Books : My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike
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by: Joyce Carol Oates
List Price: $25.95Amazon.com's Price: $17.13 You Save: $8.82 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780061547485
ISBN: 0061547484
Label: Ecco
Manufacturer: Ecco
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 576
Publication Date: July 01, 2008
Publisher: Ecco
Release Date: June 24, 2008
Sales Rank: 8448
Studio: Ecco
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
New York Times bestselling author of The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates returns with a dark, wry, satirical tale—inspired by an unsolved American true-crime mystery.
'Dysfunctional families are all alike. Ditto 'survivors.''
So begins the unexpurgated first-person narrative of nineteen-year-old Skyler Rampike, the only surviving child of an 'infamous' American family. A decade ago the Rampikes were destroyed by the murder of Skyler's six-year-old ice-skating champion sister, Bliss, and the media scrutiny that followed. Part investigation into the unsolved murder; part elegy for the lost Bliss and for Skyler's own lost childhood; and part corrosively funny exposé of the pretensions of upper-middle-class American suburbia, this captivating novel explores with unexpected sympathy and subtlety the intimate lives of those who dwell in Tabloid Hell.
Likely to be Joyce Carol Oates's most controversial novel to date, as well as her most boldly satirical, this unconventional work of fiction is sure to be recognized as a classic exploration of the tragic interface between private life and the perilous life of 'celebrity.' In My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike, the incomparable Oates once again mines the depths of the sinister yet comic malaise at the heart of our contemporary culture.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Aging Oats
Having been a fan for many years (decades) of the prolific and brilliant Oates, I can only say this book confirms my sad theory she has, in fact, nothing more to say.
Isn't the son of the real Ramsey family still alive? What about the Father? Writng this mean, confused, rambling chaos of a suposedly ficticious character is not only bad writing but the worst in bad taste. Blond, which was her fictional biography of Marilyn Monroe was, at least, written long after Monroe was dead. There's no ... Read More
Rating:  - Read it on my Kindle
I read this book on my Kindle and only discovered through talking with a friend who read it in paper form that there were footnotes throughout the book. On the Kindle, there are asterisks but no footnotes at the bottom of the pages. Only after finishing the book did I find page after page of the footnotes, totally out of context, at the end of the story. I would say that this bothered me except that I looked at the paper version of the book and was so bored by the footnotes that I actually preferred ... Read More
Rating: - Disjointed narrative worth working through
Skyler Rampike, surviving child of the tabloid disaster that is his family, narrates this story. His 6-year-old sister, a prodigy figure skater under the pushy care of their stage mother, is murdered and found in the family's furnace room, with a scribbled and barely readable note left behind and a basement window left ajar. It should sound quite like the JonBenet Ramsey murder, because it is clearly the jumping off point for Oates and she acknowledges it in an upfront disclaimer. Skyler is 19 when ... Read More
Rating:  - Difficult Read
I am glad this was borrowed from the library and not purchased. I struggled to make myself finish the book. I'm not really sure I 'got' it but I'm very happy that I'm done and it is going back to the library. If you want a FANTASTIC read..."The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" is the book of the summer!
Rating: - Tragic and Comic
Our book club's book for August was MY SISTER, MY LOVE by Joyce Carol Oates. Originally we had thought about reading some nonfiction for a change, but then someone suggested a "novelization" of a true story. We were thinking of IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote, but then someone suggested MY SISTER, MY LOVE which is a fictional account of the JonBenet Ramsey murder case. In light of the recent evidence that came to light, we thought this would make for good discussion. And it helped that we have read the ... Read More
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