[.ca] I'll Take You There (ISBN 0060501189)

From Amazon.com:
In her bewitching 30th novel, I'll Take You There, Joyce Carol Oates returns again to neurotic female post-adolescence. The unnamed narrator attends an upstate New York university in the early 1960s. In those times of tightly prescribed femininity, she joins a sorority in a bald attempt to become part of the sisterhood of normalcy. It doesn't work. She reads philosophy, she works for a living, she's asexual, she's an orphan, she's a Jew: "I was a freak in the midst of their stunning, stampeding, blazing female normality." Booted from the sorority, she falls hard for a thirtyish black philosophy student who seems to her to live on a higher plane than the rest of humanity. In the final section, she is called west to the deathbed of someone she thought was lost to her forever. Oates brings together some of her strongest trademark qualities: She writes her character's life as though it were a fairy tale. She sells her material, bringing dramatic tension to the very first page: "They would claim I destroyed Mrs. Thayer.... Yet others would claim that Mrs. Thayer destroyed me." And she writes with tender care about the intellectual life of her young protagonist. Some find Oates's obsession with nascent womanhood claustrophobic, but in this heroine she finds a vein of integrity and intellectual probity peculiar to those who are not quite adult. Most writers treat college life as comedy or romance. Oates, on the other hand, seriously explores an age when we are most terribly ourselves. She seems to find something deeply human and pleasingly dramatic in this time wedged between childhood and adulthood. --Claire Dederer

terrible book from a terrible author:
simply awful. why would anyone read Oates? it's like she can't stop herself from spewing out garbage like this. for the love of god, Joyce, step away from the keyboard.

One of the worst books..:
I have read in a long time. Maybe I just don't get it but this book I couldn't get into. Too many quotes and philosophy. I destested the main character the WHOLE time. Def a book to not recommend. A true disappointment.

One of the best books I have ever read!:
This is the first book I have read of Joyce Carol Oates. Now, I want to read all of her books. Her language is so... beautiful. If you are a reader that likes "deep" books, you should definitely read this one. The story takes place in a University in upstate New York during the 60s. The narrator of the book is an 18-year-old girl, whose real name you never know through out the book, though she likes to call herself "Anellia" sometimes . There's three parts to the book. The first part is when she joins a sorority, full of rich, popular, pretty girls. But "Anellia" is poor and geeky, who looks like a 13-year-old even though she is 18. The second part of the book is when she falls in love with a black philosophy student, who is hesitant at first to let "Anellia", who is white, know and love him. The third part of the book, which I think is the best part of the book, is when she discovers that someone who she thought was dead is not. I loved this book. I think Joyce Carol Oates is gonna be my second favorite author.{John O'hara is my 1st.} It is great for adults, and teenagers who like adult books.{I am a teenager} It is the kind of book that you'll think about for a while after you finish reading it. But if you are a person who likes "trashy" books with lots of sex scenes and stuff, look somewhere else.

Joyce Carol Oates At The Top Of Her Form:
Without question "I'll Take You There" is among Joyce Carol Oates's finest novels. Here she returns to familiar autobiographical grounds, examining the college life and passions of her unnamed protagonist, named "Anellia" by her lover, in Syracuse, NY in the early 1960's. Set against the background of civil rights struggles in the South, Oates once more explores the theme of an interracial love affair between her protagonist and Vernor, a brilliant black philosophy student. She elegantly weaves their passion for 20th Century philosophy with the trials and tribulations of their love affair; an intense, private relationship which is seen as forbidden by fellow students and college administrators. Oates has always had an unerring eye for detail, but here she manages to convey it in prose that harkens back strongly to the lyricism of James Joyce. She excels in exploring the banal minutiae of campus sorority life as well as the love affair itself. One of the few books I have read recently that I found hard to put down.

Good, but not the best:
I'll admit, that when I first read this book, the first of Oates that I read, I was immediately drawn into the main character, and her neurotic world. After reading a few more of Oates' novels, I can see why it is not one of her major works. Therefore, I give this novel 5 stars for believable and interesting characterization, but 3 stars for accessibility and plot relevance, averaging 4 stars. Although this is good, I would recommend reading, "Foxfire," also by Oates, instead.