Author | Joyce Carol Oates |
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Country | United States |
Language | English |
Publisher | Ecco Press |
Publication date | 2003 |
Pages | 307 pp |
ISBN | 978-0061136047 |
The Tattooed Girl is a 2003 novel by American writer Joyce Carol Oates.
Alma Busch, a 27-year-old woman from Akron, Pennsylvania with mysterious tattoos of unknown origin on her body, arrives in the affluent town of Mount Carmel in upstate New York. She is spotted by a man named Dmitri Meatte, a waiter at "The Café" who become her pimp and boyfriend. Alma meets a novelist named Joshua Seigl, who takes her on as an assistant for his next novel even though she steals and destroys his work and hates him for being Jewish.
In a review for The Guardian, author Toby Litt called the novel "a completely gripping tale told in an almost manically propulsive style".[1] Sophie Harrison's review in The New York Times was more critical of its "showy unsqueamishness" and uneven characterization.[2]