I'll Take You There is an unflinching view of the life of an obsessive college student describing her run-in with sorority life and her compulsive love for a black philosophy graduate student. As usual for Oates, this book is filled with remarkable prose that is piercing and haunting. My biggest complaint is the cover, which makes this book look like Chick Lit. It's not. Recommended.

I'LL TAKE YOU THERE by Joyce Carol Oates
September 25, 2007


Amazon Rating: 5/5 stars


I'LL TAKE YOU THERE by Joyce Carol Oates focuses on a young woman (who is never named but calls herself Anellia) who is neurotic, obsessive compulsive, and has a hard time fitting in anywhere. She is 18 at the start of the story and has just joined a sorority. The reader is going to wonder why in the world she even thought she could fit in after reading this first section of the story. She continuously sabotages herself, behaves in such a way that the other girls abhor her, and the one woman in the sorority, the house mother, who sees some true character in the girl and almost likes her, she alienates. You know there is something wrong with this girl, whether it was in-born or because of her environment while growing up. And her memory flashbacks tell us that story, a family background in which she grew up in a household filled with brothers and a father who she thinks hated her and blamed her for the death of their mother.

In the second section of the book, Anellia no longer is in the sorority (having been kicked out) and has found a man that she's become intrigued with, a black student that attends the same philosophy class that she does. He is brash and oftentimes comes close to angering the professor, and she soon begins to stalk him. They get into an odd relationship, an almost love-hate relationship as she becomes obsessed with him, most likely because he is black, during a time where racially mixed relationships were not accepted.

And finally in the third section, she receives a call regarding a man that had a big impact on her life and is told he is dying, someone that had disappeared years ago and was thought to be dead. This third section ties everything together, and in some ways gives closure to the main character as she comes to terms with her childhood.

I'LL TAKE YOU THERE is an intense character-driven story of a woman that is unlikable and all around not a very pleasant person to be with. But for those who enjoy character driven books may appreciate I'LL TAKE YOU THERE... Or maybe not. But I am giving this book 5 stars for the very detailed-oriented character descriptions that easily allows the reader to get inside the head of this unloved and unlikable woman.

Joyce Carol Oates grew up poor on a farm in Upstate New York. Most of her books invoke this background and all its bleakness. Perhaps her 2002 novel "I'll Take You There" is based on her life. I don't know. It sure does seem real. But that might just be because it is written in the first person, and in a voice I could relate to. It felt like the narrator was sitting in front of me and telling me her story.

There are three main parts of this story about this woman who is never named. Often, she mentions that people call her by the wrong name or refuse to call her by her name. When she falls in love she makes up a name for her lover to call her. And then, when I turned the last page I realized that the author had no intention of ever giving the reader her name. It seems like a silly plot device, but it works.

The first part of the book involves our narrator's life at Syracuse University in 1963. She belongs to a sorority, one that is old and respected and is peopled by brainless young women trying to find a husband before graduation. Our narrator doesn't fit in; in fact she was invited to join simply because she is smart and could help the other girls with their papers. Painstakingly, she describes the details of living in that sorority house. She's deeply unhappy, but, in fact she's been unhappy all her life. Her mother died when she was a baby and she has been raised on a farm by her cold Germanic grandparents. She has three older brothers who ignore or hate her and somehow blame her for their mother's death. Her father is mostly absent but he shows up once in a while in between his construction jobs. He drinks and smokes and pays little attention to her except for a few brief moments when she is valedictorian of her high school graduating class.

She describes life in the sorority house in excruciatingly painful detail and captures the time and the place perfectly. She is an outsider. It is all horrible.

The next section of the book involves her romance with a highly intelligent black grad student studying philosophy during the beginnings of the civil rights movement. He is a difficult person to be in love with because he has his own demons and she is usually unhappy.

The last section of the book deals with her dying father.

This is a coming of age story. It is sad. It is upsetting. It is real. It is so well written I couldn't put it down. My life has been very different from that of the woman in the story but yet I related completely. Joyce Carol Oates is just such a good writer.

I highly recommend this book although I know it is not for everybody. But for Joyce Carol Oates fans, it's a "must".

I haven't read any of her other work. I'm sure the writing is just as beautiful and sensitive as it was in this one (and it was), but how could anyone take such gifts and use them to do things like describe first love as a disease? I felt utterly horrible the whole time I was reading this. It was depressing, without any sort of emotional reward.

The character names sounded fake.

I'm not saying the book was bad (the star ratings, I noticed, have to do with how much I enjoyed the book), but it takes a certain type of reader to deal with protracted melancholy. There's a certain tension that comes from a character seeing herself in a situation which she finds uncomfortable from day one, and then just staying in it until it ends horribly. This is just fair warning to people who like to actively solve problems.

You can hear the despiration in this womans story. The want and the need to be accepted, cared for, and loved. But what I liked most about this book was the woman's strength. She refused to let that stop her from fighting for that love. Although she was an outcast who was cast out she fought her way in.