My Sister, My Love

With its echoes of the JonBenet Ramsay case, Oates's new novel delves into the intimate lives of those affected by the murder of tot figure-skating champion Bliss Rampike. Boldly satirical, this cautionary tale exposes Mummy and Daddy's misguided ambitions and acts as an elegy for the murdered Bliss and her brother Skyler's lost childhood. Through Mike Chamberlain's expert narration, one can hear Skyler's bewilderment at his parents' flaws and transparently selfish motives. Chamberlain aptly delivers Mummy's plaintive pitch, Daddy's booming machismo, and Bliss's strain. Chamberlain's subtle vocalization conveys an urgency on behalf of the children as it portrays the sinister competition at the heart of contemporary American suburbia. As the story is told in the voice of 19-year old Skyler, one hears the leaden grief, guilt, and bitterness that have resulted from the unsolved tragedy ten years earlier. A.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Starred review from April 7, 2008
Oates revisits in fantastic fashion the JonBenet Ramsay murder, replacing the famous family with the Rampikes—father Bix, a bully and compulsive philanderer; mother Betsey, obsessed with making her daughter, Bliss, into a prize-winning figure skater; and son Skyler, the narrator of this tale of ambition, greed and tragedy. Skyler's voice—leaden with grief and guilt—is sometimes that of the nine-year-old he was when his sister was killed, and sometimes the teen he is now, 10 years later, when a letter from his dying mother “solves†the mystery of Bliss's death. The emotionally wrecked Rampike children are collateral damage in a vicious marital battle; Sky is shunted aside, while Bliss is ruthlessly manipulated. Stylistic tricks (direct-address footnotes chief among them) lighten Oates's razor-sharp satire of a privileged enclave where social-climbing neighbors dwell in gargantuan houses; as Oates's readers will expect, the novel is long, propelled at breakneck speed and apt to indulge in verbal excess (as in the 55-page novella within the novel). Oates's psychological acuity, however, ranks this novel as one of the best from a dark observer of our lives and times.

October 1, 2008
National Book Award winner Oates crafts a scathing commentary on life's excesses in 21st-century America's social-climbing, money-driven, overmedicated suburbs. Narrator Mike Chamberlain (Spanking Shakespeare) captures the querulous, childish voices of 19-year-old Skyler Rampike and his sister, Bliss, an ice-skating prodigy murdered at the age of six. Chamberlain's portrayals of bluff, crass father Bix and the mother, bipolar religious nut Betsy, too, come alive; characters of minor importance to the story show less diversity. Of interest to public and academic libraries as well as to Oates fans. [Audio clip available through library.booksontape.comJoanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Lib., Providence

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