Name: Jack of Spades
ISBN: 9780802123947

Joyce Carol Oates

Enjoying his successful career and devoted family, a best-selling writer secretly authors a masochist-themed series that threatens his respectable community standing and becomes subject to a plagiarism lawsuit. By the award-winning author of We Were the Mulvaneys.

A Tale of Suspense

Jack of Spades

Derek Barlas

Wow this was awful - tedious drivel. Dont waste your time.

An exquisite, psychologically complex thriller about opposing forces within the mind of one ambitious writer and the delicate line between genius and madness. Andrew J. Rush has achieved the kind of critical and commercial success most authors only dream about: He has a top agent and publisher in New York, and his twenty-eight mystery novels have sold millions of copies. Only Stephen King, one of the few mystery writers whose fame exceeds his own, is capable of inspiring a twinge of envy in Rush. But Rush is hiding a dark secret. Under the pseudonym “Jack of Spades,” he pens another string of novels—noir thrillers that are violent, lurid, and masochistic. These are novels that the upstanding Rush wouldn’t be caught reading, let alone writing. When his daughter comes across a Jack of Spades novel he has carelessly left out, she picks it up and begins to ask questions. Meanwhile, Rush receives a court summons in the mail explaining that a local woman has accused him of plagiarizing her own self-published fiction. Before long, Rush’s reputation, career, and family life all come under threat—and in his mind he begins to hear the taunting voice of the Jack of Spades. “Sleek and suspenseful . . . Readers are sure to be gripped and unsettled by [Oates’s] depiction of a seemingly mild-mannered character whose psychopathology simmers frighteningly close to the surface.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Just when you think you’ve got her all figured out, Joyce Carol Oates sneaks up behind and confounds you yet again. She does it with a wicked flourish in Jack of Spades.” —The New York Times Book Review

Colleen

2 Stars
 
*This review contains minor spoilers.*
 
I’ve heard a lot about Joyce Carol Oates, but I had never read any of her work. I picked up Jack of Spades by impulse at the library. Having read it, I realize this was probably not the best introduction to her work. The characters were not fleshed out. The plot borrowed heavily from other authors’ works. And writing was rather spastic and not at all what I would expect from a bestselling author.
 
The story is about Andrew J. Rush, a successful (if unremarkable) writer whose life is a bit humdrum. Rush has a secret though. He secretly writes much darker, more violent, and misogynistic books under the pseudonym Jack of Spades.
 
This was supposed to be a suspenseful psychological thriller, but there were just too many things wrong with this book. The main problem was that the story was all told in first person by Rush, and he was a completely unlikeable character. He started off boring and devolved into narcissism and masochism. (view spoiler)[Andrew simply was not convincing as a psychopath. He was definitely a jackass alcoholic who emotionally abused his family, but he did not have the level of charismatic manipulation needed to maintain such a complex front for decades. Rather than being a glimpse into a disturbed mind, the whole thing felt sloppy and off-putting. (hide spoiler)]
 
Even though this is a novella, it was a chore to finish. The plot was all over the place. The catalyst for the story is that someone sues Rush for plagiarism. That story line gets muddled up with Rush’s devolving sanity. Then there’s the part about who Rush really is: the benevolent persona of bestselling author Andrew J. Rush or the secret, sinister persona of Jack of Spades. He is definitely an unreliable narrator and it just didn’t work for me. All of that was tied up with the hints of a dark secret from Rush’s distant past. There were also bits that hinted at a supernatural element, but that never went anywhere. Did you ever do the writing exercise where someone starts a story then passes it to the next person who continues writing it and so on until everyone has written a little bit of the story? Well, that is kind of how Jack of Spades felt because there was no cohesion to the story. It jumped around, kept adding random threads in, and abandoning others to never mention them again. And all of it was told through the mouthpiece of an obnoxious narrator.
 
The story also borrows heavily from other well-known authors, mostly Stephen King. Both the story itself and the stories written by Jack/Rush will ring familiar to many readers. Since plagiarism is also a big part of the story and King is mentioned ad nauseum in the story, I could never decide if it was a tip of the hat or a big middle finger. Quid pro quo or scathing satyr? Does Oates have a feud with King in real life? Or was this some extremely awkward fangirling gone wrong?
 
I have to admit that I will be very gun-shy about reading anything else by Oates in the future even though I have heard that her writing varies greatly. But Jack of Spades was definitely a flop.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 2 Stars
Writing Style: 1 Star
Characters and Character Development: 1 Star
Plot Structure and Development: 2 Stars
Level of Captivation: 2 Stars
Originality: 1 Star

Jack of Spades A Tale of Suspense

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