Broke Heart Blues
A Novel
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Broke Heart Blues
Narrated by:
Finlay Stevenson, Cassandra Campbell, Fred Berman, Brittany Pressley, Linda Jones, Vas Eli, Barton Caplan, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Joyce Carol Oates
Buy Now for $31.99
About this listen
IN THE HEART OF A LANGUID JULY, ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD JOHN REDDY HEART drives a traffic-stopping, salmon-colored Cadillac into the quiet upstate town of Willowsville, New York. His mother, Dahlia Heart, a blackjack dealer, has brought her family east from Las Vegas to claim the rambling mansion left to her by a wealthy suitor.
But it is John Reddy—already growing into a heartbreaking hybrid of James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Elvis Presley—who will claim the town itself. It is John Reddy who will arouse the desire of Willowsville’s teenage girls and the worship of its boys, the fear and envy of its men, and the yearning of its women. And it is John Reddy who will capture the town’s soul forever on the night a prominent citizen is shot dead in Dahlia Heart’s bedroom—and a statewide manhunt sweeps Willowsville’s rebel outlaw into the realm of living myth.
Over the course of thirty years, Broke Heart Blues charts the rise and fall—and the ultimate call to reckoning— of John Reddy Heart, through the myriad voices of those who find him their whipping boy, savior, dream lover, and confessor. At once a scathing indictment of the cultlike nature of fame and celebrity in America and a deeply moving mediation on human need and longing, the novel explores loneliness, and the profound price we pay for our desires and dreams.
Critic Reviews
It’s hard to think of another writer with as fecund and protean an imagination as the eighty-five-year-old Joyce Carol Oates, who is surely on any short list of America’s greatest living writers.—New York Times Magazine
Densely layered, meticulously imagined . . . [a] shared coming-of-age tale fraught with the absurd comedy and uproarious sadness of adolescent obsession . . . among the most entertaining of Oates’s novels.—Miami Herald
With Broke Heart Blues, Oates does for high school reunions what Huckleberry Finn did for the Mississippi . . . Great authors have a way of rendering common things extraordinary . . . This dry satire of America’s thirst for scandal is perfectly calibrated. —Christian Science Monitor
Joyce Carol Oates's stunning novel about one town's ramped passion for a boy accused of murder, Broke Heart Blues, feels more resonant than ever in this reissue with a thoughtful afterword. —Shelf Awareness
Oates uses her astonishingly plentiful imagination to paint the portrait of . . . virtually an entire generation of a town . . . Rife with life.—Washington Post Book World
Funny and playful . . . displays great inventiveness and a justified belief in its relevance to our emotional lives.—New York Times Book Review
A sparkling comic hit.—Boston Sunday Herald
A sharp, funny look at how memories can warp reality . . . heart-wrenching and beautifully written.—Wall Street Journal
Huge, humorous, manic, and multilayered, Oates’s twenty-ninth novel will rank high among the best work she has produced in her prolific career.—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
Densely layered, meticulously imagined . . . [a] shared coming-of-age tale fraught with the absurd comedy and uproarious sadness of adolescent obsession . . . among the most entertaining of Oates’s novels.—Miami Herald
With Broke Heart Blues, Oates does for high school reunions what Huckleberry Finn did for the Mississippi . . . Great authors have a way of rendering common things extraordinary . . . This dry satire of America’s thirst for scandal is perfectly calibrated. —Christian Science Monitor
Joyce Carol Oates's stunning novel about one town's ramped passion for a boy accused of murder, Broke Heart Blues, feels more resonant than ever in this reissue with a thoughtful afterword. —Shelf Awareness
Oates uses her astonishingly plentiful imagination to paint the portrait of . . . virtually an entire generation of a town . . . Rife with life.—Washington Post Book World
Funny and playful . . . displays great inventiveness and a justified belief in its relevance to our emotional lives.—New York Times Book Review
A sparkling comic hit.—Boston Sunday Herald
A sharp, funny look at how memories can warp reality . . . heart-wrenching and beautifully written.—Wall Street Journal
Huge, humorous, manic, and multilayered, Oates’s twenty-ninth novel will rank high among the best work she has produced in her prolific career.—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
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