"Knotted, tense, digressive and brilliant." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Oates (The Accursed) returns with another novel that ratchets up the unsettling to her signature feverish pitch... Once again, Oates's gift for exposing the frailty--and selfishness--of humans is on display. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"After her lavishly imagined, supernatural historical novel, The Accursed (2013), Oates turns in the latest of her intensely magnified studies of a family in crisis and the agony of a misfit girl." -- Booklist

"Joyce Carol Oates has outdone herself." -- NPR

"Joyce Carol Oates is known for richly detailed portraits of American families asunder. CARTHAGE is a stunning contribution to her storied canon." -- Kirkus Reviews

"...Oates shows how perilous it is to assign guilt, and how hard it is to draw the line between victim and perpetrator in a blurred moral landscape in which every crime, on the battlefield or on the home front, is a crime of conscience." -- New York Times Book Review

"For pages on end it is a compelling mediation on belief, betrayal, and grief. Oates has written a good book. I'd recommend it. What does it matter if it is or is not a war novel. The best war novels aren't war novels at all. They become something bigger." -- Daily Beast

"...brilliant...amazing.... A compassionate tenderness suffuses the final sections of the book, as palpable as the cold irony with which the book begins. It's a breathtaking effect..." -- Washington Post

"Oates, working at the top of her formidable game, handily won over more of our readers with this raw, suspenseful, 'real and immersive' stream-of-consciousness tale." -- Elle, Lettres 2014 Readers Prize

"a well-told tale of family, gr