A life rises out of the muck

Reinvention of the self is a powerful subject; its potency lies within the riddle at its heart. Is one’s original self the true core, while re-creation is simply a carapace? Or is a new and evolved identity the authentic self, past history as useless as a snake’s shed skin?

Mudwoman, the compelling new novel by the extraordinarily prolific Joyce Carol Oates, explores these questions of identity. The story centres on M.R. Neukirchen, the first woman president of an Ivy League university in north-central New Jersey, quite like Princeton, who has quashed down her early history.