I've recently read a couple of other Oates books including a collection of her short stories and I have pretty much enjoyed/appreciated everything I have read by her. I was really impressed with her novelization of Marilyn Monroe's life in Blonde which I read last year. I have several others of her novels on my shelves and decided randomly to read this one, The Tattooed Girl.
It tells the story of a writer named Joshua Seigl who is part Jewish and who wrote a novel called The Shadows about the Holocaust which was avoided by Seigl's grandfather. Joshua is in failing health with a neurological problem and at the same time is busy writing essays and translating Virgil's Aeneid and has fallen way behind on addressing his correspondence and his stacks of partially finished works. So he decides he needs an assistant to help him. After turning down some well-qualified candidates, he meets by chance a young woman working in a bookstore that he decides to hire. She is very meek and soft-spoken and she is also covered with some very unseemly tattoos including one on her face that could be a moth or Joshua thinks it may just be a birthmark. The young woman named Alma has an abusive past as well as an abusive boyfriend who works as a waiter in a restaurant frequented by Seigl. As Alma gets to know Seigl, she seems to be a good assistant but deep down, she is anti-Semitic and has a hatred for him. She was raised in rural Pennsylvania where the coal mines have been constantly burning and were owned (as she was told) by Jew bankers. And then her boyfriend also despises the Jews and tells her that the Holocaust was a hoax.
This novel could probably be considered a suspense story with Alma thinking of ways she can do away with Seigl. But at its core, it is a novel based on anti-Semitism and the hatred of people based on ignorance. As it progresses, the story becomes more intense with Seigl struggling with his illness and Alma pretending to admire him and do as he wishes. But the story twists and the ending was a real shocker! I'll be looking forward to reading more of Oates and I would definitely recommend this one.
It tells the story of a writer named Joshua Seigl who is part Jewish and who wrote a novel called The Shadows about the Holocaust which was avoided by Seigl's grandfather. Joshua is in failing health with a neurological problem and at the same time is busy writing essays and translating Virgil's Aeneid and has fallen way behind on addressing his correspondence and his stacks of partially finished works. So he decides he needs an assistant to help him. After turning down some well-qualified candidates, he meets by chance a young woman working in a bookstore that he decides to hire. She is very meek and soft-spoken and she is also covered with some very unseemly tattoos including one on her face that could be a moth or Joshua thinks it may just be a birthmark. The young woman named Alma has an abusive past as well as an abusive boyfriend who works as a waiter in a restaurant frequented by Seigl. As Alma gets to know Seigl, she seems to be a good assistant but deep down, she is anti-Semitic and has a hatred for him. She was raised in rural Pennsylvania where the coal mines have been constantly burning and were owned (as she was told) by Jew bankers. And then her boyfriend also despises the Jews and tells her that the Holocaust was a hoax.
This novel could probably be considered a suspense story with Alma thinking of ways she can do away with Seigl. But at its core, it is a novel based on anti-Semitism and the hatred of people based on ignorance. As it progresses, the story becomes more intense with Seigl struggling with his illness and Alma pretending to admire him and do as he wishes. But the story twists and the ending was a real shocker! I'll be looking forward to reading more of Oates and I would definitely recommend this one.
