Original Language: English
TÃtutulu Original: A Fair Maiden
Translation (to Catalan): Josep Franco
Year of publication: 2010
Valoración: Alright
Joyce Carol Oates never disappoints. Despite how prolific it is, their fictions are always interesting and remarkable. Even those who, like A beautiful maidenThey are not up to their best jobs.
What a restless, twisted and sad novel, this A beautiful maiden. He leaves one, after returning his last page, with a lump in his throat, and also with the feeling of having read something unfortunately real and authentic.
Follow the steps of Katya, a sixteen -year -old girl from an unstructured family who is making a babysitter for a family rich in a coastal town. There he meets Marcus, an elegant and wealthy old man who seems to have fallen in love with her. Initially, Katya feels something violent about the situation. However, his eagerness to get money from his worshiper and his almost pathological need to be impelled to frequent Marcus. There are even times when he wonders if she herself houses feelings for that older man than her grandfather could easily be.
I really liked how Oates portrays the main characters. Even those who barely participate in history are well delimited. Likewise, everyone is extremely credible, and their defects, which are neither few nor small, do not make them unpleasant in the eyes of the reader. On the contrary: there is something tragic in, for example, Marcus’s catheterism, or in that need for Katya for feeling dear.
Maybe he would reproach him A beautiful maiden that her style is, compared to that of other works by the author, merely functional. Also that its extension is exaggerated. I understand that the characterizations of the protagonists, the subtleties of their way of acting and the obliqueness of their dynamics, more important than the action itself, require many pages to establish themselves convincingly and organically evolve. However, I think Oates could have better condensed the argument of this story without giving up any of those key ingredients that he managed to dispose of the role.
Finally, I would only want to emphasize that the maturity that exudes A beautiful maiden It is very refreshing. Few authors would have achieved, in a balanced and convincing way as oates, address taboo issues such as pedophilia, manipulation of a minor, the sexualization of women and darkness that underlies young people. And everything without demonizing Marcus (although showing him as the disgusting explode who is, of course) and successfully victimizing Katya. Everything, in short, allowing the reader to always serve his own conclusions.
Source: https://unlibroaldia.blogspot.com/2025/05/joyce-carol-oates-una-hermosa-doncella.html
