A review by lesbrarycard
Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. by Joyce Carol Oates

emotional medium-paced

3.5

despite being an 800-page book, this story kept me decently engrossed and i enjoyed the saga it took me through. this is a fantastic view at grief and i feel like it came to me at the perfect point in time. however, it tries to tackle some pretty huge topics of race and police brutality that i felt fell short. the characters are judgemental, flawed, and often express racist ideals, but i couldn't tell if they were ever learning from their mistakes or from the instances of brutality that they faced. especially considering that this is a white family dealing with police brutality, i didn't feel like the characters ever truly understood their point of priviledge, and the story read like it was written by a white author. overall it's a compelling story - i just wished that the characters learned a little more among an 800 page monster of a book. 
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