Annal:1970 National Book Award for Fiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the National Book Award in the year 1970. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- –first–
- National Book Award
- 1971–>
- 1970 NBA–Fiction winner
- Score: 10.2
A novel about class, race, and the horrific, glassy sparkle of urban life, them chronicles the lives of the Wendalls, a family on the steep edge of poverty in the windy, riotous Detroit slums. Loretta, beautiful and dreamy and full of regret by age sixteen, and her two children, Maureen and Jules, make up Oates’ vision of the American family—broken, marginal, and romantically proud. The novel’s title, pointedly uncapitalized, refers to those Americans who inhabit the outskirts of society—men and women, mothers and children—whose lives many authors in the…
