Middle Age
A Romance

Joyce Carol Oates

8/30/2002

Adam Berendt, of Salthill-on-Hudson, drowns as he tries to rescue a young girl. He was an artist. He was charismatic and secretive. Men liked him. Women loved him. Noone knows him well. The residents of the affluent New York suburb miss him. His death shakes them up.

Marina Troy owns a bookstore in Salthill. She loves Adam. Being single, she hoped to take his friendship and advance it. Now she is bereft. She is also one of Adam's executors. She starts learning secrets about him she wishes she doesn't know. She finds she has to reexamine herself. Should she be running the bookstore, or perhaps she should pursue the art she abandoned ten years earlier.

Roger Cavanaugh is the other executor and a lawyer. He also finds more about Adam than he expects. He is divorced. His teenaged daughter wants little to do with him. He sees some of Adam's accomplishments and compares them to his life. He realizes why his daughter is contemptuous of his work. Soon he becomes involved in one of Adam's charities.

This book follows the lives of a handful of the extremely wealthy residents of Salthill. It examines the mid-live crises that Berendt's death precipitates. Men stray; women try to connect to their children or animals. Some people become more social, others more of hermits. All try to find where their lives are going now.

I was pulled into this story and stayed with it, although slowly. I wanted to know what would happen, how were these people going to grow? There was some growth, some deserved retribution, and some meaningless directions. At times this book grabs the readers attention, but at others tends to get meandering and lost. This is the first Oates I have read. This is an ambitious story, entwining the lives of the rich, background people who live their lives in affluence. The first two sections kept me reading and entertained. The third section fell somewhat flat. We get the chance to learn of the elusive Berendt's past, which helps keep the reader's interest.

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Notice: Explicit sexual situations