Waxing nostalgic - from stem to stern

One of my NY resolutions was to make a note of what I'm reading. I am a voracious reader, and given a stretch of time, can easily read 300 pages a day. My reading is confined, mostly, to my lunch hour. Between distractions, food, interruptions, and whatever else happens in a communal kitchen, I average about a page a minute.

My first book this year is Joyce Carol Oates' Black Girl White Girl. This is not my first book by Oates--last year, I read The Falls and Missing Mom. I found both to be adequate, though the latter to be slightly more intriguing, but also slightly more annoying (I do prefer to read slightly historic fiction). This Oates trend is nothing new; typically, when I find an author, I immediately try to devour everything by that author. See: Kingsolver, George, Picoult, et al.

Currently, I'm on page 124/272. I feel, in part, that I've just begun the book. There is a lot of repetition between chapters and even within chapters, and I don't know if this is because the book is supposed to read like the disjointed memories of a college girl turned 35, or if it's simply an affectation that Oates was trying out. It works part of the time (that part being when I read it as, like, a child of, like, a recovering hippy/druggie, and, like, the daughter's a freshman at, like, some sort of 8th dimension version of Bryn Mawr), but mostly it's frustrating. I'd much rather those 20 or 30 pages or repeats be filled with something... different.

What I like about this book, though, is that it is pseudo-local. Genna, the main character, grew up in Chadds Ford. She goes to an exclusive Quaker all-girls school that sits on the banks of the Schuylkill River in Schuyler, PA. The pseudo-local part comes in with the jacket: the college is "near Philadelphia". And, perhaps relatively speaking, the college is near Philadelphia. But, as any east/west Pennsylvanian knows--travel 50 miles from the city, and it's a completely different state. We call it Pennsatucky. It gets a little worse, though, when, somewhere around page 80 or so, mention is made of a dance at the neighboring college--Haverford. Not exactly a hop, skip, and a jump... So, that bothers me a little.

I was surprised to realize I was nearly halfway done with the book because it moves so slowly--even without the repetition. Every detail of freshman life is addressed, but at the same time, only two or three aspects of freshman life are addressed (see: repetition). Still, it's not enough of a peeve to put the book down. I feel as though I'm invested in it now. I also feel that the story itself should pick up pace soon. The jacket reveals that Genna's roommate mysteriously and violently dies (in either late freshman or early sophomore year). Not to put too fine a point on it, but I just want the girl to DIE already. Then, the story can move on to unraveling the mystery of Minette's death, and Genna can grow up, and her mom can overdose, and her dad can have an orgy. The End.

Not exactly a positive review, but if you're a fan of Oates (and I don't know that I really am outside of I've enjoyed reading her books for free), you'll find this to be somewhat satisfying.