Felix “the Cat” is a retired middleweight boxing champion. When Enid is 14, her Uncle Felix, who is twice her age, seduces her. But privately she struggles with a darker self, her alter ego, whom she calls “Angel-Face.” This darker self tempts her to steal trinkets from stores, to enjoy men’s glances on the street. He and wife Hannah have four children: Geraldine, who gets pregnant and must marry Warren, who fights in Korea promiscuous Lizzie, who shames her parents by becoming a nightclub singer and Enid, the youngest, the one with the aspirin.Įnid is quiet, intelligent and always well-behaved. In the Stevick family, father Lyle is a family man, resigned to his life as a used-furniture store owner. Oates plays against all that connotes the stereotypical ‘50s family (“Leave It to Beaver,” Chevies, Sunbeam bread) and uncovers the dark secrets inherent in all families-incest, adolescent sexual desire, isolation and suicide. This prologue sets the tone for a portrayal, as disturbing as it is intimate, of a lower-middle-class family in the ‘50s. Joyce Carol Oates opens this novel with a brutally honest account of a 15-year-old girl waiting to die after swallowing 47 aspirin.
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