Missing Mom (US) - Mother, Missing (UK)

The postal worker supplied me with my second copy of JCO's new novel (her 44th) this afternoon (not sure why I ordered two, this one is returning to sender). 400+ pages of JCO bliss is waiting for me on my nightstand. But first, what do critics think:

+ Guardian - "Mother, Missing is Joyce Carol Oates's 44th novel. Like her previous book, Rape: A Love Story, a powerful novella about the unpredictable after-effects of a violent rape, it is inspired by real events, in this case her mother's death. The book is being published in the US under the title Missing Mom, which is much more apt - despite the criminal element of Gwen's death, the novel is mainly about a daughter's grief for her mother, and Oates writes addressing a reader who will one day, inevitably, identify with Nikki's bereavement."

+ CSM - "This is not to say that "Missing Mom" doesn't have its pleasures. But the plot and characters are so relentlessly conventional, it's almost as if Oates decided to try her hand at a chick-lit novel. This is certainly her right, but the result feels a bit like hiring chef Ming Tsai to grill hot dogs."

+ NYT - "Oates's grip on crime, violence and the long-buried is sure, but "Missing Mom" is actually more disturbing in its relentless, dead-on accretion of small-time, small-town, middle-class details. Oates piles them on with pitiless virtuosity. The dishes like Hawaiian Chicken Supreme, Gwen's "wash-and-wear" perm, Nikki's "gold-spangled high-heeled sandals" and magenta lipstick, the afghans and ranch houses and cocktail sausages and coveted gift certificates to Restoration Hardware compose a cosmology of despair. Only a chalk outline can make them seem important in the world, and even then, not for very long. The brutality of blunt-force trauma might be easier to endure, ultimately, than the brutality of never mattering. At least the former is over quickly."

+ Independent - "Perhaps Oates is simply less disillusioned with the world than she was. Not so much that she will erase the violence from the heart of her books, as it is not erased from the heart of the world, but enough to offer a happier ending. Then again, perhaps in offering us a story-book ending she is simply playing up the fictional aspect of it all. No, she tells us sombrely, the world is a bad place and there is no comfort to be had. The only comfort is to be found in the pages of a book."