The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel (P.S.)

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Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1936, the Schwarts immigrate to a small town in upstate New York. Here the father—a former high school teacher—is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. When local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty give rise to an unthinkable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca heads out into America. Embarking upon an extraordinary odyssey of erotic risk and ingenious self-invention, she seeks renewal, redemption, and peace—on the road to a bittersweet and distinctly “American” triumph.

Customer Reviews: Read 48 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

"In animal life - June 21, 2007
22 out of 28 found this review helpful

... the weak are quickly disposed of. So you must hide your weakness, Rebecca. We must". This opening statement reflects a father's command to his daughter, setting the stage for her life. Rebecca, heroine of the story and daughter of immigrants, grows up in rural New York State during the Depression and World War II years. Her environment is characterized by abject poverty, discrimination and prejudice against those who are different. Denying their German-Jewish background is part of their tragedy. No German language is allowed in the house, but neither the mother nor the two older brothers manage the adopted language adequately. Violence, alcoholism and crime are part of daily life in the family and those living in their neighbourhood near the graveyard.

Oates skilfully evokes the oppressive atmosphere in which the gravedigger's family eke out a living, literally at the edge of human society. Increasingly, the young Rebecca withdraws into herself, drops out of school and tries to escape and to follow her brothers. A violent family drama that almost kills her and leaves her alone, in the end provides her with the opportunity for a much brighter future. However, is she capable of freeing herself from her background? Can changing her name, as she does a couple of times, change her life for the better? Hope, trust and happiness are emotions and experiences that are new to Rebecca and that will have to be learned. Her son, a child prodigy pianist from a marriage that was supposed to bring love and happiness, provides her with new energy and focus. But she has to escape again and, now completely unsettled, is moving from place to place until she finds an environment that offers hope and security for her son and herself. Will she stay? Is a new life possible and how will she be able to adjust to love and comfort? Can she trust enough to reveal the story of her past?

Oates' exquisite use of language to evoke characters and landscapes is well known. This talent comes again to the fore in The Gravedigger's Daughter. As the author depicts the ups and downs of Rebecca's emotional and physical life, her style is, at times, light and almost playful, but mostly, given the subject matter it reflects, it is intense and anguished. Those around Rebecca, who are supportive and caring, even loving, are painted as almost too good to be true. The Gravedigger's Daughter is a complex story that will keep the reader captivated to the end. Questions remain in the mind of the reader that the intriguing epilogue will not answer fully. It is not an easy read but worthwhile, in particular those interested in the social complexities in the pre- and post World War II American society. [Friederike Knabe]

4 out of 5 stars

A treatise on family identity April 1, 2008
22 out of 24 found this review helpful

The central character of Joyce Carol Oates's 36th novel changes her identity several times in the course of the epic, conveniently changing portions of her brutal past to transform into a more pure, acceptable lady. In her heart, she remains the Gravedigger's Daughter, the American-born daughter of WWII-era Jewish immigrants Jacob and Anna Schwart. Jacob was humiliated by his stateside job as the local cemetery caretaker, which afforded his family a life of squalor from which Anna slowly withdrew into catatonic madness. As the family spiraled violently out of control in the racist small-town atmosphere of 1940's upstate New York, Rebecca Schwart was orphaned as a young teenager.

Forced to reinvent herself as a charity case, a ward of the state, Rebecca begins to suppress the violent secrets of her past and emerge as a reliable, hard-working girl with no family, but also with no ghosts in her past and no need for anyone's pity. As Rebecca works her way up in society, earning legitimacy through marriage and motherhood, she hears the echoes of her father's harsh words to her. "In animal life the weak are quickly disposed of. So you must hide your weakness, Rebecca." The Gravedigger's Daughter is a novel about identity, and the lengths to which we will go to suppress our past to gain the acceptance of others. Rebecca ascends into a life of privilege, but not without looking over her shoulder for past demons.

Rebecca is guarded throughout the novel--to outsiders, to herself, and to the reader--proving herself an unreliable narrator, but the reader who is frustrated by this must remember that Rebecca is unreliable to herself, deluding herself to survive in an impossibly bleak world. The most compelling portions of this dense novel, which is told in three parts, center on the resilience of Rebecca in her quest for legitimacy and acceptance. The gravedigger's daughter first transforms her identity after the childhood loss of her family and later flees from an abusive, murderous husband to live under the assumed name of Hazel Jones. Unfortunately, Oates wrote her story not about these two metamorphoses, but in three portions, so the book opens with an overwrought, dreary exposition about the struggle of an immigrant family working in low-skilled jobs in a new country.

The plight of the immigrant family is close to Oates's heart--the author worked for over a decade on this novel to honor her family heritage. As an adult, Oates discovered that her own grandmother was Jewish (a secret that was buried in the 1890's to assimilate into the United States). Oates knew her grandmother, but no one in the family knew of her religious heritage or the last name she had abandoned upon arriving in the United States. In an interview with Edmund White, Oates revealed, "My grandmother had experiences very similar to Rebecca's experience with her father. In actual life the man who was my great-grandfather was a gravedigger. He did not kill his wife; he did injure her, though. And he did threaten his daughter, and he did commit suicide with a shotgun. That's all true." Oates reveals how exactly her grandmother's experience inspired the life of Rebecca Schwart/Hazel Jones by insisting, "[She] was unfailing. She never was the girl whose father had almost killed her and blew his head off with a shotgun... She was never the woman whose husband had abused her and then left her. She never would have wanted to play those cards."

The Gravedigger's Daughter is an expansive portrait of American life from one of our most agile living storytellers. Oates may lose a reader or two with her opening ruminations on poverty and family structure for inland immigrants, but those who read on will be rewarded with a challenging drama of fortune and identity in America. In the end, you may love or hate this book, but it is hard not to admire it.

5 out of 5 stars

A riveting read June 8, 2007
17 out of 21 found this review helpful

Joyce Carol Oates is quite a prolific author having penned 36 novels in her career so far [about a book a year] and its amazing that each of them is unique and makes for compelling reading [Middle Age, High Lonesome -my opinion anyway]. In her latest effort, we are introduced to a tortured soul in the form of female protagonist Rebecca Schwart. In the prologue, we learn that Rebecca narrowly misses being abducted by a stranger who calls her "Hazel Jones" as she returns from her factory job. As her story unfolds, we learn that Rebecca is the daughter of Holocaust survivors whose tortured memories of the past make it difficult for them to lead happy lives. Her father, a former schoolteacher, works as a cemetery caretaker, and later kills his wife and shoots himself [not before almost killing Rebecca herself]. Male brutality is a running theme throughout the novel, as Rebecca marries a beer salesman, Niles Tignor who turns out to be physically abusive. After she escapes being brutally beaten to death, Rebecca flees with her son Niley, and assumes the name Hazel Jones, and renames her son Zacharias. They lead a nomadic life, and Rebecca finds some contentment with an older man, Chet Gallagher who nurtures her sons prodigious musical talent, but never truly escapes her past. Yet Rebecca's story is a tale of self-discovery, of escaping a cycle of abuse, and many other things that define human relationships, and human lives. It is a long read, but the complexities of Rebecca's background, her relationships, and her own self make for compelling reading. Another masterpiece of human study by Oates.

5 out of 5 stars

Tremendous June 12, 2007
15 out of 19 found this review helpful

Oats does it again! How can I write a review without spoiling the ending? Like most of Oat's novels she deals with the evil, dark side of human nature that has a sound footing in reality and touches home. Here she deals with hidden identities and self loathing that became part of the European Jewish Survivor experience after the holocaust. Self-preservation turns into self-denial into self hatred into self destruction and multigenerational curses that never fully resolve themselves. The holocaust was more than genocide. The effects on those left behind and who got out in time, survivor guilt, is ugly and real. Oats may not be fun reading but she is a master of the ugly side of modernist and post-modernist America. She will be read and studied for generations to come.

1 out of 5 stars

Wonderful as kindling October 22, 2007
14 out of 35 found this review helpful

Yes, I have started about five fires in my fireplace using the pages of this book. I could continue past the 20th page, upon which I decided to read some of the reviews on Amazon. Ironically, it was after reading a 5-star review that I put the book away. The themes of male brutality and the number of times the reviewer used the word "tortured" was not what I had in mind for a good book. I'm off to my next book!

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