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    Little Bird of Heaven: A Novel
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    Little Bird of Heaven: A Novel
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    Little Bird of Heaven: A Novel
    Ebook559 pages9 hours

    Little Bird of Heaven: A Novel

    By Joyce Carol Oates

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates is a riveting story of love violently lost and found in late 20th century America. In this novel, Oates returns to the Buffalo, New York, region to brilliantly explore the dangerous intersections of romance and eroticism, guilt and obsession, desire and murder. Little Bird of Heaven, a soaring work by the New York Times bestselling author and a nominee for the 2009 Man Booker Prize—one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards—is as powerful and unforgettable as Joyce Carol Oates’s previous acclaimed novels The Gravedigger’s Daughter and We Were the Mulvaneys.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 15, 2009
    ISBN9780061959691
    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 Little Bird of Heaven

    3.5/5

    147 ratings15 reviews

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    • 2/5
      SO BORING!
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed reading your book. I read enthusiastically and understood the story. ... If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star, just submit your story to hardy@novelstar.top or joye@novelstar.top
    • 1/5
      In one word, AWFUL. I only finished the book because I thought the mystery night be solved at the end. It wasn't really, the author introduced a completely new character on the last page. I think she was just as keen to finish the book as I was.
    • 3/5
      Oates has done better, but it's not a bad read. Good plot, less than likable main characters, and it dragged to a conclusion. Three-hundred pages would have sufficed (instead of 442). Quoting an old editor of mine, "Edit ruthlessly."
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this book, because, you know, it's JCO. Who doesn't like her? The answer to that one is, me, apparently. Apparently I do not care for JCO.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      I did not enjoy this book at all - it was a struggle to finish. Most of the characters were very unlikable and the story was just not that interesting.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      A woman is murdered in a small town in central New York. Her former lover is accused, then released. Her former husband is accused, then released. Her murderer was never found.The ex-lover's teenager daughter tells the story from her point of view. How her father lost his job, then her parents broke up. How her father became a drifter who would occassionally wander into her life, then back out. How her brother rejected their father, and how she eventually rejected her brother. And how her world collides with the son of the murdered woman.The the story is told again, from the perspective of the victim's teenage son. How his parents came to break up. How his mother left him with his alcoholic father. How he found his mother's dead body. How his life deteriorated, and how he came to save the life of his mother's ex-lover's teenage daughter.Then, years later, these now-adult children are brought together and told the real truth of how the murder happened, the murder that changed the paths of their lives.Original approach, well-crafted, yet another beautiful read from the master, Joyce Carol Oates.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This book was a wonder to me. A wonder that I enjoyed it so much, bearing in mind that the pivotal event is handed, pre-announced, to the reader. The rest of the book circles around this event, delivered mostly in two narratives that move in towards it, away from it and then meeting back up at the end. I gave Testimony by Anita Shreve a low score and that followed a similar format. Why then is Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates a more enjoyable read? I found the author’s style off-putting for the first few pages. This was the first of her books that I’ve read and the constant use of dashes for pauses and italics for emphasis nearly made me put it down. I’m glad that I didn’t. It soon became a book that I looked forward to picking up every chance I had. Krista Diehl’s first person narrative is very touching. She recalls events over the course of several years, admitting her own naivety and showing how her intuition developed into perception during that time. Her absolute, unwavering faith in and love for her father is something that any man could only hope for. That man is on a clear path to doom and Oates tells the reader on the first page that Eddy Diehl will die in a hail of police bullets. What is gripping is the emotional turmoil the characters endure as the Diehl family is ripped apart by infidelity and false accusation. Sections of narrative are introduced e.g. a section from Eddy Diehl’s perspective during his initial police interrogation, that give valuable insight into his state of mind and the mistakes he makes. Oates uses concentric story circles of two men, Eddy and Delray, hell-bent on self-destruction through their attraction to the ill-fated Zoe who ultimately betrays them both and leaves a poison legacy of suspicion. Outside of these two men run the stories of Eddie’s daughter, Krista, and Delray’s son, Aaron. Krista is described through her own thoughts and words. Aaron is described more in the physical sense initially. His dominant presence is tangible and Krista’s attraction to him seems terrible but logical. As Aaron becomes older, his persona turns into Krull and this character comes to life through his actions and reflections. As he, in effect, loses his father, the character becomes more sympathetic and he moves into a similar space as Krista. Both he and she have lost their fathers and Jacky DeLucca’s confession brings them together years later. This reunification is also telegraphed early on by Oates, giving credence to what otherwise might seem an improbable turn of events. I did have a problem with the Jacky DeLucca character. When Krista meets her for the first time, Jacky’s dialogue is very heavy and I felt like the story was being delivered through her mouth. The same with her confession at the end. She seemed too eloquent and I just wanted her to stop. It was obvious that the killer was one of Zoe’s murkier lovers and Jacky’s lengthy disclosure didn’t sound like a woman dying of liver cancer. That’s my only complaint. To end on a high point, this has to be the first book I’ve read that ends with a sex scene and well done it is too. The requiting of eighteen years of lust is a fitting climax and it’s bittersweet. I’ll definitely try more from this author.
    • 5/5
      Little Bird of Heaven is vintage Joyce Carol Oates, so much so, in fact, that fans of her writing will immediately recognize the novel’s setting and tone. Krista Diehl, the young girl whose father Eddie is suspected of the brutal murder of his mistress, is beginning to realize just how dangerous the world can be for a girl fast approaching sexual maturity. She is both repelled and fascinated by the boys and men with whom she is beginning to come into contact, and what her father is accused of having done leads her to the conclusion that men are dangerous beings. When her father one day emotionally grabs her by the wrist, her first thought is “Always you are astonished. Their size, their height. Their strength. That they could hurt you so easily without meaning to.”Zoe Kruller was somewhat of a minor celebrity in little Sparta, New York. She was the best thing that her bluegrass band had going for it and any performance of theirs at the local park was guaranteed to attract the attention of a large number of male admirers, men who found it difficult to resist Zoe’s charms. To Krista, however, Zoe was the woman who served her ice cream at the local dairy and always remembered her name. She was Krista’s friend. That she was also her father’s mistress and that he would be accused of her bloody murder would change Krista’s life forever.Also changed forever by Zoe’s murder would be her son Aaron, a boy whose own father is believed to be the most logical suspect in the murder if Eddie Diehl can prove that he is not the killer. Aaron, already on somewhat of a downward spiral of his own, is as certain that his father is not guilty of the crime as Krista is sure that her own father did not do it. Krista’s determination to find the truth about her father and his relationship with Zoe Kruller leads her to become as obsessed with Aaron Kruller as her father had been obsessed with the boy’s mother.Oates tells her story from two distinct points-of-view. The first half of the book is filtered through the eyes of Krista Diehl who is really too young to understand everything that she discovers about the murder. This part of the book focuses on the gradual disintegration of the Diehl family which results from everything that happens to them following the murder. Aaron Kruller narrates the second half of the book and, since he is older than Krista, he fills in some of the blanks of Krista’s version of the events before and after his mother’s murder. Inevitably, these two young people have so much in common that their paths cannot help but cross – in a way that neither of them could have imagined and from which each are lucky to come out whole.Little Bird of Paradise is a novel about self-discovery, pain, loss and how children so often have to pay for the sins of their parents. It is well written, as is almost always the case in a Joyce Carol Oates novel, but it is sometimes not easy to read because one feels, almost from the start, that its two narrators are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their fathers. This sense of impending doom will, however, keep readers turning the pages all the way to the end.Rated at: 5.0
    • 5/5
      Joyce Carol Oates is one of my favourite authors. She knows how to tell a great story and to develop characters that stay with me. This novel is dark, like most of her books, filled with both passion and violence. It explores the impact of being a "person of interest" in a murder investigation. When local celebrity, Zoe Kruller, is found brutally murdered, both her husband, Delray, and her married lover, Eddy Diehl are questioned by the police, but neither is charged. The murder remains unsolved, leaving both Delray and Eddy under some cloud of suspicion, with those in the community believing one or the other to be guilty. This affects both men and their families.The novel is told from the perspective of their children: Krista Diehl and Aaron Kruller, both of whom believe their father is innocent. Yet, both struggle with what they know of their parents behaviour: adultery, drug and alcohol problems. Their lives are linked by the murder and they come together in situations that are violent and/or passionate.One thing I especially like about this book, and this author, is that she knows how to end a story. There is both closure and, at the same time, room to wonder where life will now take Krista and Aaron.
    • 5/5
      There are two suspects in the murder of a young mother, her husband and her lover. But neither is ever arrested. The children, Aaron and Krista, are each sure the other’s father killed Zoe, and they are caught in a romantic, sexual and violent relationship as they struggle to deal with the consequences of their “great trouble” for themselves and their families. Oates is a master of relationships, and getting into the thoughts of her characters, showing them in their contradictions, their longings, and their failures. We may not love these characters but we can certainly empathize with them in their hurt and pain. The story is told in two parts, one by each of the children, and in the end they come together for a moment of desire and truth.
    • 3/5
      It surprised me how bored I became soon after starting this book; not at all the reaction I usually have with her writing.
    • 5/5
      I first discovered Joyce Carol Oates about ten years ago, when I read one of her short stories (“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” It’s a MUST read, by the way). I fell in love with her stories and novels because of the subject matter; Oates’s novels usually deal with obsession usually of the sexual kind (them is a perfect example of this). Oates’s novels are always dark and gritty, never easy reading but somehow satisfying nonetheless. Little Bird of Heaven is Oates at her best.The setting is a working-class town in upstate New York (typical Oates) in the 1980s. The story isn’t told linearly, but unfolds gradually over time. Some of the information we’re given is repeated, but each time the story is told from a different point of view. Krista Diehl is the daughter of Eddy Diehl, suspected of but never charged with the murder of a local singer named Zoe Kruller, with whom he was romantically involved. On the other side of the coin is Aaron Kruller, the woman’s son. Both he and Krista become obsessed with the murder of his mother—and, by extension, with each other, in a weird way. The first half of the book is told from Krista’s perspective, the second from Aaron’s.Part of the beauty of Oates’s novels is a common theme that runs throughout: obsession. Krista and Aaron are of course obsessed with Zoe Kruller’s murder; Eddy Diehl is obsessed with clearing his name and having his life returned to normal. Another thing I loved about this book is the not-knowing; the reader never really knows until the end for sure who killed Zoe Kruller, and that’s part of what kept me turning the pages. And yet Eddy Diehl certainly does keep acting guilty, doesn’t he? I certainly think he does feel guilt, in a way, but maybe he didn’t really do it?Another thing I love about Oates’s novels is her prose. I’m pretty sure that, if you plugged one of her sentences into Microsoft Word, it would flag that sentence as a run on; but Joce Carol Oates’s writing is pure poetry. She breaks the rules of writing in a way that only she can. Sure, she does use a fair bit of profanity, which can be a bit disturbing. It’s also exhausting at times to read, but well worth the effort of doing so. The only thing I didn’t really get was Aaron Kruller’s voice, especially as a child; I doubt that a boy of eleven, especially one with a bad reputation, would call his parents “Mommy” and “Daddy.” Also, Oates goes a little bit overboard on the Elvis comparisons (it seems that a lot of people in Sparta, New York look like him!) But other than that, I highly recommend this book.
    • 4/5
      An interesting read, although I found the part told by Krista quite slow moving but a lot of time was covered, so maybe the feel matched the time covered. The novel deals with families - like other novels by the author. It is quite thought-provoking once you finish the novel. The third part of the novel is especially thought-provoking.I would recommend it to others but not if you like action-packed fiction.
    • 4/5
      This is another wondeful novel from one of my favourite authors, Joyce Carol Oates. The story takes place in a small city in upstate New York. A young woman is brutally murdered and suspicion falls on two men, her husband and her longtime lover, a married man. Two families are torn apart as the mystery remains unresolved until the shocking conclusion. Achingly sad and a very good story.