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    A Fair Maiden: A Novel
    Unavailable
    A Fair Maiden: A Novel
    Unavailable
    A Fair Maiden: A Novel
    Ebook190 pages3 hours

    A Fair Maiden: A Novel

    By Joyce Carol Oates

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A teenager’s involvement with an older man is not what it appears in a tale of seduction by the New York Times bestselling author of We Were the Mulvaneys.
     
    Sixteen-year-old Katya Spivak is out for a walk on the gracious streets of Bayhead Harbor with her two summer babysitting charges when she’s approached by silver-haired, elegant Marcus Kidder. At first his interest in her seems harmless, even pleasant; like his name, a sort of gentle joke. His beautiful home, the children’s books he’s written, his classical music, the marvelous art in his study, his lavish presents to her—Mr. Kidder’s life couldn’t be more different from Katya’s drab working-class existence back home in South Jersey, or more enticing. But by degrees, almost imperceptibly, something changes, and posing for Mr. Kidder’s new painting isn’t the lighthearted endeavor it once was.
     
    What he wants from Katya is something she can’t comprehend. What Katya wants from him is something else again. As their relationship deepens, and twists, the question is who’s seducing whom? And to what end?
     
    From a National Book Award winner and #1 New York Times bestselling author, A Fair Maiden is “fresh, current and gripping . . . the insight shrewd and the violence vivid . . . [an] intense and thought-provoking work of fiction”(New Statesman).
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJan 16, 2010
    ISBN9780547394411
    Unavailable
    A Fair Maiden: A Novel
    Author

    Joyce Carol Oates

    Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

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    Reviews for A Fair Maiden

    3.5/5

    136 ratings21 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I was really creeped out by the subject, especially given the child's apparent enjoyment of the situation, but still, this is one of JCO's better-written novels with great point-of-view narration, so I have to give it 4****.
    • 4/5
      Thank god for JCO. She writes about what lurks around the edges; the shadows that dart away as soon as you turn your head to look. In this one, a young woman with a difficult home life gets a summer job babysitting for a rich family at the Jersey Shore. She is mesmerized by and jealous of the affluence she finds at the beach. When she meets a man who is the richest of the rich people there, that he's in his 60s doesn't matter to her. He is a sophisticated writer, artist and musician. He buys her an inappropriate gift almost immediately and things move forward from there. The subject matter is obviously repulsive. However, Oates kept me reading. She is insightful about America's class issues. Her characters may behave in appalling ways, but they feel real as they do so. There is real value in shining light into the shadows and many great books do just that. This book illuminates and humanizes the teenager and the old man even as we shudder at their relationship.
    • 3/5
      I am ambivalent about this book. On the one hand I read it in a day because I had to know what would happen, but for me it lacked a sense of urgency in the book itself. Still not sure how I feel about the ending either.
    • 3/5
      A quick read where the main character, Katya, is captured wonderfully with all the insecurities and indecisiveness of a teenage girl. Joyce Carol Oates leaves some ends open in this novel (Naomi, for instance), but only the most insistent reader would dwell on it.
    • 4/5
      Intriguing and repellent by turns, this deftly-structured novel lends unpleasant insights into modern America. Well-written, but not an entirely easy read.
    • 4/5
      Chilling, exciting, and extremely well written. Oates takes the reader into the story in medias res, and immediately introduces the main conflict in the novel, as represented by the relationship between 15-year old Katya and 68-year old Marcus Kidder. They have a chance meeting in the park in a coastal town on the shore of New Jersey, and strike up a friendship which soon grows into a sort of close bond. Their relationship is of an alien-like nature and contributes to the eerie feel of the novel. As their relationship continues to develop, I as reader get the feeling of being a witness to something unspeakable. Mr. Kidder obviously wants something from young Katya, but Oates carefully covers it up and reveals only small bits and peaces of his intentions as the narrative progresses. The narrative tension and suspense becomes almost unbearable to me as a reader, which is the brilliance of the novel. I was absolutely mesmerized by this book, and can't wait to read more of Oates's works.
    • 3/5
      Compelling but a bit icky, waiting for the nasty conclusion that seems inevitable. The young heroine is well drawn.
    • 4/5
      Three stars for story, 4 stars for writing. An odd tale.
    • 5/5
      Joyce Carol Oates delivers unforgettable characters wrapped in enchanting prose. Katya Spivek was seen running through my mind at inopportune moments when I was supposed to be thinking about other things. When I didn't like Katya Spivek it was because she reminded me of too much of myself. Her character was eerily real and the relationship she develops in the novel with Mr. Kidder is shocking and unlikely, but completely true. The idea of romance between an elderly man and a young girl is off-putting to say the least, yet Joyce Carol Oates makes it seem magical and somehow beautiful. My favourite author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to whom I am entirely devoted, wrote about this subject in "Memoirs of my melancholy whores" and managed to turn me off completely turning me off his works. (Never thought that could happen!) Yet when Joyce Carol Oates tackles this unseemly topic, I am enchanted. Amazing!This is my first Joyce Carol Oates book and I'm racing to find more.
    • 3/5
      I was disappointed. Oates could do better, using the same characters and issues.
    • 4/5
      Another beautiful novel by Ms Oates. She has this wonderful talent of lulling you in to a false sense of security as you read. Just when you think all is well........suddenly it most certainly isn't. Her prose is second to none and I loved this book and the way it distinguishes between youth and old age....together with differences in the social "classes".
    • 4/5
      At times, I felt this was truly "creepy" but at other times sad and insightful. Thankfully, it is a very short novel because I don't think the suspense could be drawn out any longer. The contrast between the lives of Katya and Kidder couldn't be greater; the push and pull between the two is effectively drawn especially at the beginning of their relationship. It must be a sign of good writing when the plot is about an old wealthy manipulative man "seducing" an naive young needy girl and then making the reader sympathetic to the man. In short, it's a fun, interesting, and very readable way to spend a hour or so.
    • 3/5
      Old guy wants his death to be with young girl. Reminds one of Lolita,but with much older man. Unusual novel. Weird old guy. Hard to believe in any kind of relationship of a 16 year old with a 70 year old.
    • 4/5
      Interesting story line. The author is highly creative and able to set mood well. I am sure some will not like the book because of the topic and sad characters. Seems like a modern day Poe.
    • 5/5
      Unforgettable characters I will think about for years to come.
    • 3/5
      It’s no wonder Joyce Carol Oates have never won any major award – she’s just too brilliantly readable. A Fair Maiden is subtitled A Novel of Dark Suspense and although it’s not really dark or that suspenseful, it is a brilliantly observed domestic page turner. Jenny Spivak’s a 16-year-old from the poorer area of New Jersey: her no-good dad ditched them years ago and her man-hungry mum is always in trouble. Jenny has made bad choices, but the summer in question she is earning some money by working as a live-in-nanny for rich trash in an elite area of New Jersey. It’s there she meets the 68-year-old Marcus Kidder - slim, suave, rich, and with a head of lovely white hair, Kidder is everything Katya has never known: cultured and fabulously wealthy, he is a writer, artist, and musician, so when he takes an interest in her, Katya thinks she knows what he wants. But Marcus makes her feel uniquely special so when he asks her to sit for him, she agrees. She accepts a gift of lingerie; she poses first in sexy undies and then in the nude and although when he kisses her she storms out, she longs to return, relishing that feeling of being loved and desired.
    • 5/5
      In "A Fair Maiden," Joyce Carol Oates returns to the theme for which she is perhaps best known: a very young woman is being preyed upon by an older man interested only in using her for his own, less than honorable, purposes. Female characters created by Oates live in a world in which they can never afford to let their guards slip because, just when they begin to feel comfortable about their surroundings, a man will step from the shadows to yank them back into the brutal nature of the real world they inhabit. Sixteen-year-old Katya Spivak is not exactly an innocent. Even before her father disappeared from her life, the Spivak family struggled to make it from one payday to the next. These days, her mother is much more interested in partying in Atlantic City than in holding a job. Katya may have come up the hard way but she resents those who look down on people like her and her family. Despite her feelings, she is spending the summer in an exclusive Jersey shore community as nanny to the children of a wealthy couple who seem determined to put as little cash in her pocket as possible. Marcus Kidder, 68, is pretty much the last of the Kidder family to spend time in the community but he, and his surname, are well known there. Kidder was born into wealth but built a minor reputation for himself over the years as an artist and writer/illustrator of several children's books. He begins a gentle courtship of Katya after spotting her on the street one morning with the two young children in her charge. Despite her suspicions about the old man, Katya is flattered enough by the attention of someone of his class and wealth that she visits his mansion for tea one afternoon. The horror of "A Fair Maiden" comes from the cunning approach Marcus Kidder uses to gain Katya's trust. Ever patient, never pushing too hard or too obviously, Kidder finally succeeds in getting Katya to pose for a portrait like the ones already hanging in the mansion. That, though, is just the beginning of what Kidder has in mind for his young friend and, almost despite herself, Katya at last finds herself posing nude. She tells herself, after all, that the cash Mr. Kidder pays her after each visit means that she is a professional model and this is what professional models do. But she is no match for a man like Marcus Kidder. As the book reaches its conclusion, it becomes clear that Katya's understanding of how someone like her is seen by a man as wealthy and spoiled as Marcus Kidder is not far from the mark. Kidder is used to buying what he wants with no regard for the cost or the consequences. The question is what, exactly, does he want from Katya Spivak - and what it will cost both of them. "A Fair Maiden" comes in at only 165 pages but, because of its subject matter and the intensity of Oates' prose, it is not an easy book to read. It is, however, vintage Joyce Carol Oates and few readers will see the ending coming before Ms. Oates is ready to reveal it to them. Rated at: 4.5

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book is standard Joyce Carol Oates. It's dark, it's gothic and it's deep.

      This book is the story of the lamentable 16 year old Katya and her paramour 68 year old Marcus. Katya is working as a nanny on the Jersey shore escaping her difficult home life. She meets Marcus an intriguingly handsome artist, writer and musician. They develop a rapport though that is where this book stops being straight forward. You constantly find yourself pitying Katya and suspecting the worst of Marcus but somehow it always seems his motives are pure. Katya having lived a lifetime before her summer at the shore thinks she knows exactly what she is doing and plays her old lover for a fool. Things unravel into abuse when Marcus reveals his true motives in befriending young Katya.


      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      A strange story by an author who has made thousands of fans by writing about strange things. Katya Spivek, 16, is from a low class family. She is spending the summer in a high class beach enclave, working as a live-in nanny for a rich couple. Her employers seem to regard Katya as a possession -albeit a disposable one. One day, window shopping on the way to taking the children to the park, she meets Marcus Kidder, a long time resident who considers himself far above the new people like Katya’s employers in both money and class. Indeed, the entire town considers him to be such. He and Katya are at the opposite ends of the social spectrum, yet he picks her to befriend.Katya doesn’t know what to make of him- stately gentleman? Old perve after a nubile teenager? He seems innocent enough, charming the three year old, having them to tea. But when he gives Katya an inappropriate gift (red silk underwear), she decides to never go back. Then her drunken mother calls, saying she owes someone bad $300, that she has no one to help her but Katya, and she must send her the money immediately or bad things will happen to her. Turned down by her employers, with no one else to turn to, Katya must borrow from Kidder, putting her in his debt. Already almost powerless by virtue of her social class, now she is completely powerless in this relationship. Things go completely out of her control, spiraling down into a series of dark events. A sense of foreboding fills the entire story. Katya is isolated, not just in the summer town where she knows no one, but also at home. Her father is long gone, her mother an alcoholic gambler, her relatives abusive and violent. Katya stands apart from them because of her love of books and her ambition of going to college. She fits no where. You know all along that bad things will happen to her, that there is no way out for her. She’s young, female and poor.
    • 4/5
      This is a modern folk tale, not in the sense of a fairy story with magical creatures, but in the sense of a piece of legend, something that might start, “In a kingdom by the sea dwelt a Fair Maiden. And the King of this kingdom was agèd and yearning…”…which, indeed, the legend Oates has written within the larger story does. Katya is a pretty, 16 year old, world-wise nanny in Bayhead Harbor, New Jersey. Marcus Kidder is an aging, wealthy member of a prominent family in that town who contrives to make her acquaintance. From this meeting a story about seduction of innocence emerges, yet one whose course manages to surprise and disconcert the reader. Like the best of this genre, it draws the reader into the insecurities and ambiguities of Katya’s mind as she struggles against the trap she sees coming. The slowly-building disquiet fascinated me and this became a “single sitting” book.
    • 4/5
      Joyce Carol Oates gives us another creepy yet riveting short novel centered on the irresistible urgings of the adolescent girl. Katya is a summer nanny in a seaside resort. Nannying is fine, but relatively boring, for the budding young woman so when mysterious, artistic and rich Mr. Kidder shows an increasingly compulsive interest in her she cannot resist his charms, nor his money. Katya comes to the shore from a broken white trash home life, replete with drug addled violent, ex-con, “cousin”/boyfriend – Roy. In her confused adolescence, being pulled by the admiration of men, in this case a creepy dichotomy between the hyped up red-neck Roy, and the suave mealy-mouthed Marcus Kidder, Katya seems to make all the wrong choices. Katya satisfies a need for each man, ostensibly sexual, but in the end it is each to their own violence. All the pieces fall into place bringing the story to a confluence of events with an unexpected and twisty ending. Katya will be scarred for life, even if her earlier home life hadn’t already achieved this. The story leaves one with the lingering bad taste of a morality born of a - beware the motives and driving forces behind self-serving men! - mentality.