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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 33607003099739 | Adult Fiction | OATES | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
In this taut and fascinating novel, the bestselling, New York Times bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of The Sacrifice, The Accursed, and Lovely, Dark, Deep examines the mysteries of memory, personality, and identity and pierces the enigmatic force that drives human lives--love.
In 1965, neuroscientist Margot Sharpe meets the attractive, charismatic Elihu Hoopes--the "man without a shadow"--whose devastated memory, unable to store new experiences or to retrieve the old, will make him the most famous and most studied amnesiac in history. Over the course of the next thirty years, Margot herself becomes famous for her experiments with E. H.--and inadvertently falls in love with him, despite the ethical ambiguity of their affair, and though he remains forever elusive and mysterious to her, haunted by mysteries of the past.
The Man Without a Shadow tracks the intimate, illicit relationship between Margot and Eli, as scientist and subject embark upon an exploration of the labyrinthine mysteries of the human brain. Where does "memory" reside? Where is "love"? Is it possible to love an individual who cannot love you, who cannot "remember" you from one meeting to the next?
Made vivid by her exceptional eye for detail and her keen insight into the human psyche, The Man Without A Shadow is a unique story of forbidden love, a kind of secret, evolving marriage, depicted in Joyce Carol Oates's tight, impassioned prose. It is an uncanny, ambitious, and structurally complex novel that penetrates the mind and illuminates the heart.
Author Notes
Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16, 1938 in Lockport, New York. She received a bachelor's degree in English from Syracuse University and a master's degree in English from the University of Wisconsin.
She is the author of numerous novels and collections of short stories. Her works include We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, Bellefleur, You Must Remember This, Because It Is Bitter, Because It Is My Heart, Solstice, Marya : A Life, and Give Me Your Heart. She has received numerous awards including the National Book Award for Them, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Literature. She was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with her title Lovely, Dark, Deep. She also wrote a series of suspense novels under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith. In 2015, her novel The Accursed became listed as a bestseller on the iBooks chart.
She worked as a professor of English at the University of Windsor, before becoming the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University. She and her late husband Raymond J. Smith operated a small press and published a literary magazine, The Ontario Review.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A bizarre medical condition-anterograde amnesia-is the linchpin holding together Oates's latest novel, a profound and moving meditation on how memory shapes our personalities and, by extension, the emotions that we provoke in others. When neuroscientist Margot Sharpe first meets Elihu Hoopes in 1965 at a neuropsychology lab in Darven Park, Penn., he is a 37-year-old man whose brain has been devastated irreversibly by encephalitis. Although Eli (as everyone calls him) can remember incidents before his illness with great thoroughness, his short-term memories last no longer than 70 seconds. Over the next three decades of scientific study, Margot learns remarkable things about the neurological foundation of memory from Eli, who in his mind is eternally 37 years old. She also falls in love with him-or, at least, the man she thinks he is. Occasionally, Eli is prone to unpredictably violent outbursts that shock Margot, and in a typically edgy fashion, Oates suggests that, in addition to the memories that he can't retain, Eli has memories that he won't reveal. With her usual skill and panache, Oates writes as though she has known her characters all their lives. Agent: Warren Frazier, John Hawkins and Associates. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
Oates's latest novel is an unusual love story between a man with severe amnesia and the neurophysiologist who studies him over decades. Elihu (Eli) Hoopes suffers a brain injury that leaves him unable to retain any new memories longer than 70 seconds. Thus he is unable to remember the person he's currently having a conversation with, let alone someone he has met multiple times since the onset of his condition. Yet he retains earlier memories and is haunted by a traumatic incident from his childhood. Dr. Margot Sharpe begins as a junior scientist under the thrall of the arrogant and manipulative Milton Ferris, but over the years she becomes the principal investigator in a series of groundbreaking studies in human memory function. Meanwhile, her growing attachment to Eli increasingly crosses ethical boundaries. Verdict Oates's narrative style ingeniously reflects the subject matter. The prose is clinical, keeping us at a somewhat emotional distance, as befits a scientific study. Similarly, the virtual erasing of Eli's short-term memory on a constant basis means a lot of repetition. Nevertheless, the reader is drawn in as Margot weaves her way into Eli's subconscious, and the impossible love story is ultimately heartbreaking. Highly recommended.-Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.