutal thoughtful study of how we process loss and tragedy. Some are lost in anger and refusal to accept, while others respond with hope for a better time. Make time to tackle this 800 page novel.

Thanks to Netgalley, Ecco and Joyce Carol Oates for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read and review this book. While this title is no longer within the realm of my current reading interests I appreciate the opportunity in receiving an ARC.

The premise sounded good, but the story was a bit too slow for my liking. Nothing against the book, it is just not my normal genre.

A bit overlong, but Carol Oates captures family life beautifully. Not Oates' best, but definitely a solid outing that I would recommend to others.

This book was the perfect family drama. It was intense, relevant, and profound. As usual, Oates writing is beautiful and just flows off the page, pulling the reader in.

This was my first dive into Joyce Carol Oats, and I did really enjoy these stories. I'm looking forward to reading more of her work. Stories aren't my favorite narrative format, but there were so many great ones in here worth reading. Of course, there were a few duds, so I ended up rounding my rating according to my average rating of each story, but there were definitely some 5 star short stories in here. I am looking forward to reading more of her work in the future.

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. by Joyce Carol Oates is a captivating portrait of a family in modern day America. When a horrific tragedy kicks off the almost eight hundred page story, I was immediately drawn in and I never looked back. Whitey, a well known man in his 60s observes a fight on the side of the highway. He pulls over to help when he realizes there are police officers beating up a black man. His intention is to stop the violence, yet upon his approach, the young, naive officers redirect their anger from their victim to Whitey, and zap him with a taser gun. When he drops to the ground and passes out, the violent officers call for medical attention and submit a false report stating Whitey was in a car accident where he sustained injuries. After several days, tragically, Whitey dies in the hospital. This is where Joyce Carol Oates’s expertise in modern American society and her gift for character development shine.

Police brutality, racism, and the death of a patriarch set a powerful backdrop for Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. We follow each member of Whitey’s family to see how they deal with his absence, getting to know and understand their sibling relationships and personal struggles. Thom is the oldest brother and he is bossy and sarcastic. Virgil comes to terms with his sexuality in the absence of his judgmental father. Lorena recognizes her own bitterness and reckons with her lack of relationships. Beverly decides it is time to stand up for herself when it comes to her cheating husband. Sophia gives second thoughts to her career choice and her relationship with an older, married man. And Jessica, Whitey’s widow, chooses to enter into a very different relationship with an unexpected partner where she walks the line between feeling love and happiness, and the desire to be dead along with her deceased husband.

Whitey’s expectations for his wife and children have less power now that he is gone and there is desperation, relief, re-evaluation of life choices, freedom to express and live their best lives, vengeance, frustration, anger and support. Each family member has his or her own story and in the aftermath of Whitey’s death, their life paths change; they fall off track when it comes to their careers, marriages and relationships, and good or bad, their true selves emerge. We get to know them and understand their past and present actions, emotions and motives along with the family dynamics. Joyce Carol Oates and her beautiful use of language make this story of corruption and justice a compelling portrait of a family in mourning.

There is so much to examine in this novel and and I truly got lost in it. A great book I highly recommend!

Did not finish. The writing reminded me of Emma Cline’s THE GIRLS, which I disliked because of its awkward, self-indulgent sentence fragments. Further, in this day and age, I’m not particularly interested in reading about a rich, white, Republican family, especially not for this many pages.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

3.5 stars. While this is an engrossing tale and I loved how each family member is given their own voice and reactions and their interactions with the rest of the family, and the story itself, I found about halfway through growing fatigued. I did not feel this required an 800-page treatment.

Actual Rating: 3.8

This was surprisingly really enjoyable from beginning to end, and super salient considering how many innocent dark-skinned (specifically Black people) are getting shot by police today without consequences.

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars is a story about a powerful man’s death, and the story about his family coming to terms with it. But even more so, Whitey’s death wasn’t as simple as it seems — he was beaten by police while trying to stop it from happening to a dark-skinned young man, and after his death, one of his sons is wrapped up in a lawsuit in a justice system that is clearly broken.

Never have I read a book that made me so TORN about its characters. I’m used to having my mind made up, either rooting for a character to have the best ending or wanting the worst tragedy to hit them. That definitely wasn’t the case with this book, and to be honest I really appreciate the multitude of emotions these characters made me feel. One minute I hated them, and the next I appreciated some of the things they did.

Let’s be very clear. All of them, except for Virgil, sound like your typical white, Trumpian, rich, suburban conservative, and their offhanded comments about someone’s race or status were enough to make me hate them. Yet, we kept hearing Whitey Whitey Whitey, this parent who just had so much influence over all of their worldviews, that sometimes you kind of get how and why they’re so narrow-minded. You’re not supposed to like them, but you do grow to understand them.

Two characters that stood out to me were Thom, the macho, heir to the family company. Violent and self-righteous. If I knew him in real life, I’d run in the other direction. Toxic. And yet, his pursuit of justice was interesting and relatable and it made sense, even though morally it was for all the wrong reasons. Thom feels like an “the end justifies the means type.”

And the second one was Virgil, practically Thom’s character foil, the runt and outcast of the family. Different and isolated. The quirky artist. If I knew him in real life, I’d probably find him obnoxious. But there was still something about the way he stuck to his principles and his way of life despite the rest of his family looking down on him for it.

The others, like Sophia, Beverley, Lorene, even the widow Jessalyn — were fun to read too, but I have to admit that it really felt like Thom and Virgil were the MAIN ones in the story. And this might’ve been one downside to this book: the fact that there were so many characters made it difficult sometimes to remember who had done what. Jessalyn’s story wasn’t altogether that interesting, but it was about a woman moving on after her husband had died and not feeling guilty, and that was something I appreciated.

And Whitey. Yes, he was dead. He was pretty much only alive for a few chapters, and a soul in a few more. But Joyce Carol Oates did an amazing job with selling us his power, his role in society and in the family. He felt like a main character, and I felt his presence throughout the entire book, even if he was no longer there. He was in how all the characters acted.

The writing style is definitely not your typical novel. It’s a little stream-of-consciousness at times, fragmented, using parentheses and mini exclamations. Surprisingly, I found that this writing style worked really well for me, especially because it felt like it was allowing me to get inside the head of every character and follow their trains of thought.

Ultimately, I’d definitely recommend this one. Even if it did get me a long time to get through — it is 800 pages — it was worth it, and in such a racially charged political climate, it honestly felt like the perfect read.

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. is not one of JCO's best books, but it's still really, really good; dark and thoughtful and full of Oates's lyrical writing. A definite must read for fans, and while this wouldn't be my introduction novel for new to her readers (Blonde and My Sister, My Love would be my pics) Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars would be an excellent follow-up choice.

I had stopped reading Joyce carol oates when she went through her gothic phase and never found myself drawn to her newer titles. I have to say this read makes me want to go back and look at her catalog. A thoroughly engaging story of a family and the sins that don’t seem like sins u til the sinner is gone. So very timely in its focus on police brutality. A telling story of family and what seems to be perfect actually I fleets damage on those inside the perfect bubble and the ultimate repercussions when the “perfect person” is no longer there to hold things together . And also how it’s always possible for new beginnings. A very enjoyable read.

Joyce Carol Oates’ Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars, tells the story of the McClaren family, whose patriarch “Whitey,” dies following an attack by two police officers after he attempts to defend a dark-skinned man being hassled by the officers. Thereafter, his widow Jessalyn and five grown children try to adapt to their new lives, and to each other, without the pillar-of-the-community Whitey as the family’s figurehead.

In revealing her characters, Oates has a tendency to write every thought, or fragment of thought, that she imagines passes through their minds. So while the plot is not expansive, the resulting story is rich in character development, following each member of the McClaren clan as they navigate their grief, often in unhealthy ways. The book is long at 800 pages, but I believe readers become fans of Oates’ work because of her ability to build complex, fully-formed, often mercurial characters that lend to the richness to her stories. Those fans will not be disappointed with this effort.

I received an ARC of this novel from HarperCollins and NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion, and I thank them.