Read a review of "Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars." by Joyce Carol Oates

A new novel by Joyce Carol Oates was obviously not inspired by current events, arriving on shelves today, but it clearly fits the moment.

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. opens with Whitey, an older Caucasian man, intervening in what he sees as an inappropriately rough arrest of an Indian man.

Whitey is hit with a Taser and dies of a stroke; the rest of the novel follows his widow and adult children as they process their grief (in healthy and unhealthy ways) and fight amongst themselves.

And, writes the New York Times’s reviewer, we see them “betraying, to varying degrees, their own racist and elitist predilections” along the way.

Read the full review of Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. in the New York Times.

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