Rating: 
Summary: Dreck
Review: ...and then I found out it is really Joyce Carol Oates, whom I do not care for. How did I find out? From an online interview- LK: Lauren Kelly replaces my previous pseudonym "Rosamond Smith." These are genre novels: mystery/suspense and not "mainstream literary."
Rating:
Summary: I wondered why I didn't like this book...
Review: ...and then I found out it is really Joyce Carol Oates, whom I do not care for. How did I find out? From an online interview- LK: Lauren Kelly replaces my previous pseudonym "Rosamond Smith." These are genre novels: mystery/suspense and not "mainstream literary."
Rating: 
Summary: If only I'd known...
Review: ...this was Joyce Carol Oates, I'd have passed. I used to be a fan, but the last few books of hers that I've read have left me cold.
Same here. She sets up an intriguing protagonist, Lara, and a tantalizing premise. Unfortunately, the promising start leads to a bunch of "Is that all there is?" plot developments and revelations, which try hard to be shocking but which telegraph themselves from miles away. None of the characters is plausible or sympathetic. Lara changes her mind so abruptly and often that I finished the book feeling like I'd suffered whiplash. The end left me thinking: "What an idiot." I can only assume this isn't the reaction Oates was aiming for.
I give this book two stars for the author's deftness with language. Otherwise I think her career would be better served by publishing less, not more. Take a vacation, Ms. Oates.
Rating: 
Summary: Joyce Carol Oates does it again?
Review: I picked this book from the shelf at my local library by reading the inside of the jacket. Never having heard of Lauren Kelly, I was pleasently surprised (after a few pages)to realize that the author could be none other than one of my favorites... Joyce Carol Oates. I was thrilled to read another short novel by the amazing JCO. I have read all of her Rosamond Smith stories and find it truely intriguing that she has yet another alias. I only hope this means more creativity to come. Take me has a familiar JCO and Rosamond Smith theme, that of the duality of personalities.
Rating:
Summary: Dreck
Review: If I had known this was by Joyce Carol Oates, I would not have bothered, and can't believe the reviews this book got. Completely unbelievable plot, disgusting and ugly characters. Who wants to read this drivel?
Rating: 
Summary: terse family drama
Review: In 1993, Lara Quade works at the Institute for Semiotics, Aesthetics, and Cultural Research in Princeton, New Jersey. At work Lara receives an anonymous ticket to a concert. Trying to figure out who sent it, she rules out her father who deserted her and her older brother Ryan over two decades ago. She knows it cannot be momma, who in Lake Shaheen, New York drunkenly drove their car into a moving train with then six year old Lorraine (as Lara was called back then) and Ryan as passengers.At the concert, Zedrick Dewe sits next to her. Afterward, Lara invites Zed to her home where they end up arguing. Someone beats up the institute's director. Lara thinks Zed did this; she confronts him only to learn he is her half-brother. Their mutual father killed his mother and spent his remaining life in Attica for the crime. Lara wonders whether her crazy mother did that deed and plans to confront Ryan about her theory. However, first she and Zed, though they share common blood, want to make love. The storyline moves back and forth with ease between 1971 and 1993 as Lauren Kelly uses the past to tell a story about the present. The character driven story line focuses mostly on Lara looking back and wondering whether her mother killed her spouse's mistress and allowed her husband to take the fall. Zed is an intriguing protagonist as he knows he must avoid the incest offerings of Lara, but their tragic past has left both lonely and each other's arms feels comforting. TAKE ME, TAKE ME WITH YOU is a terse family drama. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: A Masterful Psychological Thriller
Review: Lara Quade is a Princeton research assistant who one day receives an anonymous invitation to a concert. From here she sets out to rediscover the truth about her family and past that she had previously tried to abandon. A strange accident in Lara's youth rests at the center of the novel. The story alternates between past and present, piecing the violent circumstances of Lara's upbringing together while also relating the impulsive and dangerous journey she embarks upon after her mentor and superior is attacked. The self-destructive impulse that reduced her mother to a near invalid threatens to overcome Lara as well. Lara has a deeply introverted personality that makes her virtually friendless and yearning for the approval of people she deems superior. One of the central conflicts she has in re-examining her past is her sense of class difference. She views the lower class community from which she came with a certain contempt, but she also abhors the cultured people of money she encounters so frequently in the affluent community of Princeton. The pretension of her scholastic endeavors even leads her to walk away from a discussion laughing in the academics faces. She went there determined to redefine herself (even giving herself a new name) but finds that she is trapped in a doll like image of the neglected girl who lost her family. Like the character of Ghislaine from Angela Carter's first novel Shadow Dance, Lara is similarly scarred and drawn toward degradation for the sake of love she never fully receives. She is fiercely intelligent and bravely faces her past unlike her brother Ryan who has determined to only embrace the future. In a haunting way, the past is shown to mirror the present. For instance, the description of a dribble of spit Lara sees on her mother's face is repeated in how she sees herself when waking after passing out on a strange bed. Clues relating to the truth of what happened in Lara's childhood are scattered throughout the novel so that series of events hit the reader like premonitions turning it into a tense psychological adventure. It is also a deeply moving novel about a family that is broken apart through violence and jealousy. The sense of desperate isolation it conveys is chilling.
Rating:
Summary: A Superbly Crafted Story from a Bestselling Author
Review: Lauren Kelly is ... well, someone else. Lauren Kelly, as is stated on the review copy of TAKE ME, TAKE ME WITH YOU, is a pseudonym for a bestselling and award-winning author. I thought I knew at various points who it might be --- Joan Didion? Joyce Carol Oates? --- but those concerns were ultimately overridden by the story contained within and the craftsmanship with which it is told. TAKE ME, TAKE ME WITH YOU bounces back and forth in time between 1993, the novel's present, and 1970 and 1971. The story concerns Lara Quade, a physically and emotionally damaged young woman who is an assistant at the Institute for Semiotics, Aesthetics, and Cultural Research at Princeton University. Lara's predictable life is dramatically disturbed when she receives a ticket to a chamber music concert from an anonymous benefactor and finds herself seated next to Zedrick Dewe, who himself is also the apparent beneficiary of a ticket from an unknown donor. Quade, vaguely reminded by Dewe of her estranged brother, is unconsciously drawn to Dewe, going so far as to invite him back to her apartment --- a brazen act for her --- only to ultimately rebuff him. Dewe becomes violent in reaction to the rejection before finally leaving. Quade subsequently becomes aware that Dewe is stalking her and takes matters into her own hands. Quade, the pursued, becomes the pursuer. Her quest returns her to her childhood home and the past that left her physically scarred and emotionally empty. Quade discovers the reason for Dewe's obsession with her, and with it the certain knowledge that all and everything she knew about her past is wrong. The results, from the beginning to the end, are shocking. The conclusion of TAKE ME, TAKE ME WITH YOU is haunting in its ambiguity. While the novel is complete in itself, there are questions --- one, in particular --- left unanswered, which might indicate that more novels concerning Quade and her family are in the offing. Quade is a disturbing protagonist who will remind you of at least a couple of people with whom you have a nodding acquaintance but not a friendship, I guarantee. Yet one is left at the conclusion of TAKE ME, TAKE ME WITH YOU with the desire to know her better, to learn what happens to her at the end of the book. The image that kept coming to me while reading this work, and stays with me even now, is that of the Munch painting "The Scream." You will hear it, and see it as well. Recommended. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
Rating:
Summary: Compelling, thrilling and ultimately unsettling.
Review: The pace at the start of the story gave me a rush of adrenline.
It was superbly crafted, moving in time and presenting the future before the present. The characters were seedy, and the decisions and choices of the protagonist made it hard to root for her. But at the end I accepted her choice along with her.
I am not a follower of mainstream thrillers, nor have I ever read Joyce C. Oates. But after this novel, I intend to start.
Rating:
Summary: Boring and Trite
Review: This is one of the slowest books I have read in quite some time. I tried so hard to make it through but I just couldn't do it, I only made it about halfway through. Kelly tells the story in the 3rd person which makes it even more impersonal and dull, I just couldn't bring myself to give a damn about any of the characters! Maybe there was a story in there somewhere, but I couldn't get through enough of it to find out. Much better books out there.....
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