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(More customer reviews)The Young Adult book field is not one that comes to mind when I think of the body of Joyce Carol Oates'work. Yet here it is from the prolific Oates, "Big Mouth and Ugly Girl."
BMUG chronicles the high school and family life of Ursula Riggs(known to herself as "Ugly Girl") and Matt Donaghy (Big Mouth).
The plot is very simple and up-to-date newspaper headline-wise as Matt is accused of plotting to blow up his high school and Ursula, though heretofore not a friend of Matt's, comes to his rescue out of a sterling sense of "what is right."
Both Ursula and Matt suffer from what most of us suffered in high school: self-esteem problems, not feeling part of any group, hating our parents and siblings, etc.
Oates,being the master craftswman that she is, takes this rather tepid plot and fills it with telling details of both Matt's and Ursula's life after the accusation which sets the plot in motion:"It was like Matt had been wounded somwhere on his body he couldn't see, and the wound was visible to others, raw and ugly. When they looked at him, they saw just the wound. They weren't seeing Matt Donaghy any longer."
Under normal high school clique circumstances Matt and Ursula would have never made a connection. But through Ursula's sense of what is right and her acting upon it; and despite her parents objections, Ursula and Matt become a couple.
The moral of the story is simple but definitely needs restating to teenagers, but not only to teenagers, especially when it is restated in the glorious, tight and controlled prose of Joyce Carol Oates.
What Oates has done is pare down her gorgeous style to the bare minimum of words necessary to convey a mood, a thought or an emotion. What lessons and morals are to be learned can be easily picked off like so many berries off a tree. But in no way whatsoever does the storytelling seem didactic or obvious or over-simplified.
Joyce Carol Oates has fashioned a novel for teenagers brimming over with morality and resposibilty but has done it in a way that does not talk down to her specific audience. All of we Oates fans need not be wary of this book as it is wriiten on the highest level of craftsmanship and deserves a special place in the oeuvre of one of our finest contemporary writers.
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