Daddy Love by Joyce Carol Oates

Published by Mysterious Press on January 8, 2013 

Joyce Carol Oates writes about horrors that none of us want to imagine, and does it with such seductive prose we can't stop reading. Yet Oates' great talent is to find the horrific in both the commonplace and in the unthinkable. Daddy Love begins with a momentarily misplaced car that leads to a child's barely contained panic and a mother's sense of failure, a small horror that evolves into the larger horror of child abduction.

Part one takes place in 2007. Dinah Whitcomb has invested "all of her volcanic Mommy love" in her only child, Robbie. She strives to make every moment a learning experience for her five-year-old son. She faults herself when she feels tired, because a happy mother should always feel strong. Later she will blame herself for letting go of Robbie's hand when Robbie is snatched from her. Although she is faultless -- the abductor strikes her, first with a fist and then, when she runs after him, with a van -- Dinah feels "the defeat of her life as a mother."

The first four chapters tell the same brief story, each from a slightly different perspective, adding or subtracting facts, revealing more of Dinah's life, her sense of connection with her husband and son. In chapter five, time again begins to move forward. But can life really move forward for someone who has been as badly damaged, both physically and emotionally, as Dinah?

In the chapters that follow, Oates changes the perspective, allowing the reader to follow Robbie and his kidnapper. Oates reveals the demented mind of Daddy Love with the same skill that makes her portrayal of Dinah's tormented mind so convincing. It is nonetheless disappointing that Oates chose to make the character so purely evil, when a more nuanced approach -- a sex offender who struggles against urges he can't control, as is usually the case -- would have been less obvious.

Part two takes the reader to 2013. Robbie, now known as Gideon Cash, is in sixth grade. His true history, unknown to the teachers who believe he is Daddy Love's autistic son, is reflected only in his macabre drawings. Perspective changes again as the reader sees the world through Robbie's eyes. And as she does with Dinah, Oates enters Robbie's mind with uncommon insight. She presents a more subtle view of Robbie than is typical in fictional portrayals of abuse victims. Robbie's personality and behavior provide some of the novel's most thought-provoking moments.

Although Oates' prose is always first-rate, it doesn't soar to the same height in Daddy Love as it does in her best work. The story isn't particularly innovative. It is, in fact, too predictable to have the impact Oates probably intended. After the strong opening chapters, I felt let down by the pedestrian path that the plot follows.

The characters, as a reader expects from Oates, are fully developed and completely convincing. On the other hand, while Oates often paints portraits of victims, the characters in Daddy Love are not as memorable as those some of her other fiction: they evoke sympathy in ways that are just too easy, too predictable. To her credit, however, Oates avoids coating her characters in sugar. She understands that people rarely respond to tragedy in ways that make them noble and likable, as so many writers would have us believe. Dinah wouldn't be the ideal spokeswoman for mothers of abducted children; her connection with reality is tenuous, her fragility is unnerving. Dinah's husband realizes that he's lost perspective, that he's defined his entire life by a single catastrophic event, but he's powerless to change. Although these aren't Oates' best creations, it is for the characters rather than the plot that I recommend Daddy Love.

Be warned: Some scenes involving Daddy Love and Robbie are disturbing, and while none of them are described in graphic detail, sensitive readers should be cautioned that child abuse is very much a part of the book's content. There are also a couple of chapters that will make dog lovers cringe. Oates has never been a writer who shelters her readers from the darkest realities of life.  She does not do so here.

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