A Joyce Carol Oates Patchwork
So much more than the kind of standard-issue unreliable narrator, Georgene is a vastly complex character whose every word, every use of parentheses and italics, must be examined closely for intent. A thematically and stylistically ambitious novel that displays the author’s literary gifts to their maximum effect.
New York: Mysterious Press, 2023
297 Pages
“Even if Marguerite is no longer living still she has got to be somewhere.”
What has become of Marguerite Fulmer? On an otherwise average day in Upstate New York, the young woman left her family home, never to return. No note was left, no explanation; just a messy bedroom and her sister Gigi, driven to dig through the meager clues and discover the truth behind her disappearance.
As the investigation unfolds, every subtle bit of evidence becomes a potential clue. The silk Dior slip dress, left in a heap on the floor; the impression of Ferragamo boots outside in the dirt, a trail of footsteps that abruptly ends before it leaves the yard. And as Gigi trails the detectives, she finds previously unknown troubles in the life of her perfect, gorgeous, much-loved sister—troubles that at times seem to reflect her own.
Bit by bit, like ripping the petals off a flower blossom, a dark truth is revealed. And subtly, but with the unbearable suspense at which Joyce Carol Oates excels, clues mount and bring to light the fate of the missing beauty.
ExcerptChaos/clues. In our cold climate snow flurries are common in April. Snowflakes swirling in a chaos like clues in the wake of a mystery.
It is terrible to see, to realize, that the world is a chaos of clues.
Where there is no body, only a missing body. Where there is no assurance that the missing body is even alive.
Why was I the only person to recognize that the Prada wallet wasn’t a clue but an anti-clue? That is, an item that purports to be a “clue” in the jigsaw puzzle of the mystery of M.’s disappearance but was, in fact, an “anti-clue”—a stratagem to confuse, not enlighten.
A trap to lead detectives into thinking that M. had been abducted, and her wallet tossed out the window of a vehicle headed for the Thruway. Probably.
Skeptical G. knows better: there would be no logic to tossing the wallet of an abducted woman out the window of a speeding car headed for the entrance of the Thruway. For why?
Obviously, staged. And why staged?—to mislead.
To make detectives think that the missing person is somewhere other than Aurora. To make detectives think that a crime has been committed and not a “voluntary” absence of the seemingly missing person.
Other clues the detectives may have missed. But G., perusing M’s calendar since the start of 1991, noted.
Frequent pencil-notations on the calendar. Like anyone’s calendar.
Amid a welter of notations of no interest, this for April 8 caught my eye: “MAM: 9 A.M.”
And, for March 29: “MAM: 11 A.M.”
Of course, I didn’t mention this to anyone. My interactions with the detectives were as infrequent as I could make them without arousing suspicion.
Origins[Spoiler warning!]
Decades ago, when I was living in another part of the country, and my life was very different from the life I live now. I’d experimented with a story titled “The Lost Sister”—a narration by a woman whose older, far more accomplished sister has gone missing, and who is, as the reader soon deduces, bitterly jealous of this sister, yet deeply connected to her. The story intrigued me at the time with its possibilities for expansion, but I set it aside, and during the pandemic re-discovered it with a surge of excitement and enthusiasm since, in my much altered life now, living alone in a large house in rural-suburban New Jersey, during a lockdown, I felt that I could better comprehend the isolation and loneliness of the narrator, which is shielded from her consciousness by her wry, acerbic tone. Georgene—“Gigi”—is a broken, tragic figure whose bravado attitude allows her to imagine that she is in control of a narrative in which she has virtually no role at all—and is totally mistaken about the fate of her sister.
At about that time, a friend invited me to visit with him in Ithaca, New York, and we drove around Lake Cayuga to the old, stately, small-but-upscale village of Aurora, New York, the home of Wells College. As soon as I saw Aurora and walked about its glacier hills and the “historic” campus of Wells College, I knew that I had the perfect setting for “33 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister.” This story could not be set elsewhere.
—Joyce Carol Oates
From the Contributors’ Notes 
of The Best American Mystery & Suspense 2023 for the story “33 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister.”
ReviewsPublisher’s Weekly, January 23, 2023, page 52
This elegant, captivating tale is un-put-downable.
David Pitt, Booklist, February 15, 2023
Oates’ latest foray into crime fiction is another masterpiece of storytelling …. So much more than the kind of standard-issue unreliable narrator, Georgene is a vastly complex character whose every word, every use of parentheses and italics, must be examined closely for intent. A thematically and stylistically ambitious novel that displays the author’s literary gifts to their maximum effect.
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2023
A kaleidoscopic portrait of an unforgettable woman whose memory everyone honors only by distorting it.
Laury A. Egan, New York Journal of Books
Oates has fashioned a genre of her own: a form of literary suspense that utilizes psychological glimpses into disturbed minds and feeds on the bizarre relationships between people. While a compelling read, it is not a true crime novel, though it might be categorized as an oblique mystery. Shifting ambiguity replaces a sense of imminent danger, so the book’s attraction is the sleight-of-hand displayed by Georgene rather than by hooking the reader with fast action.
Sarah Weinman, New York Times Book Review, March 26, 2023, page 9
But what could have been an unnerving tale is marred by truly puzzling stylistic choices (so many parentheticals, one after another!). Still, even a subpar Oates novel unmoors me and makes me wonder what will arrive next.
Image: Ralph Albert Blakelock, “Night Glow”
I'm a Reference Librarian at the University of San Francisco's Gleeson Library, and I run the Joyce Carol Oates web site, Celestial Timepiece.
Celestial Timepiece 
I just wish she had gotten the river by Troy NY correct. It’s the Hudson, not the Mohawk.
And I’m an RPI alumna, so did not appreciate the negative commentary about the school.
Otherwise, I greatly enjoyed the book.
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