Book Description

On New Year's Day 1973, Joyce Carol Oates began keeping a journal, which she maintains to this day. Already a well-established literary force by the age of thirty-four, Oates had written three books that had been named finalists for the National Book Award (in 1968, 1969, and 1972), and her novel them won the award in 1970; she had also received a number of O. Henry Awards, in addition to many other honors. Despite the warm critical reception from the literary world, however, the young author was naturally reticent about her personal life and would remain so throughout her career.

Customer Reviews (3)

Intimate and soul-baring
This is an intimate peek at the personal musings of an amazingly talented and prolific writer. It closely follows her career moves and family life for ten years with forays into her childhood and school years. It is a great privilege to witness the inspiration and thought processing of one of the great writers of our time about the dozens of books she worked on during that decade in which she was driven to produce continuously to prove her worth to herself, striving for perfection while fearing it was unattainable.
Embarrassed by her prolificacy after being criticized for it, Oates dives into other interests that happen along (piano lessons, playwriting, book reviews, etc.) to try to distract herself from her incessant writing. "My image is of someone obsessively writing and producing and publishing feverishly..." (p.99). She wants very much to write more slowly, to be more "normal," but once she gets going on an idea she is unable to pace herself. "...Notes on "Bellefleur." More from Raphael's point of view. But slowly. Slowly. I want to take months, years, with this..." (p.263). But despite her desire to write this 592 page novel slowly, her first draft would be completed in eight months and the revision completed in another month and a half.
By the time I reached the middle of the book I was fairly certain of her obsessive/compulsive tendency. Her urge/need to write has a stranglehold on her mind, except when she is obsessing on something else (like music). The hunger - so common in her early characters - is nowhere to be found in the Oates of the journal. What I do find is a marked lack of interest in food. Maybe the physical hunger and cravings for food, with which she endows her characters, is her way of exploring these emotions and feelings to find out what she is missing. In Oates, that hunger/longing is manifested in a powerful creative urge. Only when she is actively involved in classroom instruction or visiting with friends and colleagues, can she push her writing voice away from the forefront of her mind. But even then, the voice is not stilled - merely muffled. Her mind is always writing, writing, writing, the words tumbling over one and other, recording themselves, to spill out later at the slightest beckoning. "I have all I can do to contend with the images that rush forth, in the fullness and complexity of my ordinary days" (p251).
This journal is so intimate and soul-bearing, I am repeatedly struck by her generosity in sharing it with us. One wonders why, since she can't possibly need the money or the name recognition. Perhaps it is apologetics for her phenomenal prolificacy (she has written at least 70 books and probably closer to 100) - a need to convince her critics that she labors as hard over her work as any other writer does. Whatever her reason, as a longtime fan, I am grateful for a chance to get the story behind the writer. I closed the book reluctantly and with hope that more decades of her journaling will someday be published.

Pound for pound, the weightiest American writer
Yea, she writes more than anyone else, but looking into this--an era that some might argue is the best period of JCO's career--is just another reminded why this reader no longer reads her work: it's just not that interesting anymore.There's just so much material by her that's available that's second rate, it seems odd that she's publishing a volume that even she has admitted she has not read.My guess is that if you don't have enough of JCO's books on your bookshelf, you might want to add this one.Or you could ask yourself, "Which work by her do I most want to reread?"If there's an answer to that question, I'd take that book off the shelf, and then ask yourself if it was worth the second look.

HUMANIZING JOYCE CAROL OATES
REVIEW BY BARBARA LIPKIEN GERSHENBAUM SEE ALL MY REVIEWS

People write journals for different reasons which are usually not created for public consumption; at least not while the writer is still alive. Nevertheless, this phenomenon has been known to happen and THE JOURNAL OF JOYCE CAROL OATES 1973-1982 is one such book. Oates is considered the most prolific American writer to come out of the twentieth century and move seamlessly into the twenty-first. If nothing else, this journal humanizes her, which offers fans and readers further understanding of the woman, the writer, her love of teaching and the body of work.

In "A Note on the Text" editor Greg Johnson explains why the ten years between 1973 and 1982 make up the entries chosen to create "THE JOURNAL OF JOYCE CAROL OATES: the magnitude of Oates's "4,000 single-spaced typewritten pages" is too much of a project for an editor to complete in a timely fashion. With this in mind he chose one year of "the uniformly high quality ... the journal entries ... [which he] intended to provide an accurate view of Oates's primary concerns" at that time in her writing career. These pieces "focus on her work, her writing process, and philosophical concerns." However some of her very personal experiences and interactions with family, friends, colleagues and students have made their way into this truncated version of her journal.

In her Introduction Oates tells readers that she actually began to keep a journal from 1971-1972 when she was in London and feeling somewhat homesick. " ... This journal seemed to me at the start a haphazard and temporary comfort of sorts, that would not last beyond [that particular time,] yet, astonishingly, ... the journal has endured, and is now thousands of pages housed in the Syracuse University Library Special Collections. My understanding with myself [was] that the journal would remain haphazard and spontaneous ... never revised or rethought; it would be a place for stray impressions and thoughts that shift through our heads constantly; [it] would be a repository ... for experiences and notes for writing."

The Introduction goes on to explain how Oates rationalized, ruminated upon, questioned and analyzed the entire process of journaling. She wonders if she will be too exposed if her journal is published; will the public read it and somehow sense a blurring of her fiction and these entries? If a journal is considered a private place, it is transformed into something else when others read it ... [one] of "the risks of journal-keeping."

She continues her comments: "What I have seen of this edited/abridged journal, so capably presented by Greg Johnson, affects me too emotionally to make its perusal rewarding: revisiting the past is like biting into a sandwich in which you've been assured, there are only a few, really a very few, bits of ground glass." She goes on to opine upon the reasons why she feels this way: "Does the uncensored journal reveal too much of me? Does the journal of the 1970s/1980s return me to a time in which ... my parents were alive" for example. What? Joyce Oates has not read the published version of her journal ... or at least she has not read all of it. When she talks about a "glass sandwich" readers will have a visceral reaction that will provoke them into thinking about having themselves outed in what they had begun as private writing.

Every journal, regardless of its author, will be a collage of memories, dreams, desires, self-regard, internal turmoil, petty arguments ... warm reconciliation, satisfaction and a whole host of personal experiences seemingly of import only to the author. However, journals cannot help but offer readers a window into the writer's personality, a critique on her/his work so far, questions about her/his status in society: as a person, as a professional, as a careerist and in this case as a writer and teacher. Reputation alone is not enough to sustain the ego of talented people and this drives them to keep working. Their fans often want more ... they want to understand a body of work produced by the recipient of their ardor ... offered in a way different from formal biography or autobiography.

THE JOURNAL OF JOYCE CAROL OATES 1973-1982 is rich in personal and happy reminiscences about her husband, her parents, her joy in gardening, her passion for entertaining, her respect and great regard for fellow writers and other luminaries she has known and/or continues to see. She is generous and humble. In assessing her life in 1981 about eight months after completing ANGEL OF LIGHT and A BLOODSMOOR ROMANCE she writes: "How gracefully things are taking shape, financial, professional, otherwise. ... In all, a lovely day. Amen."

But not every entry is as bright as this one. An intruder invaded her office and "thrust something at me, a tiny package. A razor blade in it, I'm led to believe." Another encounter with violence occurs in the form of a tongue-lashing: "You're very anti-man, aren't you" ("must be confusing me with the feminists".) Oates writes in her journal: "The pointlessness of violence. ... Not simply for the criminal, but for the victim. I don't think I will, or could, learn anything from the experience. Or could I?"

Perhaps she did. Oates speaks in a very American voice and imbues her writing with myths, history, family, ideas and ideals associated with the suburban, urban, academic, political and street images of the landscape of the United States. Some of her books are overtly violent and others use violence as a device to make a larger statement about the culture we inhabit. Yet, she never preaches nor does she knock the reader over the head with potentially vile ideas.

As a matter of fact, when she talks about writing, the process of writing, the formation of characters, the flow of dialogue, the choice of setting, the pace of the plot and in what century or universe the book resides, she concludes: "If I wonder where my personality really exists, in what form it best expresses itself, the answer is obvious: in the books. Between hard covers. Hard covers. The rest is Life."

Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum

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Book Description
Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. As powerful and relevant today as it on its initial publication, them chronicles the tumultuous lives of a family living on the edge of ruin in the Detroit slums, from the 1930s to the 1967 race riots. Praised by The Nation for her “potent, life-gripping imagination,” Oates traces the aspirations and struggles of Loretta Wendall, a dreamy young mother who is filled with regret by the age of sixteen, and the subsequent destinies of her children, Maureen and Jules, who must fight to survive in a world of violence and danger.

Winner of the National Book Award, them is an enthralling novel about love, class, race, and the inhumanity of urban life. It is, raves The New York Times, “a superbly accomplished vision.”

Them is the third novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, A Garden of Earthly Delights, Expensive People, and Wonderland, are also available from the Modern Library. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (22)

Realism stretched like putty
Perhaps the greatest trick which Oates performs in Them is her ability to take emotions which human beings have been examining for centuries, like love, and pull them apart, elongate them to such an extent that they are barely recognizable from their pedestrian definitions.There is an excruciating, unrelenting quality to Them, and it is found in this inscrutable ability to take the banal and make it rich, painful, grotesque.This novel of great pain laid bare is not so much an exercise in exposing human universals, but showing how distressingly small human concerns are;in the great sweep of events little people remain little, no matter how large their emotions.

The only kind of fiction that is real
As writer Joyce Carol Oates states in the introduction of her "them", this book is `the only kind of fiction that is real'. The gimmick in this book is that she tells the story as if it were reality. According to her early note, the narrative is based on some letters she received from a former student. This so-called student wasn't a good writer, but she thought her story worthy telling therefore her teacher assumed the task.

The student is Maureen Wendal, one of `them'. The narrative is about her and her mother, Loretta, and her older brother Jules. Oates follows a couple of years in the lives of these people. In their lives there are many ingredients that could turn the novel into a soap opera -- rape, love, lies, prostitution --, but this writer does not deals with the cheap prose. Her sentences are crafted, and her characters thoroughly developed, making all of them very real.

Political and historic background lend the book more relevance. The famous Detroit riots in the middle 60's are part of these lives. Oates seems to be interested in the subtle relationship between reality and fiction. She borrows `real' lives to construct fiction that has as basis real facts that change the lives of her characters.

As she points out in her introduction, nothing in the novel was exaggerated in order to increase the drama. Not matter if her work is real or not -- this is not her point, after all -- the fact is that she wrote an incredibly good book populated with fictional characters that read like real. And this is more than any reader can long for.

Possibly The Novel Upon Which Oates Built Her Reputation
Jules, Loretta, and Maureen Wendall are three of the most tormented and tormenting characters from modern American literature. These people, even Loretta but especially Maureen, have the capacity to advance themselves beyond their lower-class roots, yet each allows himself or herself to be doomed not just by the turmoil of events outside their lives, but by the limitations of their own personalities.

When Oates composed this aggressively frustrating novel some forty years ago, the material about which she wrote--whites living in poverty relocating from a rural setting to the Mecca of Detroit--was revolutionary and ground-breaking. The murders, sexual assaults, cruelty, kidnapping, government corruption, even the undermining of the American Dream, was all presented without dramatic enhancement or judgment, it was simply spoken of as any other event would be. This lack of commentary on the part of the author makes all that comes to pass within "them" so much more startling. Unlike many of her later forays into fantasy, this novel aches within the confines of the realism with which she wrote it.

Beginning with a cold blooded slaying in a bed and ending thirty years later in the ashes of the Detroit riots, "them" reconstructs much of the unpleasant side of mid-century American lower class life. Time and again we see glimmers of hope for Jules and Maureen, and (starting with the move to Detroit itself) for Loretta, and in every case---but one---we watch as the characters themselves let the chances go unused, or worse, warp them past recognition.

The novel "them" is powerful and disconcertingly real. The fact its author tells us about such terrible things in literary prose makes it seem all the more offensive to our sense of complacency.

The chapter near the end in which Maureen Wendall writes a letter to her teacher, Joyce Carol Oates, might confuse many, but this, too, is a literary construct, and represents an unusual Oatesean technique, a kind of letting the story rupture and protrude outward into what we think of as "our" world.

It's been a dozen years since I first read this novel and to this day I think it stands out more than any other Oates work as her most alluring trip into the superconsciousness of the twentieth-century American nation.

Great Writing, so-so story
To read this book is a pure pleasure. The writing is amazing, descriptive but not so much that your imagination is constricted.The characters are so complex and well developed, it makes reading along with them realistic and enjoyable.However, this is one of those "good" books with a depressing plot.That's how I would describe it, depressing.Over the course of the book things just keep getting worse, and at the very end - well, I won't give anything away.If you're the type of person who likes to watch movies like "Schindler's List", extremely well done but emotionally taxing, then you'll love this book.
One thing I was amazed at, however, was how Oates talked about things I have never before read in a book for school.She doesn't use any euphimisms, that's for sure.I suggest you read it, overall the writing and powerful emotions conveyed to the reader are far more amazing than anything else I have ever read.

makes me want to shoot myself...
... but I love this book.jules, maureen and loretta are the most foolish, pathetic and delusional narrarators that you will ever come across.almost every sentence is painful and will make you want to slap some sense into them.unfortunately, after a while you wind up thinking like them, and in the end you actually agree with their unsettling point of view. This book will haunt you.. ... Read more

Amazon.com
A hero who gets into the mind of a serial killer is a fixture of television crime shows, but such stories are usually disappointing, because the viewer knows it's just a gimmick. Not so with this unusual little novel, which The New York Times called a "note-perfect, horror-comic ventriloquization of a half-bright, infantile serial killer." Joyce Carol Oates has so convincingly written through the voice of a killer, you will feel nervous while reading at how familiar, how human, he is. Part of how she achieves the effect is through sparing use of bizarre capitalization (e.g., "MOON" and "FRAGMENT") and crude drawings done with a felt-tip pen. But the language is what makes it come alive, as in such weird statements as "My whole body is a numb tongue." This book was winner of the 1996 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (52)

A deceptively simple novel that tackles a tough subject
The protagonist of Joyce Carol Oates's Zombie is thirty-something problem child Quentin P.The son of an accomplished professor, Quentin is on probation for a sexual molestation charge and currently working as a caretaker for his grandmother's boarding property.He struggles daily with his desires for a sexual zombie of his own, a creature who will be a companion without passing judgment or challenging his master.He has attempted crude surgery on several candidates, always taking care to choose victims from the fringes of society, so they will not be missed or connected to Quentin P.

In diary entries, Quentin chronicles his daily life, explaining his dreams to his court-appointed psychiatrist, visiting his grandmother to earn cash for odd jobs, and ducking his father's inquiries.Quentin is as intelligent as he is misguided.He studies one potential victim for weeks, plotting his routines and patterns and getting a thrill off of brief interactions.Quentin quietly awaits the most opportune moment to strike, ensuring he has an alibi for the time of abduction.

The novel climaxes as Oates takes the reader deep inside the mind of a serial killer and sexual sadist as he captures his prey, nicknamed SQUIRREL.Quentin writes, "In a movie there is a FADE OUT, & a FADE IN to a later time.But I could not do that.I did not have that power.I was in Time."The reader is along for the ride, minute by minute, as Quentin fails yet again in his quest for a Zombie, and returns to his makeshift life on the fringes of society, managing to fit in enough to get by undetected.

Fans of this book should pick up Lionel Dahmer's A Father's Story.Dahmer's memoir is the story of the dark journey of a father who was faced with the grisly reality of one of America's most notorious serial murder, mutilation, rape, necrophilia, and cannibalism cases.Both this novel and the memoir humanize the Jeffrey Dahmer's of the world, providing a brief glimpse into the inner machinations of a serial killer.

Haunting
Zombie is a novel of obsession, compulsion, misunderstanding, outrage, prejudice, homosexuality, aberrant psychology, dysfunctional family relationships, murder, and oh so much more. The story centers on Quentin P__, an extremely disturbed thirty-something part-time student, caretaker,convicted sexual predator and serial killer whose one goal in life seems to be the capture and mutilation of individuals for the purpose of creating a "zombie," i.e., a person who will answer only to Quentin P__, and will, upon zombification via crude medical procedure, fulfill Quentin's every desire without question. The book is quite graphic, with descriptions of Quentin's captures and experimentations, and of his crazed (though not crazy to him) quest to create the perfect zombie. The story is told in diary form, and in an odd (though very effective) style, where Quentin seems to be looking at himself from outside of himself, perhaps to gain some distance from himself in order to more easily excuse his own actions. As a whole, Zombie is extremely effective, and is one of the few books whose scenes invaded my dreams--dreams of zombies, of course, but not nice, obedient ones. My highest praise to Oates for this incredible book.

Read it and shiver
Once you read this you won't know what you feel.It is horrific and yet you can see the humanity in a killer.This was my introduction to Oates and although it is not a typical theme in her work, it is pure Oates in it's construction and interest level.Not for the weak.

Becky Due Author of The Gentlemen's Club, Touchable Love
This book really makes you think about the predators that walk among us. This book kept me interested to the end.

Oates does Dahmer, with the expected results.
Joyce Carol Oates, Zombie (Dutton, 1995)

Sometime during the early nineties, Joyce Carol Oates went from being a writer of important, ponderous tomes to being a writer of stripped-down tales. The same innate fascination with the basic meanness of humanity is there, it's just a little more naked than it used to be. The ensuing years have produced some of Oates' finest work, and Zombie fits right into the mold.

It should be obvious relatively early on, even to those who aren't serial killer fans, that Zombie is based on the life of Jeffrey Dahmer. (Greg Johnson substantiates this in Invisible Writer.) Because of that, the book's plot is easy: we have a serial killer. We have a victim. But plot is not, as it rarely is in these new Oates novels, the centerpiece of the work: Oates is interested in getting inside the mind of the creep and presenting his point of view to the audience. This is what makes Oates' newer work compelling; you get to see the thing from inside.

Because of this, it should be clear that if you are a person whose enjoyment of a book lies in the plot rather than the characters, you'll want to avoid pretty much anything Oates has written since 1991. (Her older material should work for you, and the Rosamond Smith novels are pretty much tailor-made.) Zombie is no exception. But if you enjoy seeing through the eyes of a character, getting that character's take on everything gong on around him, you're going to like this. Despite being perhaps the single most prolific writer of the past fifty years, Oates' writing is always top quality, so no worries there. I liked it; I hope you will, as well. *** ½ ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Read this as your introduction
If you've never read Oates- read this for your introduction.It is beautiful and the stories seem prefectly picked.I loved how you can see her progression as an author and also the different paths she's followed in her fiction.Worth it's wait in gold- an then some.

A dark collection that is truly gripping!
Joyce Carol Oates is a gifted writer, and if you're a fan you won't want to miss adding this to your collection. The stories are pretty creepy, but nevertheless appeals to me for it really reveals the darker side of human nature. A gripping read!

Classic Collection
Joyce Carol Oates has been an amazingly prolific writer, of both novels and short fiction.This collection, although only a small portion of her literary output, is a must-have for any fan of her work.The fact that she also wrote the Afterword, explaining her decisions regarding which works to include (for the list was so vast that they couldn't all be in there!), is a plus.(Although I, too, regret her leaving out her "gothic" work, as she did.) Ms. Oates' work can be grim and dark, but I have always been drawn to it, probably because I prefer fiction that explores the darker side of life, and that focuses on the gray areas of reason and moral choices, as I find this much more interesting and thought-provoking. There are seldom, if ever, any tidy endings in her stories, but life moves inexorably forward nonetheless.Hope?Possibly, but often not, or hidden behind despair and longing.Truth?Absolutely, without gloves.Beautiful writing, fascinating stories and characters.Oates is not for everyone, but for those of us who value her work, this volume is a treasure.

The Best Oates Anthology Since 1994's Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been
Coming in at almost 700 pages and featuring eleven new stories as well as two-dozen classic short stories from the 1960's thru the end of the twentieth-century, plus commentary from Oates herself, this anthology represents a sweeping cross-section of this ingenious writer's best short fiction. Her tremendous talent as a novelist aside, I've always felt Oates was at her best when dealing with a short subject, and for anyone unacquainted with her writings it would be hard to finda better starting point for an introduction to one of America's greatest creative minds. As for Joyce Carol Oates' admirers, this is simply a must-possess volume.

While there is a lot of fine writing inside this collection, probably my favorite five stories in High Lonesome would be (in no special order):


Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been

How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Corrections, and Began My Life Over Again

Heat

Four Summers

Concerning The Case of Bobby T.


Considering just how prolific Oates has been since the early 1960's and stopping for a moment to ponder the immensity of her output and all that is out there to be read, collections like this one are very nice, and I hope we soon see further volumes that gather in more of her incredible writings.

Comprehensive
High Lonesome is substantial. Both as physical object, a retrospective (of sorts) and a collection, it is a significant book. Joyce Carol Oates' self-selected tales run the gamut from haunting tales of revenge to close studies of family and relationships. The volume includes 13 new stories plus a sampling of Oates' work extending back to the '60s.

The book itself is a beautiful specimen. Bibliophiles owe it to themselves to give the book a look just for its high production value.

All that said, one begins to tire of Oates' oft-seen subjects (sisters, mothers/daughters) in familiar milieu (upstate New York). This is not a fault of the individual stories themselves, but rather having them all bunched together in one spot.

But Oates has an impressive range of voice and style, including the two new stories "The Fish Factory" and the eponymous "High Lonesome," both exquisite. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (10)

When Enough Is Enough
The world portrayed in Joyce Carol Oates fiction is one filled with sudden violence, violence that more times than not comes at the expense of one of her female characters. The Female of the Species, a collection of nine stories, is indeed filled with violence but this time it is not the women who need to worry. Each of the nine stories shows what can happen when a woman decides that she has had enough of a man's abuse, infidelity, desertion and the like or when she gives in to her own sexual demons.

The book is subtitled "Tales of Mystery and Suspense" and that is not a false claim. Each of the stories is cloaked in mystery but the best of the nine shine because of the way that Oates gradually brings them to such a level of suspense that the reader can hardly wait to get to the last page to find all the answers. In "Hunger," the longest of the nine stories, and my favorite, a young wife and mother who seems to have it all, including a rich, older husband who spends more time working than with his family, meets a man on the beach and crazily becomes obsessed with him. Will she come to her senses before she makes a fatal mistake? Is her oblivious husband, a good man who truly loves his wife and daughter, in danger? As the suspense built and built, I completely lost myself in what is one of the best short stories that I've ever read.

The other eight stories are a bit uneven; some of them I will remember a long time for the tragic worlds in which they placed me for a few minutes and one or two others because they just did not work for me. The best of the stories somehow made me sympathetic to the women driven to violence despite the horror of what they were doing. Those included stories about women who respond to fears for their personal safety with violence of their own and stories of children driven to desperation by their mothers. But I found "Madison at Guignol" to be a surrealistic misfire that left me both repulsed by its descriptions of torture and confused by its message. And I was disappointed that "Angel of Mercy" did not offer any new insights into what causes a nurse to kill her patients rather than to watch them suffer slow and painful deaths.

That is the danger, I suppose, in a book that contains only nine stories. The ones that don't work out for the reader remain as memorable as the ones that do.

horrible and empty
I have been an Oates fan for 20 years or more--since I was a teenager and found my mother's copy of "Where are you Going, Where have you been?" I have always felt that the gruesome, macabre, and disturbing elements of Oates' work were unfailingly balanced by her subtle and precise renderings of complex human motives and desires. In this book, the shell of Oates is still there, but the deeper layers that had kept her stories from tumbling into sick, voyeuristic, violence-porn are glaringly absent. This book fails to explore anything deep or worthwhile and conveys only ugliness and evil. Many of the stories seem to come from some well of hatred toward women that is truly disturbing. In the past, reading Oates' stories was always worth the trip. No longer. Something has changed and not for the better. I would not advise anyone to read these stories.

Chilling and insightful
Scripture says that the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons.The meaning of this verse is commonly taken to imply the consequences of sinful parenting.For Oates, the sins of the parents are visited on the daughters.Here is an outstanding collection of women and girls of varying ages and circumstances who have in common both a horrible past or current hurt/injury by the one who they should trust the most and the horrible psychological and often sociopathic, violent and self-destructive effects of these hurts.Nabokov explores these themes.What makes Oates' contribution worthwhile is the brevity of the genre and glimpse into each life leaving you wanting to know more.In a sense, we often come across people with such backgrounds and who are severely disturbed as they briefly cross our paths.It is all too common and real.A book worth reading and thinking about.

Splendid Femme Fatale Tales from Oates
I certainly beg to differ with some of the disappointing customer reviews I have read here for Joyce Carol Oates's latest short story collection, "The Female of the Species". While Oates is not my favorite writer, I have yet to be disappointed with any of her work; whether these are short stories, novellas or novels demonstrate her considerable range and artistic abilities as a writer of superb fictional prose. In her latest collection, Oates certainly doesn't disappoint with her richly textured, stylish prose offering tales of women and children who are forced to commit acts most foul. My own favorite stories are "So Help Me God", "Madison at Guignol", and "Hunger", but the others are well worth reading too. "So Help Me God" chronicles the loneliness of a young wife who takes matters into her own hands when she finally deals with her older, violent husband, after being taunted by an unknown obsessive caller who knows intimate details about her life. "Madison at Guignol" is Oates at her stylishly wicked best, as a young fashionista gets her just desserts at the hands of some salesgirls in an opulent Madison Avenue store. "Hunger" describes a married woman's obsession with a young, handsome French-speaking visitor, who wins not only her heart, but also her young daughter's. Without question, Oates is still at the height of her creative powers with these elegant tales of diabolical mischief and mayhem; these are tales worth reading, but in small doses - as an editorial reviewer noted - to enjoy not only her elegant prose but also her splendid plotting.

Crushingly Disappointing
Would the woman writing under Joyce Carol Oates' name these days please return America's greatest living author to us?

Seriously, this was the most unenjoyable, in fact most distressingly bad, book by Oates I've read, among the maybe thirty I have had the utmost pleasure to read.

I don't know what vein Oates is tapping to construct these writings but the prose does not sound like her at all, the stories themselves are unimpressive, unwelcoming, unpleasantly centered on people who do not merit consideration. And worse still, I find this is a trend with Oates these days. I can't think of a single book she's published since Middle Age that has been (yes, strictly in my opinion) any good. The short story in Female of the Species that was called "Madison at Guignol" was perhaps the worst Oates story ever published. (And yes I do understand the connotation of the word "Guignol" in the title.)

Some might accuse me of approaching Oates with preconceived notions and then recoiling when she fails to deliver what I, myself, wanted, but that's not the case. One thing I have always applauded in this author is her chameleon-like ability to cross genre boundaries and create tales so divergent in theme and tone that they could have been the opus of a half-dozen different people. I have avidly read along thru Gothic stories, mysteries, romances, non-genre pieces, novellas, poems, short fiction, novels, literary criticism and plays by Oates, and so I believe I can fairly say I do not stereotype Joyce Carol Oates or expect any one thing from her, but in this case, as much as reporting it pains me, this was a bad book and I can only hope Oates bucks the trend and reaches back into the well of talent the world knows she has, and that her next book(s) will be much better. ... Read more

Book Description
Successful author and famous intellectual Marya Knauer did not always occupy such a secure and comfortable position in life.Her memories of her childhood in Innisfail, New York are by turns romantic and traumatic. The early violent death of her father and abandonment by her mother have left her with a permanent sense of dislocation and loss. After decades apart, Marya becomes determined to find the mother who gave her away.In searching for her past, Marya changes her present life more than she could ever have imagined.Vividly evoking the natural beauty of rural upstateNew York, and the complex emotions of a woman artist, Marya: A Life is one of Joyce Carol Oates's most deeplypersonal and fully-realized novels. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Oates' most autobiographical novel
This incredibly prolific author has readily admitted to this novel as her most autobiographical. Marya whirlwinds through the brutality of schoolyard life, the angst of adolescence, the trials of academia, the upsets of failed relationships. In the loosest sense, this is a Bildungsroman, the tale of a young person on the make.If one scene in the novel stands in the reader's memory, it would be an episode about a third of the way through when the school's English teacher is tormented by the class to the point of nervous breakdown..The episode invites comparison with what happens early along in another Bildungsroman, Richler's THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ.

This story is Marya's life, but in some strange way Marya is an outsider, someone less at the centre of events than someone pushed round by them.Self-awareness is her salvation; if not for Marya, then for everyone around her we are reminded of Nietzsche's words about nondescript people who register their presence in the world with a kind of dumb amazement.Everything Marya does shows her on a level of understanding far beyond that of her kin, her classmates, her coworkers. Halfway through the novel (p. 137), we have the intellectually precocious Marya, for whom "every word of LEAR [was] hooked in flesh and could not be dislodged." [218 words]

Good but Oates has done better
It was Virginia Woolf who decried the lack of literature about the lives of the masses, the everyday folk: "All these infinitely obscure lives remain to be recorded," she said. Of course, she didn't promise to read them!

In MARYA, A LIFE, Oates attempts to fill that void. Marya is a portrait of a modern woman from a bewildered childhood to a womanhood that commands admiration, respect and love. She is a loner, bright and different from the people around her. She strives for self understanding and fulfillment.

Joyce Carol Oates is a meticulous storyteller and a vivid writer. I wonder if this is autobiographical. If so, the Woolf reference becomes irrelevant. Oates is definitely ordinary folk -- she is one of the finest and most recognized writers on the contemporary American literary scene.

But if you're in the mood for a book about a woman growing up and "making it" on her own, you'll enjoy this one.

Sunnye Tiedemann (aka Ruth F. Tiedemann)

True to form, the last sentence came through.
I read this book and couldn't help thinking that I was just "hearing" an account of someone's life. I felt as if I was missing something which I was. And it came out in the last sentence of this amazing and I don't know how she does it book by Joyce Carol Oates. Between "Them", "Do With Me What You Will". "You Must Remember This", and Short Stories written by this woman, I don't know how she knows, how can she get into "our" lives, "our" minds, "our" thoughts, and write so knowingly and correctly about life with such feeling and understanding, I'll never comprehend, just wish if only I had the insight and ability she has. A friend years ago said this book was written as if about my personal family and knowledge she had about our life, but this book was everyone's story, no one could not relate. Again, I thank Joyce Carol Oates for her knowing. I am sure she would understand the previous sentence.

Character development like only Oates can deliver
This is another great book by Oates, that really takes you into the mind of the character.At times it is a bit erratic, and even tedious, butin a style that makes you want to read on.It is a good read if you love thedescriptive style of Oates and don't require a lot of dialog and action tomaintain your attention. ... Read more

Book Description

In Salthill-on-Hudson, a half-hour train ride from Manhattan, everyone is rich, beautiful, and -- though they look much younger -- middle-aged. But when Adam Berendt, a charismatic, mysterious sculptor, dies suddenly in a brash act of heroism, shock waves rock the town. But who was Adam Berendt? Was he in fact a hero, or someone more flawed and human?Download Description
"Special feature: This PerfectBound e-book contains ""Enchanted Places,"" Joyce Carol Oates's essay about the rooms we live in - especially selected for the e-book by the author.A darkly comic novel from the author of BLONDE and WE WERE THE MULVANEYS.In Salthill-on-Hudson, a half-hour train ride from Manhattan, everyone is rich, beautiful, and--though they look muich younger-- middle-aged.But when Adam Berendt, a charismatic, mysterious sculptor, dies suddenly in a brash act of heroism, shock waves rock the town.But who was Adam Berendt? Was he in fact a hero, or someone more flawed and human?His loss and the rumors that surface of his possible lovers plunge his friends into grief, confusion, and self-reflection.The women who loved Adam find themselves engaging in life-altering romantic adventures.The men who were Adam's closest friends become utterly transformed in his absence.Adam's lawyer, Roger Cavanagh, who has broken the law for Adam's sake, becomes invovled with an elusive and perhaps treacherous young woman.Marina Troy exiles herself to fulfill a wish Adam had made for her. Lionel Hoffmann sets out, unwisely but with great hope, to recapture his lost youth after a lifetime of soulless financial success, even as his wife, Camille, discovers an unspeakable joy close to home.Augusta Cutler, a hitherto sensous, unreflective woman, defiantly endeavors to solve the mystery of Adam's origins, even if ti means losing her marriage and family.MIDDLE AGE: A ROMANCE is an intimately drawn, richly sympathetic, yet unsparingly comic portrait of the affluent class at the dawn of the twenty-first century.Incisive, insightful, and never predictable, it's a uniquely American saga of self-determination and identity from one of our finest writers of contemporary fiction. " ... Read more

Customer Reviews (36)

John Gardner: "Joyce Carol Oates is one of the great writers of our time"
I spent a whole month driving to work and back home listening in my car to Joyce Carol Oates's darkly comic yet compelling and even warm novel "Middle Age: A Romance" as read by Mary Peifferon 19 CDs. I'd spent 21 hours in the fictional Salthill-on-Hudson, half an hour outside Manhattan, New York, which is a small peaceful community of educated, attractive, andwealthypeople, mostly couple married for many years but some are single or divorced,where "everyone is middle-aged" in their 40s, 50s or even 60s but looks much younger. The main character of the novel, charismatic and mysterious sculptor Adam Berendt dies on the very first page. His tragic unexpected drowning in the Hudson River as he tries to rescue a child has an enormous and profound effect on his friends, both men and women. The loss of a friend make these people look at their lives, marriages, relationships, and careers in a new and often painful light, learn that life can be changed even in the middle age when the passions, feelings, and desires seem to have disappeared from their sleepy, ordered, and comfortable existence, and actually change their lives and themselves with the different results, optimistic and hopeful in some cases, dark and even tragic in the others.


Joyce Carol Oates possesses such a great talent as a writer, such precision and accuracy at analyzing and describing the smallest details of the human conditions and motivations that she is able to make not heroic, sometimes arrogant and in the beginning of the novel useless, weak and pathetic characters interesting andsympathetic, alive and multi-dimensional. She actually made me believe that the changes are possible at any stage of life as the story (or rather stories of several Salthill-on-Hudson's residents who have been all affected by Adam Berendt's life and death) progresses.Listening to the novel as read by Mary Peiffer was a great pleasure of enjoying the harmony of the brilliantly written prose and its sound.

A Good Novel By Oates, Softer in Approach Lacking Her Trademark Intense Drama
Oates dedicates the novel to "To my Princeton friends who are nowhere in these pages." But unlike many of her other works most of the many characters are sympathetic and generous. They support worthy causes, and most are appealing, so it would not be an insult if they were like some of her Princeton friends.

Joyce Carol Oates was born in 1938 in upstate New York State and is a distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton. She gained fame with her first novel With Shuddering Fall in 1964. Now four decades later, she is the author of scores of novels, short stories, essays, plays, and poetry. The present novel from 2001 is somewhere near the end of the chronological order of her body of work and we see the polished prose of an experienced writer. I have read a number of her works from different time periods in her career and set up a Guide to Joyce Carol Oates Listmania list. Compared to her early novels, this is a straightforward and almost a "light" read without much intense drama, and certainly less than other recent Joyce novels such as The Falls. The novel has a nice story structure and easy prose, and the reader is spared the "too much prose" found in some early works such as The Assassins.

Oates is known for her emotional and dramatic stories, often with women or even poor women such as students or teachers caught up in stressful situations, and often set in her native upstate New York (Niagara River - Syracuse - Erie,PA. triangle). Actually, some of her best work is found in her 10 to 20 page short stories, which are often dramatic, sometimes very intense, and many involve off-beat characters, and rapes, murders, and people with serious mental health issues, etc. People who have not read her collections of short stories should take a look at those. The present novel contains few of those off-beat elements. It is a story set in a small town or group of towns on the Hudson river, and as Oates tells us it is a 28 minute commuter train ride from the center of New York city. Some of the characters work in New York city and just live in the area. Most of the people in her novel are wealthy or at least comfortable financially.

The story begins with the death of a middle aged man on a July 4th weekend. Adam Berendt dies of natural causes while swimming to rescue a child. He has a heart attack. As we learn, he is somewhat mysterious character, but he is also an admired friend of many in the town of Salthill on the Hudson. We follow the people after the death and how they interact and change, including a younger women who he admired and who runs a local book store.

This is a relatively compelling read, but lacks the intensity of some of Oates's short stories. As a work by Oates it is almost a bit "tame." It is about the characters and how they change after the death, or there personal views and feelings, and their relations. It is a theme more subtle than some of her other works and the novel is a very easy read.

This is an entertaining story that most Oates fans will love, and many others will like. It is an easy and quick read.

Interesting
Decades ago, in a young pique, I "gave up reading" Joyce Carol Oates. I vowed I would never pick up another book again. I have no idea why, or which or her works at the time precipitated this decision, but I felt so strongly about it, I continued to shun her works.

Finally, I picked up the unabridged version of this book on CD (19 discs!) and became mesmerized by the story of one rather ordinary-seeming man, Adam Berendt, who transforms the lives of everyone he meets in the small upstate New York village of Salt-Hill-on-Hudson.

Since Adam dies in an accident very early on in the book, we are left to meet and decipher all the acquaintances whose lives he very much affected--from the middle-aged wives who, to a woman, all fell into unrequited love with him, to the younger Marina Troy, a single woman who thought he was her lover (although the relationship was never consummated), to the various husbands in Adam's circle, all of whom either admired him almost as much as their wives, or were affected by him whether they wanted to be or not.

The mystery of who Adam was--or was not--is hinted at during the accident, when we get a brief glimpse into his thoughts. The actuality of it is not solved until more than 3/4 into the book, and is anticlimactic, although upsetting.

To my great shock, the book has a happy ending of sorts. I did not expect that, and I'm not sure it actually fit the story, but it does tie in with Adam's redemptive qualities.

Will I read another by Oates? I don't think so. I think this was enough, although I can't think of anything bad to say about it.

Oates fans will love this one
When a man dies while attempting to save the life of a drowning child, the story has just begun.His death opens a tale of people searching for their purpose in life, for their true spot in the world.
The man who has died, Adam, entered their lives and seemingly took their world by storm.Although they all believed him to be their friend, it seems that Adam did not have a close personal relationship with any of them, except in their own versions of their lives.What he did do was to get them to seek out the truth of their lives in varied ways, from conversations, by his example, at times almost by pitting them against themselves and each other.
As each person mourns his passing, they begin to change their lives and goals and to strive for more than they have in the past.More love, more effort, more independence, more happiness, more freedom........
While there is much introspection, there is also a self-centered aspect to many of their lives in the manner in which they interpret life around them.
I found the action of one college age daughter to be beyond infuriating and could not believe that the father suffered her abuse in the manner that he did.
Those that love to read this author will find this a book to be a treasure. That I am not a fan, is probably obvious.I find her work complex, which I enjoy, but emotionally draining at times, when there appears to be little redemption for anyone and the characters appear too hard edged to ring true.I think she is a gifted writer, but not someone I seek out.I read this for a book group and the book group was divided over this novel.

Oates' Best Novel Of This Decade
What a delight Middle Age: A Romance was to read! It is a stirringly complex book in which a huge cast of characters share center stage as they intertwine, interact, and face their personal quests for self-respect, liberation, or understanding. Set in upstate New York among the monetarily-privileged (but achingly insecure and empty) of the turn of the twenty-first century, this novel begins when one of the town's most beloved and mysterious figures dies what appears from all angles to be a most heroic death. From there America's most accomplished woman of letters, Joyce Carol Oates, leads the reader along on a surprisingly fast-paced story of exactly how this single death impacts an entire town, and how it sets into motion a multitude of major and minor events that leave so many of those within the story changed. And (in saying this here and now I in no way spoil anything) unlike so many literary outings with Oates, this solid novel of evolution and revelation ends on a happy note as it ties up its loose ends in positive and satisfying ways for all concerned. Middle Age: A Romance is a really good book that should unite a large cross section of readership in glowing praise at its author's awesome talent. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (4)

Macabre
While agreeing with fans of Joyce Carol Oates that her prose and general writing style are second to none, this collection of macabre stories failed to please. Perhaps the stories are just TOO unpleasant and, although I'm as sure as can be that I'll be condemned as precious and unworthy to understand such a brilliant writer, I still choose torisk running the gauntlet of her followers to state that these stories both depressed and sickened me. My reading time is too precious to waste any of it on feeling depressed and demoralized, even by such a fine writer as Joyce Carol Oates.

Chilling tales of evil in the ordinary
Oates' stories don't include a single ghost or supernatural event. Instead these 10 macabre tales focus on the happenstance of evil colliding with ordinary life. Many of the stories carry a sense of inevitability.

The opening story homes in on the bullying personality of a beefy runner who likes to startle the weaker runners in his path. You know how it's going to end and can only watch, with a certain uncomfortable satisfaction.

Some, like "Valentine" - a monologue from a spurned man to his lover - have a Poe-like feel, lucid but unhinged. From the first word the outcome is certain, but the reader is riveted all the same.

Others imagine the psychological effects of a very specific event - the change in a long-awaited child after a near-death accident; or the strange, halting absorption of understanding that Daddy is a serial killer.

These are stories to be read singly, not in a gulp. They are visceral, gruesome and unsparing of the darker aspects of human nature; also beautifully crafted and compelling.

Oates Does It Again! (Unfortunately...)
It's often said that no American writer has ever had a greater capacity to re-invent herself than Joyce Carol Oates. The trouble is, not every new literary incarnation of this great writer is an improvement on the old. When she released what might be regarded as her first true collection of macabre stories with 1994's Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque, it was a bold move for this woman whose primary reputation rested on the strength of her non-genre writings, and most received that book with generous praise. The trouble is, little did we know then that she would return to mine this vein again and again, and with each visitation find less there.

The Museum Of Doctor Moses serves to gives us some very disturbing short stories. As a whole it contains one passably good story, the title one, an Oatesean tale that is both believable and shocking enough to merit some praise, and its presents some lesser pieces that I've already halfway put out of my mind. The remainder of the collection falls somewhere beneath the quality of the story of the disturbed and disturbing Doctor Moses, and at times well below it.

"Hi! Howya Doin!" was as direct as A+B=C, and could easily have been constructed by a gifted seventh-grader.

"Suicide Watch" had a "lifted from the headlines" feel to it, as did much of Oates' far superior 1991 collection Heat, and while not a terrible story, was decidedly unworthy of the talents Oates has long proven she owns.

"Stripping" the worst story in this anthology was frankly a waste of paper, ink, and time on both the reader and writer's behalf.

The revenge-themed "Valentine, July Heat Wave" was the story that more than any others in Doctor Moses has the tone of classic Joyce Carol Oates, but even it was not particularly memorable.

Which leaves a half-dozen other stories I'll decline to comment on here. None of what remained to be read was all that bad or all that good, either, but all in all were disappointments.

Perhaps I expect too much from Joyce Carol Oates. She has spent half a century crafting an impressive body of literature sure to be read and studied for many generations. At her time of life she has certainly earned the luxury of writing what she wishes. I only wish that she would "reincarnate" into a form that would lead on to something more worthwhile than most of what she's published thus far in this decade, the tens.

Read at your own discretion but don't be surprised if you come away a little disappointed.

Macabre Deluxe
"The Museum Of Dr. Moses" is perhaps one of Joyce's greatest efforts in the milieu of the macabre.Unlike many of her previous books and stories on the theme, this book actually discusses situations that are much more day to day occurring and much easier to empathize with than are some of her most gruesome stories of the past.

In many ways, this technique brings the world of the macabre in coincidence with the world of daily life.In her story "Hi! Howya Doin!" she describes a jogger who in his physically fit and nonchalant manner becomes an irritant to others.It is easy to imagine this irritation, and how some others might react to it.In fact, it is interesting for the reader to imagine, that even the somewhat unexpected and macabre end is something they can actually empathize doing.

Other stories are even more detailed and more graphic in illustrating the macabre.Yet each of them are tied enough to regular daily life, that it can be imagined by the reader.It can even be imagined that the reader could be in that position.For example, in her story, "Valentine, July Heat Wave" the story involves a couple that have recently separated and a final meeting prior to the inevitable divorce.Yet this meeting is not like any other in the past.

Once again, Joyce's style of portrayal is such that the reader can imagine being in such a similar situation, without that much of a stretch.Only an assumption that their spouse is a little crazed.That in fact probably covers about 96% of marriages in America.Using this new style, Joyce allows the reader to come close to the macabre experience through her articulation.

The book is recommended for all readers interested in tales of the grotesque and macabre.It is also highly recommended for JCO readers in general as it is a new stylistic metamorphosis on the theme for the author.
... Read more

Amazon.com
The Collector of Hearts is an eerie, powerfully strangecollection of classic Oates narratives.Few of the stories are blatantly horrific,although "Posthumous," with its subtle handling of a gruesome death, could give Stephen King's blood and gore a run for its money. Instead, Oates is a master of turning the everyday into the horrible, so that the stories are unsettling--grotesque because they seem familiar. The author skillfullycreates believable characters, both sympathetic and despised, sometimes in as few as three or four pages.We feel for the victims of dysfunctional families, and we loathe the perpetrators of evil even as we cringe while relishing their demise.

Not every one of the stories in The Collector of Hearts is a masterpiece.Some are almost forgettable.However, enough of them are filled with Oates's signature understated dread to make them worth reading, and the occasional gems, such as "The Hand-puppet" and "The Affliction,"make this collection worth owning. --Mara FriedmanBook Description
"Shimmering . . . Oates is a master at this genre."--Boston Globe

In these twenty-five gothic horror tales from the master of the short story, Joyce Carol Oates explores the waking nightmares of life with eyes wide-open, facing what the bravest of us fear the most. From the Kafka-esque "Scars" to a balladlike tale of erotic obsession in "The Crossing," to the mother-daughter bond given a fatal twist in "Death Mother," the stories in The Collector of Hearts illuminate the mysteries of the human experience--both intellectual and visceral. It is a stunning and richly diverse anthology of mood and menace--haunting, elegiac, and compulsively readable. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

The Squeak
Restrained and disappointing mild, this follow-up to "Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque" didn't render me numb from head to toe yet eerily entranced. The stories seemed strained and forced; very requisite, as if Joyce Carole Oates had a gun pointed to her temple, the nudge of the gun's barrel rattling preconceived story ideas into a mush of oatmeal and brain matter more closely resembling...well, these stories are so ordinary and mundane that an appropriate description is hard to pinpoint. Sad, sad, sad. A huge, HUGE letdown...

Another amazing, disarming short-story collection by Oates!
Those who have followed my reviews know that I love Joyce Carol Oates's writing. Her books are beautifully written and her stories are poignant and haunting at the same time. There is nothing grotesque about The Collector of Hearts, but the stories within this collection are dark, strange, and sometimes downright disarming. This collection, like many of this author's other works, center on broken families and relationships gone awry, and, just like her other books, these stories are at times disturbing and thought provoking to the core. My favorite stories are "Death Mother," "The Sepulchre," "Demon," "Posthumous," "Scars," "The Dream-Catcher," and "Shadows of the Evening." These are my favorites, but there are more incredible stories in this collection. Joyce Carol Oates is one of the best literary voices of today. I urge everyone to read her books if you haven't done. Her books are not for the faint at heart, but for those who enjoy reading strong, dark literature that touch and haunt you in more ways than one.

not intended for the faint of heart
joyce carol oates is one of my favorite all-time writers & this is an excellent selection of really morbid or eerie short stories which is bound to strike a nerve with you. with the exception of perhaps one or maybe two stories, oates has taken suspense to a new literary height & she invites you to her ghastly world of tormented souls & creepy happenings. at times, i'm reminded of the classic tales of terror written by shirley jackson or edgar allan poe as joyce has a distinct literary voice not to be confused with any other living writers. one of the most disturbing tales in the collector of hearts is called death mother. if this one doesn't leave feeling a bit uneasy or nervous, then perhaps you no longer have a pulse. the majority of the stories here are taut, sometimes a bit gruesome, & extremely macabre in oates continual exploration & study of evil which lurkes inside us all. joyce knows the dark screts of thehuman heart all too well & the things which will constrict our throats but this novel is solid evidence that she isn't afraid to reveal her knowledge. as diverse as she is eclectic in her masterful writing style, you simply cannot go wrong with this marvelous collection of short stories. if you enjoy this, you may also like her her book called faithless: tales of transgression or haunted which are also excellent choices. modern day horror writers like koontz or king should be taking notes &/ or attending workshops that this woman may offer. unpleasant reading, my friends. enjoy!

Runs deeper than your average horror tale
Oates' stories in "The Collector of Hearts" are billed asgrotesque, but the stories are not grotesque in the usual sense. Rather, itis the sense of foreboding, of struggling to conquer childhood hurts andbroken relationships, that provide the horror in these tales. These are notstories you read for a good scare, so much as to get a sense of what in ourordinary lives might be horrific. One drawback -- the characters in thesestories start to look and sound alike after awhile.

Not quite as haunting as Haunted
Joyce Carol Oates has an interesting approach to horror.The vague view of the plot and characters allows you to fill in their personalities with the traits of those whom you know.Most of the stories center aroundfamily relations gone wrong.I found Haunter more frightening and suggestyou read that first. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Penzler Pick, January2002: OK, OK. I know it looks like a conflict of interest, orfavoritism, or nepotism, or some -ism or another that appears to be unethical.But it's not. Honestly.

Since I've been creating "Penzler's Picks" for Amazon.com I've never reviewedany of the books I've published under my imprint at Carroll & Graf--until now.I've been tempted many times, for the obvious reason that, if I like a bookenough to publish it, I'd like it well enough to recommend it. But I've resistedfor the reason noted above.

My affection for and admiration of Beasts, however, is so enormous that Ijust can't help myself. I've been an admirer of Joyce Carol Oates for longerthan I care to admit. Indeed, I raved about Blonde in these pages longbefore it was nominated for a National Book Award (and should have won, in myopinion).

Beasts is a little jewel of a book, only 138 pages. Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is aperfect gem, and so are Steinbeck's The Red Pony, and JamesEllroy's Dick Contino'sBlues, and Henry James's The Turn of the Screw; theshort novel is capable of being one of an author's masterpieces. Short novels,or novellas, allow for the author to develop characters more fully than ispossible in a short story, yet constrict them enough to maintain a single mood,or tone, throughout the entire book, which might easily become oppressive in alonger work.

Set in an apparently idyllic New England college town, Beasts is thestory of Gillian Brauer, a student who falls in love with her professor, hisBohemian lifestyle, and anti-establishment attitudes, and what happens when shefalls under his spell.

Knowing that other girls preceded her does not deter Gillian from becoming partof the household of Professor Harrow and his larger-than-life wife, Dorcas, theoutrageous sculptress of shocking wooden totems. Drawn into their life, Gilliansoon becomes a helpless pawn, a victim of her own passions and those of hermentors. Or does she? Sometimes even the most seemingly powerless prey cansurprise a predator.

Savor every word of this little masterpiece, as it is unlikely that you willread anything to equal it for a long, long time. --Otto PenzlerBook Description

Customer Reviews (43)

No, we are not all Beasts, but we could be!
I read *Beasts* one October night just before Halloween and went to bed feeling sick--and not from too much candy. I woke up the next morning wanting to write a novel based on my own college experiences in the 70's.A new genre of strange-but-true college-in-the-70's stories?

Once upon a time, before Political Correctness was even a spec on the far horizon...many of us were simply awash in this simplistic way of exploring freedom.Oates shows that in retrospect there is much to face and realize about that time and place.

The horror in this book is not gratuitous, and the sexual subject matter is central but is not experientially portrayed, certainly not as a turn on--unless you like vomit.The repulsion-attraction theme is prominent.

Whether morality is more relative or more absolute in human experience becomes mute.Repulsion burns out all attraction.What the town and public finds ugly--initially and immediately--actually is ugly.Oates puts the evil back in evil, where the 70's tried to make it banal.

I wish other reviewers here would discuss the meaning of *Beasts* to them. For now, I think I'll save my deepest insights for my own novel.

My first Oates book has made me believe I can take on one of her longer ones.She's accessible to a variety of levels and types of readers, can be read either superficially or deeply, and is worth returning to for further reflection.

Fabulous.
I love Joyce Carol Oates.She writes very well, very succinctly and the characters are fun and strange.I also like the often erotic tone to her works without trying too hard.This is a short read but hard to put down or let go of.

JustRead It- One of JCO best
To date this is my favorite JCO story.It is all the good things that have been said about it and more.Don't let all the good reviews set you up to be let down.Just Read It


It will take you down a dark path, then knock the wind out of you.Enjoy!!!!

Thought it would be better
The best thing about this book was its brevity - only 138 pages long and thankfully so.

This is the story of a college student's journey into an obsessive relationship with her professor and his wife.

It wasn't very well-written; their relationship was obviously quite intense but the writing was anything but. Written in a different way, this could've been a real page-turner. But it wasn't. It was just lukewarm at best.

I wasn't endeared - either positively or negatively - to any of the characters; I felt altogether disconnected from them and the events of the story.

The ending was quite good however, so this wasn't a total loss. But I'm not sure I would ever read another of her books (though her writings under the pseudonym of Lauren Kelly are good) and I definitely wouldn't recommend "Beasts" to anyone.

A great read
I recently discovered Joyce Carol Oates when my older son decided to read Freaky Green Eyes.Beasts was wonderfully written, you could almost feel the nighttime air when the girls had to leave their dorm for the fire alarms.I loved the way the characters were developed, the depth attained in such a short book was impressive, in my opinion.This is definitely a book for more mature readers.Fabulous, short, wonderful read. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (34)

Interesting read, but a little drawn out
This was my first exposure to Ms. Oates. I enjoyed the story for the most part. It was dark and the ending was good - an ending that let the reader figure out what happened.But I had to get used to her style. She would descibe an end result and then go back and give the details that resulted in that particular result. So I was a little confused at first. I found the last third of the book to be drawn out too much regarding the son's music "career" and the set up for Hazel's life. I am going to try another one of her books to see if this is her usual style. Overall, I recommend this book for a LONG read. :)

Too much detail
Joyce Carol Oates always seems to find the most disturbing themes, and this book was no different. It was interesting, and I liked the way it went back and forth between time. I found it really, really long. I'm in a book club, and several people didn't finish it. While I did stick it out, I can't say it was worth it. I think it could have been a lot more interesting if it was about half the length.

couldn't put it down
Yes, I know that's the worst sort of cliche, but it's also true.This is the first Oates novel I have ever read, and it was hard to put down.I can't give a book higher praise than that.Maybe not to everyone's taste, but if this is your cup of tea, it's terrific.

What a Read!!
I listened to the audiobook of "The Graveiggers Daughter", what a great book. This is a story of young girl, who had the worst imagninable childhood with a sick farther and a mother who would not come to peace with the her new world and overcomes the odds. I loved this book and set in my car just to finish the book.The ending was the best, when Rebecca/Hazel meets up with her long lost family and the letters exchanged, itbrought me to tears, what an emotional read.Plus I loved the reader of the audio book she made the book.

The Musician's Mother
I've read quite a few of Joyce Carol Oates' many novels and this is one of her better ones.The gravedigger's daughter is Rebecca Schwart, daughter of Jews who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930's and the book's heroine. Abusive relationships are a major theme in the book as Rebecca leads a miserable childhood with her embittered and disturbed parents, has a brief period of relative happiness working as a hotel maid then enters into an abusive "marriage" with a much older man until she flees with her musical prodigy son. There is a subplot about "Hazel Jones" a name she is called early in the novel by a stranger. Rebecca later takes Hazel Jones as her own name and this mystery of the real Hazel Jones is finally told with a sad and unexpected twist. A well executed epilogue in the form of letters between Esther/Hazel and another daughter of Holocaust survivors makes a memorable ending.This is a long often "wordy" book at 582 pages but worth the time and effort for fans of Oates or other good contemporary writers of women's stories.
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Book Description
Joyce Carol Oates's epic novel of an American family in the 1950's probes the tender division between the permissible and the forbidden, between ordinary life and the secret places of the heart. Set in an industrial, working-class town in upstate New York, this book chronicles the frustrating marriage of parents Lyle and Hannah; the idealistic political journey of son Warren, and the passionate, obsessive relationship that develops