A Widow's Story: A Memoir by Joyce Carol Oates

ISBN:   9780062015532
Grade:  B-

Thank you to NetGalley for my advance read of this book!

The much anticipated memoir by Joyce Carol Oates is an unflinchingly honest look into her life as a widow and the writer many of us have come to love.  True to her short stories and fiction, A Widow’s Story has the same profound descriptive and sometimes harsh style of writing that she’s known for whether you love it or hate it.  If you’ve read anything JCO you probably have an idea of what she’s really like and reading her memoir will likely confirm those thoughts.  A Widow’s Story is the story of JCO in the months after her husband Raymond Smith’s untimely passing due to pneumonia and a story about the man behind the author. She and Ray had spent nearly 50 years together and both are well known names in the literary world.  The pair had started the Ontario Review which has helped further the careers of quite a few authors, not to mention all the JCO books and her teaching at Princeton.  What follows is a handbook of sorts pertaining to all the tedious “death duties” following the passing of one’s spouse and gives us an intimate look into her email correspondence.

The memoir starts off with JCO receiving a note on her windshield stating “learn to park you stuppid bitch” which feels so ironic that the person who left that note has no clue of the recipient’s identity.  The note was left in response to a haphazard parking job after taking Ray to the ER for respiratory symptoms.  Ray is diagnosed with pneumonia with E Coli in the lungs, a diagnosis that carries a 70% mortality rate.  Ray appears to be on the mend until a secondary infection on unknown origin takes over the other lung and ultimately kills Ray.  This takes JCO from our beloved author to being a regular person.  She deals with things in the hospital like a CNA from hell and the revolving door of medical personnel and goes home to a pair of cats.  She also reads, although not in bed and not titles that the every day reader would read like Ulysses.  Returning home after Ray’s passing, the house goes into an immediate shift with her two cats Cherie and Reynard (stars themselves in two children’s books) blaming her for Ray not being home when it really is the hospital’s fault for Ray catching the secondary infection.  This begins the journey through widowhood and trying desperately to pick up the pieces.

Normally I love JCO and have been an avid fan since discovering her in high school, but this book didn’t wow me like some of her fiction.  The book itself is well written and has its share of touching moments yet there was a certain coldness that didn’t endear the book to me.  From reading her fiction I had an idea in my mind of what JCO is like which included being peculiar and highly articulate and those were confirmed traits. The coldness was unexpected to me and for some reason I thought her to be a warmer person who just so happens to write about utterly horrific events in her fiction.  There are toucning moments in the memoir including JCO wondering what Ray’s last thoughts and words were as he died alone surrounded by strangers.  The second part that had me tearing up was the dream with her young parents and not wanting them to know that Ray was in the hospital.  The passing of her cat Reynard had me in tears as he like Ray died alone yet will be forever remembered in his book Where Is Little Reynard. Finally the last message Ray left for JCO saying love to her and his kitties.

This as a whole is a lovely look into the life of Raymond Smith that is new to many of us, a portrait of Ray as an avid gardener, the man who brought home two little motherless kittens from the pound and the man who never read any JCO fiction. This is also proof that the prolific powerhouse of literary fiction is human and grieves like any regular person would grieve. The 400+ pages make for a dense read but well worth it for the devoted JCO fan.