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New York Times Bestselling Author Finally returned to print in a beautiful trade paperback edition, a haunting gothic tale that illuminates the fortunes and misfortunes of a 19th-century immigrant family of confidence artists--a story of morality, duplicity, and retribution that explores the depths of human manipulation and vulnerability “Oates . . . rarely falters throughout this epic. . . . An American tragedy.”--People “My Heart Laid Bare shows Oates at her most playful, extravagant and inventive.”--The San Francisco Chronicle The patriarch of the Licht family, Abraham has raised a brood of talented con artists, children molded in his image, and experts in The Game, his calling and philosophy of life. Traveling from one small town to the next across the continent, from the Northeast to the frontier West, they skillfully swindle unsuspecting victims, playing on their greed, lust, pride, and small-mindedness. Despite their success, Abraham cannot banish a past that haunts him: the ghost of his ancestor Sarah Licht, a former con woman who met with a gruesome fate. As Abraham moves his family from town to town, involving them in more and more complex and impressive schemes, he finds himself caught between the specter of Sarah and the growing terrors of his present. As his carefully crafted lies and schemes begin to fracture and disintegrate before his eyes, Abraham discovers that the bond of family is as tenuous and treacherous as the tricks he perpetrates upon unsuspecting strangers.… (more)
User reviews
His enthusiasm is infectious. His kids are caught up in it. I was caught up in it. The guy is a scumbag, but by some mysterious combination of his innate character and the author's presentation of same, I felt myself rooting for him. That's terrible!
How could I do such a thing, knowing that he tells dozens of lies everyday to his family and everyone he comes in contact with.
I kept waiting for him to bump accidentally in the street into one of the hundreds--wait, thousands--of marks that he preyed upon throughout his life.
Just like many of the men in the book, I am in envy of his success with women. I am honest, and not a crook like him; why don't any women like me as much as they like him?
The saddest part of this book is how the children are trapped in the spiritual prison erected by their father. The physical boundaries that exist during the periods when they live at the edge of a swamp are minimal by comparison. In fact, he takes them travelling all over the Eastern United States.
Please read this book if you want to find a window onto the early 20th century history of the U.S.A.