The New York Times Book Review - Emily Fox Gordon
Joyce Carol Oates is an ambivalent memoirist. In The Lost Landscape: A Writer's Coming of Age, she repeatedly expresses her doubts about first-person autobiographical writing. For one thing, she's deeply wary of the confessional voice. For another, she has little faith in the reliability of memory…In spite of these anti-memoiristic rumblings, The Lost Landscape remains indisputably a memoir. Like many these days, it's not continuous, and is composed almost entirely of previously published essays…The greater part of the book is arranged chronologically. Small, tightly focused pieces alternate with substantial narratives to make a satisfying whole, giving the reader a coherent account of Oates's childhood and adolescence…For all of Oates's doubts about the primacy of the particular and the private, The Lost Landscape is full of specifically memoiristic pleasures.
From the Publisher
Stunning…[a] varied, kaleidoscopic, and…insightful map to the formation of a writer who understands how deeply mysterious the ‘familiar’ really is.” — Publishers Weekly
“…a tender-hearted excavation of [Oates’] hardscrabble early life…in sharing with us the lost landscape of her childhood, she has ensured it will never be forgotten.” — O magazine
“Oates perfectly captures the unique confusion of childhood, brought on by the unsatisfying explanations of adults.” — Elle
“’The Lost Landscape’…offers a window into a highly original mind. While it is never a given that a writer’s personal story can illuminate her work, in Oates’ case, it very much does.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“[An] intriguing new memoir…Oates mines literary gold.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“This captivating account of the growth of a writer’s mind puts [Oates’] new collection of essays firmly in the tradition of similar autobiographical works by writers such as Goethe, Wordsworth, and Joyce.” — Philadelphia Inquirer
“[An] intimate yet sweeping memoir…” — The New Yorker
“…affecting...the book place[s] us intimately in the mind of Oates’ vulnerable self.” — Providence Journal
“A tender-hearted excavation of [Oates’] hardscrabble early life…in sharing with us the lost landscape of her childhood, she has ensured it will never be forgotten.” — O magazine
The New Yorker
[An] intimate yet sweeping memoir…
Philadelphia Inquirer
This captivating account of the growth of a writer’s mind puts [Oates’] new collection of essays firmly in the tradition of similar autobiographical works by writers such as Goethe, Wordsworth, and Joyce.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
’The Lost Landscape’…offers a window into a highly original mind. While it is never a given that a writer’s personal story can illuminate her work, in Oates’ case, it very much does.
Providence Journal
…affecting...the book place[s] us intimately in the mind of Oates’ vulnerable self.
Elle
Oates perfectly captures the unique confusion of childhood, brought on by the unsatisfying explanations of adults.
San Francisco Chronicle
[An] intriguing new memoir…Oates mines literary gold.
O magazine
A tender-hearted excavation of [Oates’] hardscrabble early life…in sharing with us the lost landscape of her childhood, she has ensured it will never be forgotten.
San Francisco Chronicle
[An] intriguing new memoir…Oates mines literary gold.
The New Yorker
[An] intimate yet sweeping memoir…
Kirkus Reviews
2015-06-04
Glimpses of the iconic writer's youth. Oates (Humanities/Princeton Univ.; Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories, 2014, etc.), the highly prolific author and winner of many prestigious literary awards, gathers 28 pieces, most revised from previous publications, into a tender, often moving evocation of the physical and emotional landscapes that have shaped her. Although she has published a volume of journals, an account of her grief after her husband's sudden death, and many personal essays, Oates portrays herself as a reluctant memoirist. She worries about "violating my own self" and "exposing my very heart," as well as writing "anything that disturbs, offends, or betrays any other person's privacy." Recalling a friend who committed suicide and another who was sexually abused, Oates felt compelled to change details, as well as to create "a quasi-fictitious character named ‘Joyce'—who is almost entirely an observer…more emotionally detached (and more naive) in the memoir than I had been in actual life." Nevertheless, she reveals some intimate details: a childhood plagued by shyness, self-doubt, and anxiety; recurrent insomnia; the mystery and burden of having an autistic sister; and feeling like an outsider at Syracuse University ("as a scholarship girl I was a spy in the house of mirth"). As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, she was "profoundly disillusioned" by her professors' stultifying approach to literary analysis. She fell in love and married, but her husband remains a shadowy figure, his memory too precious to share with readers. Oates identifies the roots of some works: a serial murder case inspired the much-anthologized "Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?" and her experience living in Detroit informed several novels. The circuitous, impressionistic narrative returns often to her parents, "extraordinary people morally," whom she portrays in loving detail. Though her past seems to her fragmentary and elusive, what she remembers—or imagines—is warmly, gently told.
