A masterly work from a writer with “the uncanny ability to give us a cinemascopic vision of her America” ( National Review ), A Garden of Earthly Delights is the opening stanza in what would become one of the most powerful and engrossing story arcs in literature.Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. In A Garden of Earthly Delights , Oates presents one of her most memorable heroines, Clara Walpole, the beautiful daughter of Kentucky-born migrant farmworkers. Desperate to rise above her haphazard existence of violence and poverty, determined not to repeat her mother’s life, Clara struggles for independence by way of her relationships with four very different men: her father, a family man turned itinerant laborer, smoldering with resentment; the mysterious Lowry, who rescues Clara as a teenager and offers her the possibility of love; Revere, a wealthy landowner who provides Clara with stability; and Swan, Clara’s son, who bears the psychological and spiritual burden of his mother’s ambition.A Garden of Earthly Delights is the first novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, Expensive People , them, and Wonderland , are also available from the Modern Library.
Wonderland Quartet Series
This series delves into the depths of American society, exploring the intricate relationships and aspirations of young individuals. Follow the lives of ambitious characters striving to transcend their social class and find their identity amidst turbulent times. Each installment offers a compelling look at the personal struggles, loves, and disappointments that shape the destinies of individuals and their families. It is an engrossing literary journey capturing the essence of the search for a better life.




Recommended Reading Order
- 1
- 2Expensive People- 308 pages
- 11 hours of reading
 Expensive, affluent, yes - but morally bankrupt - this is the suburbanite society from which Joyce Carol Oates carves out an electrifying novel of Gothic suspense. EXPENSIVE PEOPLE is the journal of Richard Elwood, an eighteen-year-old looking back with disaffection at his childhood in a succession of wealthy suburbs. He buys a rifle by mail-order ('German Sniper Rifle used by Mad Fanatic SS Men - Limited Number!') and roams the neighbourhood at night with it...The suspense is electrifying, the writing lethal. The first sentence is guaranteed to rivet your eyes to the page: 'I was a child murderer,' begins Richard. Now read on. 
- 3Chronicles the lives of the Wendalls, a family on the steep edge of poverty in the windy, riotous Detroit slums 
- 4Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. Spanning from the Great Depression to the turbulent Vietnam War era, Wonderland is the epic account of Jesse Vogel, a boy who emerged from a family tragedy with his life spared but his world torn apart. Orphaned after watching his father murder his entire family, Jesse embarks on a personal odyssey that takes him from a Dickensian foster home to college and graduate school to the pinnacle of the medical profession. As an adult, Jesse must summon the strength to reach across the “generation gap” and rescue his endangered teenaged daughter, who has fallen into the drug-infused 1960s counterculture. Hailed by Library Journal as “the greatest of Oates’s novels,” Wonderland is the capstone of a magnificent literary excursion that plunges beneath the glossy surface of American life. Wonderland is the final novel in Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, A Garden of Earthly Delights, Expensive People, and them, are also available from the Modern Library.JFrom the Trade Paperback edition.