Have you ever tried to make a meal out of everything in your kitchen? It would take a real chef to make something good out of it. I mean, some people have a lot of weird ignredients they don't know how to use, like that last drip of caesar dressing. The Accursed is that meal, told from the perspective of a historian grandson to an early 20th century philophy professor at Princeton University, as well as through diary entries of the invalid wife to a local big shot.
If you've read any of Oates's longer works, you probably know what to expect. The Accursed is vivid, gothic, and expansive. It's so expansive I think about it almost ever day, relating it to the context of my own stupid life.
Oates highlights the darkness of growing up wealthy and religious in early 20th Century Princeton, New Jersey. She notes the hidden but universally damning aspects of systematic inequality. She even throws in characters like Woodrow Wilson, Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, Grover Cleveland, and Teddy Roosevelt to complete the milieu. This might be your thang if you have ever enjoyed using the term "goth".
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