Beasts

Erm. The jacket made this sound a bit more like a gothic horror romance than it was. Totally false advertising. Instead, I got a tedious period piece about spoiled college students in love with their wretched abuser of a professor and his sculptress wife. I found it tedious. And more a vehicle for Ms. Oates to show her own academic prowess than a suitable vehicle for storytelling. The crux of the book only takes about 30 of the book's 138 pages; everything else merely builds up to the plot. The characters are dull and drawn poorly, seen only vaguely through the main character's eyes; although, perhaps that is only because she's so obsessed with her professor. He's actually not terribly impressive. All the girls merely suffer from guru syndrome. The climactic ending is silly and overblown and a bit improbable, frankly, speaking as one who used to be a smoker. And I tired of the constant ‘beautiful Dominique' descriptions: Because she's secretly a woman of colour, she is bold and dramatic and exotic. And the main character, I swear, is in love with her. But that only serves to set Dominique apart, make her less rounded as a character. So, no. I wasn't into this one. For my first foray into a full-length JCO work, I was terribly disappointed.