SOURCE: "He Could Not Tell a Lie," in The New York Times Book Review, October 16, 1994, p. 7.

In the following review, Carroll assesses What I Lived For, finding that "the structure of this straightforward mystery is transformed into art of another order entirely, an exemplary work of moral investigation."

John Gardner once said that a novel is a vivid and continuous dream. In What I Lived For, Joyce Carol Oates has written a vivid and continuous nightmare: a savage dissection of our national myths of manhood and success, a bitter portrait of our futile effort to flee the weight of the past, a coldeyed look at our loss of community and family, a shriek at the monsters men and women have become to each other and a revelation of our desolate inner lives. What I Lived For is an American "Inferno."

The novel is set in Union City, a...