A Fair Maiden
Fifteen-year-old Katya Spivak is out for a walk on the gracious streets of Bayhead Harbor with her two summer babysitting charges when she is approached by silver-haired, elegant Marcus Kidder. At first his interest in her seems harmless, even pleasant; like his name, a sort of gentle joke. His beautiful home, the children's books that he has written, his classical music, the fine art in his study, his lavish gifts to her: Mr. Kidder's life couldn't be more different from Katya's drab working class existence back home in South Jersey - or more enticing. But by degrees, almost imperceptibly, something changes, and posing for Mr Kidder's new painting isn't the light-hearted endeavour it once was. What does he really want from her? And how far will he go to get it?
3.8 out of 5 based on 9 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
176 |
| RRP |
£15.99 |
| Date of Publication |
January 2010 |
| ISBN |
978-1847248589 |
| Publisher |
Quercus |
| |
Fifteen-year-old Katya Spivak is out for a walk on the gracious streets of Bayhead Harbor with her two summer babysitting charges when she is approached by silver-haired, elegant Marcus Kidder. At first his interest in her seems harmless, even pleasant; like his name, a sort of gentle joke. His beautiful home, the children's books that he has written, his classical music, the fine art in his study, his lavish gifts to her: Mr. Kidder's life couldn't be more different from Katya's drab working class existence back home in South Jersey - or more enticing. But by degrees, almost imperceptibly, something changes, and posing for Mr Kidder's new painting isn't the light-hearted endeavour it once was. What does he really want from her? And how far will he go to get it?
John Crace's Digested Read -- The Guardian
Reviews
The Daily Express
Virginia Blackburn
"This is a marvellous novella with a sparing use of prose and not a word out of place… There is something haunting about this book: although it takes place during the brightly lit summer, it is one step away from being a dark, Gothic ghost story, albeit peopled with characters who are still very much alive."
04/01/2010
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The Sunday Times
Joan Smith
"The brilliance of this book (and its suspense) lies in a skilful manipulation of categories. If it is a modern novel, it is impossible for it to end well; if it is a fairy tale, almost anything could happen… Oates is brilliant on class, vulnerability and illusions, and it is only on the final page that she reveals where power really lies."
24/01/2010
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The New Statesman
Lucy Beresford
"Oates's achievement here lies in her quiet skewering of a familiar narrative form, one that she manages to make fresh, current and gripping. The prose is taut, the insight shrewd and the violence vivid, but what lingers in the mind is the painful ambiguity of contemporary human interaction... [An] intense and thought-provoking work of fiction"
11/01/2010
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The Washington Post
Jane Smiley
"Oates's world is our world: crass at best and vile at worst, and American to the core. But we keep returning, and we do so for the same reason I went on with "A Fair Maiden" -- not because Marcus and Katya are winning or even enlightening, but because Oates's ability to plot is like no other writer's."
04/01/2010
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The Financial Times
Lesley McDowell
"She is superb at capturing an authentic teenage voice of audacity mixed with insecurity, the dawning, dim awareness of exactly what that threat means."
23/12/2009
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The Daily Telegraph
Michael Arditti
"The novel’s chief attraction is to be found in its account of Katya’s adolescent awakening, betrayal of Mr Kidder and ultimate redemption. With its depiction of the relationship between the elderly artist and the young muse who becomes his angel of death, it might well stand as a heterosexual counterpart to Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, albeit with its focus less on the artist than on his object of desire."
09/01/2010
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The Guardian
Sarah Churchwell
"Oates's affluent families are liable to be caricatures of smug, selfish materialism, and this book is no different... [It ends] in a scene so far-fetched Oates can't possibly intend this book to be read realistically. It is, rather, a parable about sexual economics: anyone who requires instruction about the exchanges of power between young, attractive women and rich, old men may find it enlightening. The rest will find only Oates's indisputable ability to sustain ambient darkness and ominous unease – as well as a great many italics."
30/01/2010
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The Independent
Wendy Brandmark
"What are we to make of this novel with odd combination of soft porn and fairytale, its conflation of sex and death, its voyeuristic narrative voice? The joining of the realistic story of class, sex and callow youth to a luminous tale of transformation does not quite work; perhaps because it seems formulaic. There are some fine moments ... but the novel seems too controlled, as if the author had never allowed her characters one moment to roam free."
20/01/2010
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The Observer
Elizabeth Day
"Although there is the occasional lyrical phrase – "Shadows through a lattice window moved restlessly against a wall, appearing, disappearing" – much of the writing appears to be wilfully ponderous until the plot suddenly speeds up towards the end. Everything interesting happens in the last 40 pages. At times you feel that Oates is attempting a post-feminist take on a Perrault fairytale of curious virgins and murdering noblemen, but delivered with such a lack of emotion that you feel strangely detached from the action."
17/01/2010
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