Joyce Carol Oates’ Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars, tells the story of the McClaren family, whose patriarch “Whitey,” dies following an attack by two police officers after he attempts to defend a dark-skinned man being hassled by the officers. Thereafter, his widow Jessalyn and five grown children try to adapt to their new lives, and to each other, without the pillar-of-the-community Whitey as the family’s figurehead.

In revealing her characters, Oates has a tendency to write every thought, or fragment of thought, that she imagines passes through their minds. So while the plot is not expansive, the resulting story is rich in character development, following each member of the McClaren clan as they navigate their grief, often in unhealthy ways. The book is long at 800 pages, but I believe readers become fans of Oates’ work because of her ability to build complex, fully-formed, often mercurial characters that lend to the richness to her stories. Those fans will not be disappointed with this effort.

I received an ARC of this novel from HarperCollins and NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion, and I thank them.

It has been a while since I have read a book by Joyce Carol Oats. I was caught off guard by the style of her writing so stark and compassionate at the same time.

This story is an American tragedy. When a parent dies each family member deals with the loss and grief in different ways, in ways that will divide them.. Will they ever find their way back?

Thank you very much NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this brilliant book! There are so many issues presented in this book, it would be difficult to adequately list all of them. I feel like I want to re-examine and discuss each and every chapter with someone! The drawn out characters were certainly not always likable, and some were in fact despicable, but each one was absolutely fascinating. The contemporary American family in this story (mother, father, five grown children) portrayed the many unexpected ways we all can react to loss and grief,
Issues of class, racism, entitlement, homophobia, psychological trauma and human decency are explored deftly through the eyes of this white privileged family in overt and subtle ways. I found it to be moving and astonishingly timely during this time of attention to Black Lives Matter.
At 804 pages, this is a quite lengthy and intensely emotional read but I was completely engaged & found it to be a page-turner.
The ruthless examination of the thoughts and actions of these characters and the excellent storytelling are uniquely JCO.

I love Joyce Carol Oates’ writing and this book does not disappoint. I enjoyed the slow read as the characters kept developing over time. I could have read this book forever- such interesting characters - and when one character changes but the others don’t, the drama begins. Great story.

John Earle “Whitey” McClaren is an influential citizen and family patriarch in Hammond, New York. Whitey stops his car along the highway when he sees police officers mistreating a dark-skinned young man. Whitey's good samaritan instincts get him a thorough beating that ultimately brings on a stroke. Whitey's family of five grown children and his beloved wife, Jessalyn, rush to his bedside, but just as it appears he will survive his injuries and the stroke, he dies from a staph infection.

The opening passages of this novel shocked me as I am sure it did most readers. Here we are in the throes of a national tragedy of yet another black man killed by police, and JCO has already prepared a book to tell us how a family reacts to the loss of a man they loved and respected. Jessalyn's journey through grief is gruesome. She begins to fade away, tremendous weight loss and hair that suddenly turns gray. Everyone worries about Jessalyn, but she wants to be left alone.

The oldest son, Thom, sees, from the beginning, that Whitey has suffered physical attacks that do not correspond to a stroke. He takes photos of his father in the hospital, resolving to find out what happened on the highway that afternoon. Thom's obsession is to find the facts and get justice for his father.

Beverly, the oldest daughter, tries to be helpful to her mother but she is more annoying and needy, and her mother and siblings wish that she would stop crying and go back to her own life that may be in a shambles. Lorene, a young principal at a local high school, has difficulty coping but does not seek help. Sofia, a lab assistant, is lonely and trying to decide what to do with her life. Virgil, the youngest son, continues to fade in and out of the family's lives. According to Jessalyn, he is a gentle soul, and he is the only one she wants to see and have at home with her.

JOA's 800-page novel thoroughly explores grief and growing up to be decent adults. I found myself worrying about Jessalyn throughout the entire story. Her profound grief process is written with clarity and insight, as we would expect from Oates. She has written before about the loss of her husband. I felt that profound understanding of grief in this character's experience.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC of this new novel.

"Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars." is a great novel. Always been a fan of Oates's work. I'll definitely recommend this one.

There is so much to say about this book. As a former English major, I just want to dissect and analyze the whole thing, but I'll try to keep this short. I can summarize right now, though, to say that I think this is an important contemporary book, especially for right now, even as it was so emotionally difficult to get through.

On the surface, it's a book about what happens to a family when its patriarch (Whitey) dies suddenly after a stroke. How his five children cope (not very well for the most part,) how his widow (Jessalyn) copes, (almost like she herself has died and wishing that she had.) And in that sense, it's a sad book because Whitey was such a huge presence in each of their lives, and how is it that one person like that can just disappear and cease to exist outside of their loved ones' minds and memories.

On another level it is about extreme racism. Whitey being murdered by two white police officers when he tries to save an Indian man who they had mistaken for a Black man. But even with this information, Jessalyn is especially quiet about this, knowing that one white man's death -- when so many Black men have been victimized in the same way -- was not something to put out there.

It was also about the quieter racism (and classism and sexism) in our society, from a close friend of the family telling horribly offense jokes (which Jessalyn stands up to him for, even as her own children don't understand her disgust,) the comments about Jesslayn and Hugo (since one of his parents was from Puerto Rico,) and everyone with brown skin being lumped into "the other."

I found that Oates did a good job making her point. The jokes and the comments made me, the reader, uncomfortable, but I think this was her point. We should be uncomfortable when we hear those comments. We should speak up and not let other people get away with not only making those comments but even thinking that those beliefs are acceptable in the first place.

Finally, I liked how Oates incorporated Walt Whitman's poem "A Clear Midnight" in the story. The idea of a soul walking alone at midnight in a wordless state, thinking of these four things that make up the title. So often, it was difficult to tell when a character -- especially Jessalyn -- was actually speaking or just thinking of saying something in her head. She often seemed wordless externally even when she was bursting with words not coming out. And, while night, sleep, and death all have certain connotations, the stars leave a hopeful note at the end -- stars are eternal and lasting and will be there even after we are gone. Life continues on, which is how I think we leave Jessalyn.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this arc. It has not influenced my opinion.

If there is ever a time for this book, its now. This thousand-page book has race relations at its heart. There’s so much to relate to the George Floyd death. It is the story of a New York state family, but its also the story of America. It lays bare police racism. I was not comfortable reading it, but I’m glad I did.

This book is not for the faint of heart. 800 pages! I thought I would never finish. I powered through the last few pages.

Thank you to Ecco books for the copy for my honest review!

Synopsis: Former town mayor, John McClaren aka “Whitey” lives in Hammond, NY with his family. He sees an indian man being hassled by police on the side of the highway. He wants to do the right thing and pulls over to tell the cops to knock it off. What ensues is police negligence and brutality against two unarmed, innocent men. Whitey’s family is then dealt with the aftermath including a heartbreaking tragedy and what it does to the psyche.

My Review:⭐️⭐⭐ / 5 stars

So wonderfully written and extremely, meticulously detailed. The family goes through so much and you ache for them and what happened. Sibling squabbles are expected. However this book deals with so many different aspects of modern society including racism, police corruption, grief, class warfare, and basically everything going on today. Whitey’s widow just breaks my heart. Her inner turmoil of losing herself, finding ways to be her again after being wife/mother, and healing from losing her husband. Was the book worth 800 pages? No, I don’t think so. I felt we were stuck in the same scene for so long. The book FELT like 800 pages. There was not any portion where you feel you are just breezing by. It is heavy. You feel it resonates with what is going on in the world here. But I think this easily could have been 400 pages and been equally powerful. However, if you have the time to spare, definitely check it out.

How ironic that the first chapter of Oates' latest novel is about police brutality. A timely subject for our country--one that needs to be discussed and solutions found. I am disappointed therefore that Oates doesn't use this opportunity to fully address these issues after beginning her novel with that dramatic scene, but instead, writes a rather commonplace story about yet another wealthy white American family that begins to unravel after the death of the patriarch.

There are five adult children in the McLaren family and the story explores each child's relationship with their parents and each other. Oates' skill at creating characters is impressive--however, these are not very likable people. How awful that the husband is called 'Whitey', that nickname given to him after his hair turned white at a young age. Wouldn't you have refused to let people call you that?

The most interesting character to me is the mother Jessalyn, who went through her married life being coddled by her husband, treated like a child, not his equal when making important decisions. Jessalyn continues to live by herself in the huge, historic eight-bedroom family home. Its size is a bit of an embarrassment but how can it be sold if part of Whitey still remains there if anywhere, where she still hears his voice advising her on life.

I was hoping she'd rise up out of her overwhelming grief and take the opportunity to become a fully independent woman for once. But no, she meets a new man and, like a chameleon, begins changing to fit his lifestyle, values and opinions. Unfortunately, I've known several women who changed just like that.

Okay, so you are probably wondering why I've given this novel four stars if I have so many criticisms. The gesture is a bow to the writer's impressive skills. I have to say here though that her habit of using parentheses, when the qualifying word or phrase could have stood on its own, drove me a little bit crazy after awhile. Why? Why? Why?

I received an arc of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinions. Many thanks for the opportunity.

If ever there was bad timing for a book's release, it is the release date of Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. by Joyce Carol Oates. With its discussion of police brutality and bigotry, one would think it is a perfect time to publish the book. However, the police brutality, in this case, occurs against a wealthy, white family patriarch, which feels more like a declaration of "All Lives Matter" rather than a timely story that contributes to the fight against racist police violence.

Also, the tragedy that befalls this larger-than-life patriarch is only the impetus for the rest of the story, which is, in fact, more about the dissolution of the family at the father's death. Granted, the scene of his beating is horrible. It is rare for a scene of violence to bother me in a story, but I had a very difficult time pushing through that scene, which occurs within the first few chapters. I almost opted to mark it as a DNF because the scene was so uncomfortable. However, it is a brief flash in an over-long story, seen and then passed over for his death and the aftermath.

The rest of the novel follows the five children and wife of the patriarch as they each struggle to cope with his passing and his impact on their lives. We quickly find that three of the children are horrible human beings. Selfish, angry, racist, and wholly absorbed in maintaining the status quo, you find those scenes that focus on them to be just as uncomfortable as the police beating. They hide behind their white privilege and ability to donate money to worthy causes to justify their racism and abhor anyone who may actually comingle with someone of another skin color, including their mother.

If that were not bad enough, the scenes that focus on the widow and her grief drag on interminably. I read the novel for over an hour one night and still did not get through that first rush of grief the widow experiences. At some point, you no longer care about her suffering and her utter lack of interest in life. As callous as it sounds, you just want the scene to end so that the story would move forward.

In the background of all this is the fact that the family files a lawsuit against the local police department who caused their father's death. It truly is in the background of the novel, mentioned only as a point of the eldest's anger and obsession. Here is another example of where the story's release may not be the most timely. The McClaren family is wealthy. They can afford to seek legal justice for their father, but they are the exception. Ms. Oates discusses the expense associated with such lawsuits and how they can last for years. There are very few families who can afford to take on such cases and pointing out this fact seems rather tactless.

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. is too much of everything. It is too long. Ms. Oates drags out certain scenes, like the widow's grief and battle to simply survive after her husband's death so that they feel never-ending. Three of the siblings are too selfish. The family exhibits too much bigotry and hatred towards those who are not among the family's class. Ms. Oates tries to soften this through various love interests and a burgeoning interest in social justice within the widow, but it does not feel enough. No one calls the three siblings on their white privilege. The family receives closure in their lawsuit, again something that just does not happen in real life. The entire story made me feel uncomfortable, and not because it forced me to look at my own ignorance regarding racism. I don't feel that the story contributes anything to the Black Lives Matter movement. In fact, as I previously said, it feels more like a statement that white people can suffer at the hands of the police as well, which is the epitome of those who declare "All Lives Matter." I finished Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. rather disgusted with the family, the story in general, and the publisher for releasing the novel. I know Ms. Oates is a literary darling, but this is simply the wrong story for the current situation within the United States right now.

<I>Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy in return for an honest review.</I>

I am glad to see that a lot of other people seemed to enjoy this novel, but I really didn't.

I am going to talk about one thing only in this review, because it was so bad it made paying attention to anything else in the book virtually impossible.

The book is full of sentence fragments mixed in with half-to-full page sentences that had me wanting to tell the narrator to take a breath. Oates dropped in periods and exclamation points like she was getting paid based on how many she used. You do. not. use periods. for emphasis. and reading "sentences" like this. constantly. distracts greatly! from the plot and characters.

There were also flashbacks and scene changes with no transition, tense changes between paragraphs taking place at the same time, and most of the characters ended up sounding like they all had the same voice with the stream of consciousness writing. The stream of consciousness style also lead into a lot of repetitiveness within the story.

I could have maybe gotten past the writing style if either the story or characters had been more interesting, but I found to the plot to be meandering and thin and the characters to be essentially different versions of the same unlikable outline. I'd like to try a different Oates book in the future since I know this is not her normal writing style (at least it isn't for her short fiction), because this one was definitely not for me.

Civic-minded, Republican, and upper-class John Earle “Whitey” McClaren, former mayor of Hammond, New York, witnesses police beating what seems to be a black man on the side of the road. Finding the behavior unconscionable, he stops to intervene. The reverberations of that encounter echo throughout the remainder of the book.

Oates’s writing is insightful and lovely, and I found myself frequently highlighting passages I wanted to remember. I should note, though, that internal monologues with many parenthetical phrases are privileged over dialogue. The characters, particularly the McClarens, are extremely well-developed, if not likeable. It’s been a very long time since I’ve read a book where the characters seem so real they could walk out of the pages.

When I started reading the novel, I didn’t realize it was 800 pages. Length doesn’t usually bother me: I think books should be as short or long as they need to be, and it’s only problematic if they are too short or too long for the story. This book feels to me both too long and too short. Part of it was the pacing—about halfway through, I felt it was dragging having a lot of repetition with the struggles of Jessalyn, the McClaren matriarch.

More so, though, I think this book had two narratives inside it—the story of the consequences of the police beating and the story of the McClaren family. The latter was thorough and depicted how the five siblings were not just competitive but battling against each other and how that affected them and their relationships.

The former strand, that of police brutality, did not have the depth I wanted. Perhaps it is the particular time in which we are situated, where the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police has inspired worldwide protests. We did get police coverups, circling the wagons, and a general lack of consequences for the officers involved, but I wanted more. I suppose I feel this way because while the police encounter was the triggering interaction, most of the consequences could have followed from a multitude of events (besides those affecting one character). So, if such a highly charged premise was invoked, I think the author had a duty to wrestle with the implications more deeply.

The book also touched on class, race (outside of police violence), animal experimentation (trigger warning!), and mental health.

Thank you so much for allowing me to read this ARC! I was really intrigued by the lives of the very wealthy family, including the widow and her five adult children who must struggle to go on following the feather of their father and husband. I felt like this book touched on so many important themes. Definitely going to be recommending it once it comes out!

Though this novel was written before the recent protests, it opens with a blatant case of police brutality as if it were ripped from today's headlines. But its heart and soul lie in the family drama of the survivors. I really believe that only someone who has experienced great personal loss (as Ms Oates has) would be able to write the grief scenes as achingly beautiful and heartfelt as those in this book. The characters, all 5 of the main ones, are so filled with real life that I would wake up each morning wondering what was happening to them today. It is no surprise that so many topics were covered in its 800 pages: racial prejudice, mental instability, uncontrollable anger, marriage infidelity, sexual repression, unhappy career choices, and love, always love.

Thanks to NetGalley and Eco/HarperCollins Publishers for the ARC to read and review.

Joyce Carol Oates is not only inimitable and prolific, but she is an American icon of literature. She is able to write about the subtle nuances of people no matter what their race, socioeconomic background, or ethnicity. It is almost as if she has been graced with the ability to see into the human soul.

This novel's title comes from the last line of 'A Clear Midnight', a poem by Walt Whitman. He is "pondering the themes thou lovest best" - night, sleep, death, the stars. Ms. Oates has captured the essence of this love as she grapples with loss, rebirth, darkness, and the infinite presence of love, both present, past, and eternal.

The novel is about the McClaren family, a well-to-do family of two adults and five grown children. On his way home from work, Whitey, the family patriarch, sees a dark skinned man being unfairly assaulted by police officers. Whitey (so nicknamed for the color of his hair), stops his car and asks the police to relent in their assault. The police tell him to get back in his car and go away. Whitey refuses and the police turn on him, tasering him repeatedly, kicking and beating him into unconsciousness. The police, realizing they have gone too far, call 911 and Whitey is taken to the hospital under the pretenses that he had a stroke or heart attack. The only witness is the man who was the original target of the police who happens to be a doctor in the same hospital where Whitey resides in a coma.

Ms. Oates depicts, in minutiae and through a macro lens, the depths of feeling and unique character of each family member. There is Jessalyn, Whitey's wife, and five grown children, I felt like I grew to know them all. The character development over time is astonishingly perspicacious and relevant to the family dynamics and the impact of external circumstances that each of the family members is grappling with.

This novel, at almost 800 pages, is a tome and I loved almost every single bit of it. Parts of it reminded me of Ms. Oates' memoir 'The Widow' as she describes the torment and hopelessness that ravages Jessalyn.. Not all the characters are likable and some are downright despicable, Every person in the novel is unique.

I have only one criticism, and this is for the editors only. A licensed therapist would never choose to travel with a patient. Not only is it against the code of ethics for every mental health professional, the therapist would likely lose their license if found out.

This is a novel to savor, if that is possible. I found it hard to put down and looked forward to reading it every day. Ms. Oates has an absolute ability to portray family dynamics realistically, somewhat like a trompe l'oeil painting. As a clinical social worker and family therapist, I can vouch for that.

This novel is prescient, as if Ms. Oates had twenty-twenty foresight into the future. Today's news could have been based on this novel. The brutality of the police, the profiling of the doctor, the assault on a witness, and the ultimate covering up of the truth rings so true. Thank you Ms. Oates for this wonderful reading experience..

It was a pleasure to get re-introduced to the writing of Joyce Carol Oates via this tale of loss and grief and families barely hanging on.

I will be curious how this book fares when it's released next week. When I first started reading the novel, George Floyd was just murdered by a police officer, so the beginning of the novel was a bit jarring. For whatever reason, I kept thinking the Whitey was black (guess I'm pre-conditioned to think that way), and it didn't take long for me to realize he was white, and the other man was also not black, but mistaken for a black man. 800 pages and somehow I have to wonder if the police brutality even works in this novel since nothing really happens, the family basically ignores the fact that the police tasered their father in his sixties, causing his death,

Perhaps, if I was reading this novel at a time when we hadn't just witnessed another black person who was murdered by police or while jogging in a neighborhood (will there be such a time when this isn't happening?), maybe I could have overlooked the fact that there was so little closure about this police brutality, but I couldn't stop wondering when the man who was pulled over, the man from India who sought info on Whitey, because Whitey stopped his car to intervene when he saw this man being beaten by the police, but this character also disappears from the novel, and withdraws from drawing public attention by being a witness, and the novel basically explores Whitey's wife, who transforms after the death of her husband, which is not such a novel occurrence. This family is so damn bland, so damn racist, so damn white they didn't even seem real.

Jesalyn, the widow, falls in love with a Hispanic photographer, and this enrages the family. She becomes "bohemian" and wears her long white her in braids and gives away her expensive closing. One son, the artist, falls in love with a Nigerian man, and all the adult children seem to ponder suicide after the death of their father, but none are successful. At one point, I thought Thom, the one who took over his father's business, would do more about making his family understand the injustice of their father's death, but no, he does something horrible to a cat because no one approves of their mother's feral one-eyed cat, and I won't say more about what he does with the bat later in the novel, but I will say that the novel ends with the mother and Hugo on a trip, and other than this being a dysfunctional white family, using the police brutality as a means to open the novel seemed a bit like a cheap shot considering how little attention that opening received in the novel. I kept reading because Oate's is a master storyteller, but this novel could have been much shorter, and Whitey could have just died mowing the lawn, and then she falls in love with an artist, and the family rebels. We shall see how this book is received next week.

Can you ever go wrong with Joyce Carol Oates? The answer is no. You really cannot. I can't wait to see how this one is received.

Be prepared because this is a door stopping chunkster of a book with 800 pages to sift through. This is a family drama told only the way that Joyce Carol Oates can tell. She sure knows how to write about family dysfunction!

Perhaps, if I had not experienced my own sort of family drama due to a death of a loved one, I may have rated this higher. Maybe, because I have experienced this I should give this book a higher rating. It has clearly affected me! I may revisit this rating after I simmer about this book...

Many thanks to Netgalley and Harper Collins for this advanced readers copy. This book is due to release in June 2020.