This book gets one star for the development of certain characters in the story (Iris's mother, Jinx Fairchild). However, this was one of the most boring books I have ever read. Iris Courtney a dry stick of a girl drifting through life in a cold industrial town...blah....blash....blah. I could not get the point of this novel. If you are a JCO fan and must read this book, save some money and check it out at the library.

The time is the decade between the mid-1950's and the mid-1960's, and the place is Oates's familiar setting, her native upstate New York. In some ways this never loud but hard-hitting book continues many of the threads common in a multitude of Oates' previous works (a young girl, bookish, intelligent, much like Oates herself was as a teen, from a crumbling home where alcoholism and gambling are the wedge cracking the solidity of daily life; struggling poor family dealt unfair circumstances living in a dying blue collar town; social discord flaring to violence) and yet in many other ways, this is virgin territory for America's greatest living writer.

This novel concerns Iris Courtney, a pretty, white, intellectual girl whose future success or failure is basically in her own hands because she cannot count on assistance from either her drunken, once-beautiful mother, or her gullible gambling-addict father. Her one possible ally seems to be an uncle, an affable, secretly-tormented photographer estranged from Iris' father, Duke, secretly in love with Iris' mother, Persia. It also is the story of a black man of roughly Iris' age, named Verlyn Fairchild, who lives in the same town at the same time. On the surface these two would seem to have nothing in common and yet their lives intersect completely by chance one night when Verlyn risks his own life to rescue Iris from a brutal attempted rape at the hands of a thuggish, perhaps retarded teenage bully, feared son of a migratory clan of mountain people who have settled in the factory town. This act of courage creates a bond between two teenagers from different avenues of life, and from that point on, though Iris and Verlyn are seldom in scenes together, the lives of these two characters are continually compared and contrasted, creating a study of the opportunities 1950's life opens--or does not open--depending on little more than the race of the person in question.

Iris and Verlyn at the time of their meeting come from roughly the same income levels, from the same broken homes, from the same school system, and were born the same year. But we watch as the tragedy of limited opportunity drags Verlyn into an inescapable existence of poverty, while Iris, through a few lucky breaks and hard work, rises from her beginnings and becomes closely tied to a family of wealthy art collectors called the Savage's. Verlyn's one hope is basketball, a sport at which he excels. His nickname is "Iceman" referring to his coolness on court when handling the ball. His prowess as a player on the school team momentarily earns him celebrity, high praise, and temporary esteem. But when an on-court accident wrecks Verlyn's future hopes of scholarships and college, it seems every door closes on him, even while Iris's fortunes have turned immeasurably brighter. In the end, Iris becomes engaged to the son of the Savage's and Verlyn takes the only way that is there for him out of his bleak hometown: the US Army during the beginnings of the Vietnam War. There is a tiny foreshadowing of Verlyn's fate in the military at about the 1/3 point of this novel, long before we learn of his enlistment, and it is there so quickly and at the time so innocuously stated that it might well be missed. Suffice it to say the future resolves itself as expected in the cases of Iris and Verlyn, and there is little justice in it.

I'd put this among Oates' top ten novels, which might not sound like a high ranking until one considers just how many novels this prolific woman has published. In other words, it's easily among her upper-third.

JCO was on a radio talk show promoting this book and I heard her read from the poem she got the title from. So there.

I read the book after hearing the interview, and I did enjoy it. It was not what I would call an easy read, but that's not from faulty writing.

I couldn't finish the book. Bad. And like the reviewer below I was disturbed that the title was taken from the Stephen Crane poem with no mention of him. The poem is below:

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter-bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

This book was ok. I bought it because the title was a direct quote from a stephen crane poem. Why no attribution anywhere to crane?
I guarantee less than 1% of Americans could attribute the quote. If you search the web now on "Because is is bitter.." you'll get Joyce Carol Oats 90% of the time. BOGUS. She robs Crane and gets away with it.