Oates' novel explores the Ramsey case through an
observer whom even dedicated CNN viewers might not have been aware of: the
victim's older brother. Now 19 and estranged from his parents, Skyler Rampike
is holed up in a dingy New Brunswick boarding house, writing a tell-all whose
copious footnotes, crossed-out lines, and clever chapter titles don't soften
his sister's ever-present voice. Skyler was supposed to be a gymnastics
prodigy, but parents Betsey and Bix gave up on him after a bad fall at
practice. When his sister Edna Louise shows some rinkside promise on a
playdate, she becomes Bliss, the youngest star of the girls' ice-skating
circuit, with the help of makeup, elaborate costumes, and a team of coaches.
Her performances and Betsey's investment in them strain the Rampikes' marriage
to the point that Bix moves out; he isn't at home, in fact, the night Bliss
disappears from bed, although he returns in time to discover her body in the
basement.
One of Skyler's chapters consists of the line,
"And they all lived horribly ever after." That's a pretty good summary of the
Olympics of guilt through which Oates puts her teenage narrator as he accounts
specifically for his crime, revealed in the first chapter, of ignoring his
sister's calls the night of the murder. (Bliss was a bed-wetter, as JonBenet
was rumored to be, and relied on Skyler to hide the evidence from their mom.)
The spiky satire of suburban life, from the fictional maladies with which
Skyler is diagnosed to the deck of index cards on which Betsey plots every
grocery-store encounter with local society gives way to the familiar Oatesian
trope of the intertwining impulses to self-defend and self-punish. At nearly
600 pages, Skyler's narrative eventually apes the self-aggrandizement he spots
in his parents, but by then, readers may just want to change the channel.
