Middle Age: A Romance

A tender, darkly comic novel about contemporary America from the author of Blonde and We Were The Mulvaneys. With Middle Age, Joyce Carol Oates has been acclaimed as one of the most important writers of her time

"A stylish and wise chronicle of transformation and regeneration."  -  Sunday Telegraph

In Salthill-On-Hudson, a half-hour train ride from Manhattan, everyone is rich, beautiful, and - though they look much younger - Middle Age. But when Adam Berendt, a charismatic, mysterious sculptor, dies suddenly in a brash act of heroism, shock waves rock the town. But who was Adam Berendt? Was he in fact a hero, or someone more flawed and human? His loss and the rumours that surface of his possible lovers, plunge his friends into grief, confusion, and self-reflection. 

"Oates is a massive literary heavyweight, and many earnestly believe she could knock the other contenders for the title of Great American Novelist – Updike, Roth, Wolfe, Mailer."  -  The Guardian UK

Middle Age: A Romance is an intimately drawn, richly sympathetic, yet unsparingly comic portrait of the affluent class at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Incisive, insightful, and never predictable, it's a uniquely American sage of self-determination and identity from one of our finest writers of contemporary fiction.