The Accursed
Author: Joyce Carol Oates
With her stunning writing acuity and a new bent into the occult, Joyce Carol Oates delivers a list of political and authorial great characters: Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Upton Sinclair, Jack London and Samuel Clemens and routes them into a personal agenda and vendetta as the book opens, with Woodrow Wilson as President of Princeton University. As Oates creates a psychological thriller, she introduces us to the eerie goings on of the day: it is 1905 and 1906 and The Curse attacks the strangely quiet and rural college town. All of the prestigious residents of the day are invoked into the Curse by Axton Manse, a man disguised as the form of the satanic. Brutal and driven, Woodrow Wilson falls under the Curse along with his Princeton affiliates, and the college is filled with the signs of ghosts, vampires and greedy and arrogant politicians.
As Oates creates an arena where the privileged of Princeton fall under, into and within their own retribution, The Accursed is haunting, tragic and savagely comical. A different novel for Oates but again, she carries off a great plot with savagely intricate characters that delineate the early 1900’s in a charged incident of the past.
Ratings are based on a 5-star scale
Overall: 5
Review by Broad “A” – Ava
We received a copy of this title for our book review. All opinions are our own
The Accursed
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