I'll Take You There - Joyce Carol Oates

It's a good title and an appropriate one too, for in this intense, darkly poetic novel, prolific author Oates takes the reader deep into the psyche of a young American girl on the brink of adulthood. Her subject is a girl known only (and erroneously) as 'Anellia', an unconventional student whose experience of academic life is an vehemently rigorous one, shaping her consciousness and exposing her to a variety of influences that consolidate her feeling of being a perpetual outsider. Anellia is at university in the 1960s; desperate to gain a sense of identity, she initially pledges her loyalty to a sorority but cannot maintain the facade of perfect grooming and respectful hierarchy that implicitly governs the house. Unceremoniously cast out by her fellow scholars, she subsequently forms a strong passion for an older black student, an attraction that introduces her to the chaotic world of erotic desire. Despite her lover's relative indifference she stays in this destructive relationship until unexpectedly summoned to the bedside of her dying father, an event that finally pitches her toward maturity. Written in a strong, resonant prose that mirrors Anellia's painful inner journey, this is often a bleak, uncompromising read, illuminated by the clarity of Oates's distinctive voice. Treading the familiar path of rites-of-passage territory, she still manages to make her material seem fresh and unusual, and her acute perception of her characters and their surroundings holds the attention throughout.