{"description": {"type": "/type/text", "value": "Joyce Carol Oates\u2019s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. In Expensive People, Oates takes a provocative and suspenseful look at the roiling secrets of America\u2019s affluent suburbs. Set in the late 1960s, this first-person confession is narrated by Richard Everett, a precocious and obese boy who sees himself as a minor character in the alarming drama unfolding around him. \r\n\r\nFascinated by yet alienated from his attractive, self-absorbed parents and the privileged world they inhabit, Richard incisively analyzes his own mismanaged childhood, his pretentious private schooling, his \u201csuccessful-executive\u201d father, and his elusive mother. In an act of defiance and desperation, eleven-year-old Richard strikes out in a way that presages the violence of ever-younger Americans in the turbulent decades to come."}, "covers": [655916], "key": "/works/OL14958462W", "authors": [{"type": {"key": "/type/author_role"}, "author": {"key": "/authors/OL32981A"}}], "title": "Expensive people", "subjects": ["Death", "Parricide", "Mothers", "Literature", "Fiction", "Suburban life", "Mother and child", "Mother and child, fiction", "Fiction, psychological", "Fiction, horror", "Serial murders, fiction"], "type": {"key": "/type/work"}, "latest_revision": 12, "revision": 12, "created": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2010-03-15T21:17:35.905707"}, "last_modified": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2023-06-17T04:03:25.917132"}}