The Tattooed Girl - Softcover

Praise for I’ll Take You There:

‘One of the female frontrunners for the title of Great American Novelist...powerful, fresh and as youthful as if Oates were still writing her first thirsty, clear-sighted book, four decades ago.’ Maggie Gee, Sunday Times

‘Oates is a writer of extaordinary strengths...she has dealt consistently with what is probably the great American theme – the quest for the creation of self...Her great subject, naturally, is love.’ Ian Samson, Guardian

‘Her prose is peerless and her ability to make you think as she re-invents genres is unique. Few writers move so effortlessly from the gothic tale to the psychological thriller to the epic family saga to the lyrical novella. Even fewer authors can so compellingly and entertainingly tell a story.’ Jackie McGlone, Scotland on Sunday

‘A visceral, spiritual portrait of an extraordinary woman growing in self-awareness. Written with an enthralling combination of sensual perception and intellectual seeking....luminously powerful.’ Rosemay Goring, The Herald

Joyce Carol Oates if one of the world’s most respected living novelists whose audience has increased significantly with publication of MIDDLE AGE and I’LL TAKE YOU THERE. Her new novel brings us a tale of dark passions, prejudice, and the strange forms that love can take.

THE TATTOOED GIRL is an intense, visceral, yet unexpectedly tender novel about a celebrated but reclusive author, Joshua Siegel. Young but in failing health, Siegel reluctantly admits that he can no longer live alone. He launches a search for an assistant and finds Alma. A young woman with synthetic-looking blond hair and pale, tattooed skin, she stirs something inside him. Unaware of her torturous past – -the abuses she's suffered, the wrongs she's committed, and the hatred that seethes within her – -he has no idea that he is bringing into his home an enemy: an anti-Semite who despises him virulently and unqestioningly. With her unique, masterful balance of dark suspense and surprising tenderness, Joyce Carol Oates probes the tragedy of ethnic hatred and challenges accepted limits of desire.