Book Review: "Breathe" by Joyce Carol Oates

Yes, I am reading another JCO novel because right now, this is where I want to be. As you know, my mind has been a bit everywhere and I haven't been feeling great BUT, I have my books and I have my laptop and so, we persist. I know there's been talks of the fact we are seeing a surge of these strange accounts where there are no stories but tons of ChatGPT style responses and comments. I would really recommend we disengage with these people and not make a thing out of it. Just report it and move on. That's what I do. Anyways, on to Breathe by Joyce Carol Oates.

Michaela McManus is a 37-year-old woman who moves with her husband, Gerard, to Santa Tierra, New Mexico where he has secured an eight-month residency at the Institute for Advanced Research. They are relocating from Cambridge, Massachusetts and so there is a great change in landscape and lifestyle for them. Both of the characters here are very distinguished people and so, we expect them to be able to handle their emotions quite appropriately and professionally, but obviously JCO constantly subverts expectations and shows us quite a different picture. I do wonder how much of herself she has put into our main female character here. The writing is very vividly emotional.

Shortly after their arrival, Gerard develops a persistent cough, which rapidly escalates into a severe illness. Within weeks, he is hospitalised at the Santa Tierra Cancer Center, diagnosed with a mysterious and aggressive disease and this is where it gets intense. We see similar contemplations in this book that we see in the book A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir. It becomes less about just the experience of knowing someone who is deteriorating in front of you, but it is about being powerless to numb their pain or aches in any way - almost like you know what's going to happen but you don't want to admit it.

As Gerard's condition worsens, Michaela keeps a constant vigil at his hospital bedside. Her once-vibrant husband is declining at a critical speed. She knows she must face reality when Gerard is finally moved into hospice care. As per many of JCO's novels, they don't particularly deal with the crush and blow of the main event but rather the fallout of grief afterwards. This is the case here. Gerard's death is not a 'main event' as JCO novels usually lack just one. Instead, she sends us on the emotional reckoning with the main character, the fallout of the accumilated feelings from everywhere. It is one of the reasons I love her novels so much.

She imagines receiving a voicemail which tells her that her husband's death was a mistake and she starts seeing him in random places as well. This is all part and parcel of the grief that she is dealing with. I think we who have lost someone close always imagine that it could be a mistake and that right now, that person is going walk through the door. And they're tell you that you've imagined the whole thing. But in reality, that's not the case - in reality these people are really gone.

JCO's use of the New Mexico landscape is amazing because unlike the city, it has this haunting spirituality about it. It is very different to where she came from and now, she's stuck in somewhere that's still relatively new all by herself. The author writes this in as the main character's mental state declines rapidly and honestly, I think this was probably the best thing about the book. One great thing that JCO's books have in common apart from the emotional fallout is the way they present the landscape. There is always something about the land, whether it is changing or staying the same, that haunts or attaches itself to the character.

All in all, I would say I enjoyed this book just as I have enjoyed other JCO novels that deal with the concept of longing and grief. Hopefully, if you choose to read this too, you will realise that she definitely deals with the fallouts more than the main events, so much so that the fallout becomes the main event.