"The living and the dead. Braided together. Woven together. An immense tapestry taking in centuries."A little over 100 pages into this novel I stumbled across the above lines, and even though I had another 500+ pages to go, I instinctively sensed that I had discovered the key to this immense, sprawling narrative, a description of what Oates was attempting to accomplish with Bellefleur. Literally spanning centuries, seven different generations and involving dozens of distinct characters, this is the story of the Bellefleurs, a privileged and moneyed family of the type usually characterized as American aristocracy. But Oates intentionally shatters her story into countless little shards of narrative so that with each chapter—all which function as their own stand-alone vignettes or even short stories—the reader is pulled between vastly different times and characters, with no obvious correlation from one to the next. At first it's disorienting, but Oates does eventually create the vague impression that the entire thing is indeed operating by its own internal logic and intricately designed rhythms. Frankly, this is a novel to get lost in, and one must be willing to make that decision intentionally.Because it's literally impossible to keep things straight from one page to the next, sometimes even one paragraph to the next—there are many examples of two characters sharing the same name, and this family's history often seems to have a habit of operating on an endless loop. In this way I was reminded of Oates's own description of another novel that often came to mind while reading Bellefleur:"Wuthering Heights... ambitiously diffuses its consciousness among several contrasting perspectives; its structure is not so complicated as it initially appears, but chronology is fractured, not linear, and certain of its most powerful images... require a second reading to be fully comprehended. What is mystery becomes irony what is opaque becomes translucent poetry. There are numerous flash-forwards, as well; and a mirroring of characters across generations."*Reading back over that description of Brontë's novel, it seems clear to me that this was exactly the modus operandi behind Oates's own work. And while Oates doesn't quite reach the same heights of feverish ecstasies of her model, she did manage to create countless characters and images and actions in Bellefleur that I won't soon forget.Which is not to say that I loved this novel unconditionally—several hundred pages in I knew which characters I didn't find very interesting and began to skim the chapters they appeared in, and I really did have to force myself to finish the last 100 pages or so (which is a shame, because it really does all lead up to an unexpected and incendiary conclusion). Basically I wanted a leisurely summer read—"a voluptuous novel crammed with people and events," as Oates herself called it**—and that's exactly what I got. And for the most part, I enjoyed it thoroughly. _____________________* - Uncensored: Views and (Re)views** - The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982
À travers six générations JCO nous tisse un destin familial riche et dense. Les Bellefleur sont une famille peuplée de personnages romanesques, depuis Jean-Pierre Bellefleur, aristocrate français arrivé à l’aube du XIXe siècle, à Germaine, dernière née de la famille, une petite fille bien étrange. Oates nous perd et nous rattrape sans cesse au fil de ses flashbacks, son avertissement nous met en garde, le temps n’a pas beaucoup de sens et la vraisemblance n’est pas de mise dans ce récit. L’auteur ne nous propose pas d’intrigue à proprement parlé, mais une suite ininterrompue d’anecdotes, où les époques se croisent, se mélangent, pour laisser de temps en temps la place à la dernière génération des Bellefleur, celle qui tente de reconstruire un empire tout aussi morcelé que le récit lui-même. Oates nous offre une sacrée galerie de personnages, ainsi que des destins souvent hors norme, parfois tragiquement banals. L’histoire des Bellefleur s’inscrit dans la grande Histoire, mais reste empreinte d’une aura de mystérieux, les légendes concernant certains membres de la famille peuplent l’imaginaire de plusieurs générations. La folie, la passion, le désespoir et la mélancolie sont les moteurs principaux des Bellefleur.Ce roman fut le premier best-seller de JCO, et n’est pas sans rappeler Nous étions les Mulvaney, écrit bien plus tard. Ce dernier reprend le même principe de narration, mais se concentre sur deux générations et un seul événement clé, et me parait peut-être plus digeste pour le non-initié à l’œuvre de JCO. Bellefleur constitue une vrai prouesse narrative, un labyrinthe géant, avec de multiples histoires, racontées à la façon d’un puzzle. La multitude de détails est étourdissante, tout contribue à un réalisme poignant, tout en distillant de subtils éléments de merveilleux, d’inexpliqué, d’irrationnel. La vraisemblance n’est pas le souci de l’auteur, elle nous met en garde dès le début. Tout est alors permis, la bizarre côtoie l’étrange, les repères temporels sont souvent trompeurs, quelques indices nous permettent de situer plus ou moins certaines scènes, mais d’autres indices les contredisent. Ajoutons à cela que la famille Bellefleur semble vivre un peu à l’ancienne, à la manière des grandes familles, avec leurs principes, us et coutumes, etc, et le décalage avec leur époque n’est que plus troublant.Un roman étrange et envoûtant, tout à la fois gothique, fantastique, subtil, rocambolesque, tragique, romanesque, déconcertant, farfelu, invraisemblable, poétique, enthousiasmant, troublant, réaliste, psychologique, familial, universel, foisonnant, onirique, extravagant, excessif, animalier, anachronique, dense, grandiloquent, hypnotique, fascinant, fantaisiste, merveilleux.
What do You think about Bellefleur (1991)?
This book was long and witten in short episodes that were stitched together all out of sequential order. Because there were numerous people in the Bellefleur family, and the books spanned several generations, it was difficult for me to figure out exactly who each chapter was talking about. It didn't help that they were all related and family names were reused, so several characters of different generations had the same name. There IS a family tree at the beginning of the book, and it might have been helpful to be able to flip back and refer to it throughout the book, but I was reading on my Kindle and it just did not seem easy to do. And as I tend to read in short bits of time here and there instead of solid blocks, it took me several months to finish, which contributed to my hazy awareness of who was who. I did enjoy the sort of mysterious, almost spooky feel of the book.
—jeanie
Reading this book was a strange experience. I do not appreciate sentences that require road maps to navigate. If I have to edit the book myself, by removing unnecessary clauses and descriptors to tease out the meaning of the sentence, then the writing is too flamboyant for me. The story is dark and gothic and muddled. There were brief passages that would hold my interest just long enough to keep me reading, but in the end I finished it out of sheer stubbornness. I didn't like any of the characters and was happy for the end of it all. This was the first of Joyce Carol Oates that I have read and I have to admit I am not sure I want to try any others.
—Angie
Let me start by saying I'm a HUGE fan of JCO, but this was my second attempt at this book, and I finally just gave up. To my mind it's like a great byzantine workshop where ol' Joyce trots out lots of ideas that will later become full books in their own right. I recognize so many short stories, so many themes... Perhaps this is an ambitious younger writer's attempt at something 'War and Peace'-ish. There are compelling strains of story, characters full of promise, but I just can't find my way through all those WORDS. There are far too many wonderful books in the world to be read in a single lifetime, and after two attempts, I've decided this will be one for another lifetime.
—Mark
