Mudwoman. Joyce Carol Oates - Softcover

Joyce Carol Oates

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007481810 ISBN 13: 9780007481811

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2012

Synopsis

Paperback. Pub Date :2012-08-16 Pages: 448 Language: English Publisher: HarperCollins UK A haunting new novel from Joyce Carol Oates.Mudgirl is a child abandoned by her mother in the silty flats of the Black Snake River.Cast aside. Mudgirl survives by an accident of fate - or destiny.Only when she is adopted by a Quaker family does she begin to suppress those painful memories.Meredith 'MR' Neukirchen is the first woman president of a prestigious Ivy League university whose commitment to her career and moral fervor are all-consuming.But with an emergent political crisis and a prolonged secret love affair. MRhas to confront challenges to her professional leadership which test her in ways she could not have expected.The fierce idealism and intelligence that delivered her from a more conventional life in her hometown now threaten to undo her.When she makes a trip upstate. MRNeuk...

About this title

From the Back Cover:

A riveting novel that explores the high price of successin the life of one woman, and her hold upon her self-identityin the face of personal and professional demons,from Joyce Carol Oates, author of the New York Timesbestseller A Widow's Story.

Mudgirl is a child abandoned by her mother in the silty flatsof the Black Snake River. Cast aside, Mudgirl survives byan accident of fate—or destiny. Meredith "M.R." Neukirchenis the first woman president of an Ivy League university, butshe is confronted with challenges to her leadership which testher in ways she could not have anticipated. The fierce idealismand intelligence that delivered her from a more conventionallife in her upstate New York hometown now threaten to undoher. A reckless trip upstate will thrust M.R. into an unexpectedpsychic collision with Mudgirl and the life M.R. believes shehas left behind. A powerful exploration of the enduring claimsof the past, Mudwoman explores the tension between childhoodand adulthood, the real and the imagined, and the "public" and"private" in the life of a highly complex contemporary woman.

About the Author:

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Her books include 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. In 2003 she received the Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature, and in 2006 she received the Chicago Tribune Lifetime Achievement Award. Her recent work of non-fiction on grief and bereavement, A Widow's Story was a critically-acclaimed success.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0007481810
• ISBN 13: 9780007481811
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 428