My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike by Joyce Carol Oates Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike
Book Review: Darkness
Summary: 3 Stars
Typical of Oates, this a dark novel, but darker than many of her others. The protagonist often rambles and it does get long, but overall, it is fairly interesting read, and a good commentary on stages moms and the media. Book Review: Unbelievably good
Summary: 5 Stars
I could not put this novel down. I rarely rate books, as I don't feel I adequately have words to describe them, however, this book was so incredibly mesmerizing I feel compelled to share my thoughts.
I was drawn in from the first page and all the way until the end. I alternatively sympathized with and despised some of the characters. This satirical tale brought in so much from contemporary American life, with all its greed and fixation on fame - but in the end, what everyone is seeking for is acceptance and love.
I think Joyce Carol Oates is one of the greatest U.S. writers ever, and possibly the greatest living writer we have today.
Book Review: Poweful read
Summary: 5 Stars
I just finished reading it and am blown away by the psychological power of this book. I've read many of her books and always wonder where she can be pulling all this depth and knowledge about people from. I feel like I've discovered some new depths in myself from reading this book. I feel like I know and love Skyler Rampike and was with him throughout his long, sad journey. The book seemed like a tragedy then ended on a hopeful but very realistic note. After I finish absorbing this one, I plan to read the Gravedigger's Daughter. Book Review: "Will you make me a red-ink heart, too?"
Summary: 5 Stars
Joyce Carol Oates has written fiction based on actual events before, BLACK WATER (1992) and BLONDE (2000). Now she has written a gargantuan novel (562 pages) that has its "genesis" in what she calls in her Author's Note/Disclaimer a "true crime mystery of the late twentieth century." Think the murder of Jonbenet Ramsey and tragic aftermath of events that followed. The family name here is Rampike; the parents are Betsey and Bix; the childen, Bliss, whose name was changed from Edna Louise, and Skyler. This rambling story unfolds through the eyes of Skyler, who is nine years old when his six-year-old sister, an ice skating prodigy, is killed in the upper-middle-class family's home in suburban New Jersey.
Ms. Oates' world view is nothing if not dark-- at least in her fiction I have read although I do not pretend to have read her 70 or so volumes. In MY SISTER, MY LOVE Ms. Oates satirizes a certain section of American society, the perennial social climber. Thr Ramikes must get into the most prestigious social club. Betsey arranges playdates for Skyler with the children of the most important neighbors. Then there is Bix, the red-blooded former football star who has a cliche ("who's complaining?" "cut your losses!"never say never!" for every occasion. So what are they to do with a troubled son with a limp who always appears to smirk in the obligatory publicity photos of Mummy, Daddy and Bliss, the holder of the title of "Little Miss Jersey Ice Princess" among many others?
Ms. Oates skewers fundamentalist get-rich religion as well. While Bix can take his religion or leave it-- he believes in a Caucasian god and is a nominal Episcopalean-- Betsey after the death of Bliss joins a pentecostal church and writes memoirs of her tragedy and produces a line of "Heaven Scent" products-- cosmetics, candies et cetera, to help heal her wounds. Her funeral in a mega-church, a "fervent/impassioned/'smiling-through-tears' Assembley of God" that seats 2,100 and is located "beyond Wal-Mart, beyond Home Depot and Big Savings Bonanza" with a copper cross twelve feet high floating over the stage-- there is no altar in sight-- is way past macabre.
Threaded through all this picture of modern American bad taste is Skyler's sometimes creepy, at other times moving, but always sad account of his love for his little sister-- at her insistence he inks a red heart in her palm-- and his own shipwrecked life. There are precious few people to like here. Both Rampike parents are despicable in twenty different ways. Oates is neither subtle nor merciful in her portrayal of them or many others as well. The two bungling detectives assigned to the murder invetigation are named Sledge and Slugg. She reserves her sympathy for the most part for the young people, Bliss and Skyler and Heidi Harkness, the teenager Skyler falls in love with at the Academy of Basking Ridge, New Jersey, a school for students with "special needs." Heidi is the troubled daughter of a celebrity murderer and former major league baseball star recently acquitted for the murder of his wife, her alleged lover and the wife's poodles Yin and Yang. Pastor Bob is a decent person too.
Ms. Oates in the end solves Bliss' murder. I wondered, as I finished this long novel, if she would have changed the ending, knowing what we now know about the DNA evidence in the Ramsey case. Additionally, even though Skyler is a brilliant young man, at times he has to be channeling Ms. Oates for he knows far too much and writes too well for even the most precocious of nineteen-year-olds.
Finally- believe it or not-- this novel ends on a mildly optimistic note with just a whiff of hope. Maybe that is all we need in the end.
Book Review: As we avidly read this clever, carefully observed morality play, we must bear the truth in mind.
Summary: 4 Stars
Joyce Carol Oates, award-winning writer of darkly amusing American fiction, has pushed the envelope to the ripping point in this speculative take on the most notorious unsolved crime of the 20th century --- the murder of JonBenét Ramsey.
In this book, JonBenét, the child beauty queen, has morphed into Bliss Rampike (note the retention of one syllable of the famous surname), a child skating star. After Bliss, born plain Edna Louise --- compelled by her overweight, ambitious mother Betsey's lost dreams of skating fame --- wins one local competition, the chase for stardom is on. "The small face meticulously made up like the face of an old-fashioned and very expensive ceramic doll," the special outfits, the costly coaching --- no penny is spared to turn the tyke into a champion, and a media darling. Bliss's dad Bix, an unfaithfully fornicating, often absent exec, loves his baby girl (maybe too much?) and balks at the expense involved in his wife's obsessive push to transform her.
Behind the scenes, a dark lunar figure obscured in the sunburst of Bliss, is Skylar, her older brother, who is the voice of this "diary." (The real life Ramsey brother, Burke, was in the house when his six-year-old sister met her death and was suspected, like his parents, of being the perpetrator).
When the young Skylar, sensing the tension between his parents, dares to ask how much Bliss's skating career is costing the family, his mother claims defensively, "It's an investment," while the adorable Bliss says quizzically, "It's what God wants me to do. It isn't like other things that cost money, Skylar. It's special."
Yet privately, Skylar knows that Bliss is insecure and frightened (of what?). Sometimes, like any jealous sibling, he preys on those fears to make her feel worse. He can't help but experience a sense of exaltation when, at the finale of a crucial competition, she falls --- especially because he himself was crippled physically and scarred mentally by his parents' ambitions to make him a star gymnast. A few days after the disgraceful fall, little Bliss is dead. No wonder then that all his young life (the "diary" is composed when he is 19) Skylar harbors a secret tormented guilt that it might have been he who savagely beat little Bliss's head against the basement wall.
In the midst of these maniacal musings from a boy who has lived half his life in "Tabloid Hell" (a point Oates stresses), we see, through his naïve eyes, evidence of sexual molestation and possible incestuous abuse of the Mommy-created child star. A bed wetter (like JonBenét), the baby sister is described by Skylar as a fey, manipulative toddler who is both aware of her power over adults and terrified of displeasing them. We watch as Skylar opens his father's secret drawers and finds the "toys" of a perverted lecher. We agonize with the boy-turned-self-tortured teen as he remembers, or tries not to, the night of the bizarre crime, and tries to figure out whether or not he witnessed or took part in scenes that, in the constant spotlight of the media, have taken on a life of their own, overshadowing the facts of the case.
Despite the disclaimers at the beginning of the book, no one will be able to read MY SISTER, MY LOVE without finding it giving legs to our own imagined scenarios about the Ramsey family, vividly recalling the sad, twisted saga of JonBenét's short life. Oates offers a pedophile as the presumed perpetrator and creates expiation by his suicide, but also postulates a family member as the "real" murderer. However, as sometimes happens, actual events have overtaken her fictional musings. We now know (as of July 9, 2008) that the Ramsey family is not guilty, based on DNA evidence, after being tried and often vilified in the court of public opinion for the past 10 years. As we avidly read this clever, carefully observed morality play, we must bear the truth in mind.
--- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott