Rise of Life on Earth - Hardcover

Oates, Joyce Carol

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811211711 ISBN 13: 9780811211710

Publisher: New Directions, 1991

Synopsis

Kathleen Hennessy, an attentive, overworked nurse's aide whose childhood had been shattered by abuse, divorce, and murder, hides an intense fury and an indifference to evil under a mask of sweetness and passivity

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The author draws the reader into the secret life of Kathleen Hennessy, a nurse's aide who, as both martyr and avenging angel, is a memorable portrait of one of the 'insulted and injured' of American society. Set in the underside of working-class Detroit of the '60s and '70s, this short, lyric novel sketches Kathleen's violent childhood-shattered by a broken home, child-beating, and murder-and follows her into her early adult years as a hospital health-care worker. Overworked, underpaid, and quietly overzealous, Kathleen falls in love with a young doctor, whose exploitation of her sets the course of the remainder of her life, in which her passivity masks a deep fury and secret resolve to take revenge.

About the Author:

Joyce Carol Oates is one of our most important and well known writers―and one of America’s foremost writers of the short story form. She is also a regular contributor of reviews and criticism for the New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. She also reads and lectures widely throughout the US, at universities and bookstores.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0811211711
• ISBN 13: 9780811211710
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 135