Murder, scandal, family, growing up; Joyce Carol Oates’s Little Bird of Heaven begins with semi-appealing oddity but sadly never flourishes into an exciting timeline of events. The first half of the novel is told through the mind of Krista, the daughter of Eddy Diehl, an accused murderer of Zoe Kruller with whom he commits adultery (he’s not the only man in Sparta, New York to do so). The second half is told from the point of view of Aaron, the son of the murdered. Like our narrators, the other characters, a handful or so, were awfully non-dimensional; it was quite difficult to connect with any of them. Dramatic scenes were too dry,…