Product Description

Customer Reviews (13)

Chilling, suspenseful and creepy!
This short story collection centers around the workings of the female minds, from six years of age onwards. The mystery and suspense are provided by everday incidents, ranging from something as seemingly banal as playing with a baby brother to murder and euthanasia. It's creepy how Oates lets us into the protagonist's mind and have readers live the story.

This is my first Joyce Carol Oates book and I didn't know what to expect. I think this collection is very well-written and was successful in stringing me along for the heroines' adventures (and misadventures). I look forward to reading other books by Oates.

The Darker Side of Femininity
This collection of short storis examines the capacity of women to do evil. Bringing us into the depths of horror, Oates's protagonists range in age, interest, and situation. We meet a six-year-old girl, a young nurse, a middle-aged fashionista, and an elderly woman dying in a nursing home, among others. What unites all of these women across their stories are the desperate personal circumstances in which they find themselves, and the realization that the only path out is a dark and disturbing one. As with much of Oates's work, this collection addresses the exploitation and marginalization of women in American society, yet it does so through horror and suspense. This is a deliciously suspenseful collection, excellent reading for a spooky October night.

whiny and preachy
The violence is gratuitous. pointless, and just plain stupid. As are these stories. A women commits the capital crime of being married to an older wealthy man. In addition, she is often exasperated with the fawning and usually hypocritical "service providers" with whom she interacts. After Oates exhausts the dictionary heaping scorn on this character--over and over again until the repetition turns the reader numb--Oates has her tortured to death in the back room of a Madison Avenue boutique. Once a provocative and original writer, Oates now writes with the screechy, scolding tone of a bitter crone.

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. ... Read more

Product Description
A young woman tumbles into a nightmare of decadent desire andcorrupted innocence in a superb novella of suspense from National BookAward–winner Joyce Carol Oates. Art and arson, the poetry ofD. H. Lawrence and pulp pornography, hero-worship and sexualdebasement, totems and taboos mix and mutate into a startling,suspenseful tale of how a sunny New England college campus descendsinto a lurid nightmare.Amazon.com Review
Penzler Pick, January 2002: OK, OK. I know it looks like a conflict of interest, or favoritism, 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 reviewed any 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 book enough to publish it, I'd like it well enough to recommend it. But I've resisted for the reason noted above.

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

Beasts is a little jewel of a book, only 138 pages. Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is a perfect gem, and so are Steinbeck's The Red Pony, and James Ellroy's Dick Contino's Blues, and Henry James's The Turn of the Screw; the short 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 is possible 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 a longer work.

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

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

Savor every word of this little masterpiece, as it is unlikely that you will read anything to equal it for a long, long time. --Otto Penzler ... Read more

Customer Reviews (49)

BEASTS: CREEPY EXPLOITATION OF THE EROTICS OF TEACHING
This creepy (2002) novella, set in the mid1970s, presents, as the impressions of a disturbed undergraduate, erotic hysteria among students at a women's college in western Massachusetts, called Catamount and resembling Smith (in geography and architecture).Perverse effects of criminal adults who exploit the erotics of teaching ultimately explain a series of mysterious fires linked to adolescent adrenaline.Read alongside Sylvia Plath's JOURNALS (which Oates reviewed for the NEW YORK TIMES in 2000) and Susan Sontag's REBORN, BEASTS shows how passion for learning and for achievement can turn into obsession with THE ONE WHO IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW.D. H. Lawrence, Franz Kafka and Sylvia Plath provide leitmotifs in this book.The murders near Dartmouth College and Smith's "scarlet professor" scandal seem to be influences as well.The book is tied to the idea that nightmare is the material of potentially great art.

Eros as God
'Beasts' is my first encounter with the work of Joyce Carol Oates. I confess to having been prejudiced against reading her because of her prolific output. In most cases, I feel, quantity leads to a dilution of quality. But she is such a presence in American fiction, having garnered praise from the likes of John Gardner, whom I regard as one of the greatest modern American authors, that it seems negligent to avoid exploring her output. This novella seemed like a good place to start, because of it's brevity, and(perhaps not the best reason, since you can't judge a book by it's cover) because the cover features the painting 'Nightmare' by Fuseli, suggesting a Gothic, psychological theme.

After having finished this short introduction to Ms. Oates' fiction, I know I will want to check out some of her more acclaimed works. While I wouldn't consider 'Beasts' to be great, it makes interesting reading. It is evident that Oates has paid her dues as a writer, and is a master of her craft. She knows how to make you keep turning the pages. On the one hand, her writing reminded me of books I have read by such authors as Peter Straub, Stephen King, or Dean Koontz, who often tell their stories from the point of view of a character who is mentally off-balance. However,the element of creepiness in Oates' story is not supernatural, but derives wholly from the natural horrors produced by obsession and self-indulgence.

This book also contained deep, but unobtrusive, strata of literary and psychological underpinning which is missing from the writings of most popular horror/suspense writers. But that might be expected, as the characters in the novella are intellectuals: a college professor and failed poet, his bohemian wife, a vulnerable and insecure young female student, and, peripherally, some of her student friends. I find it interesting that D.H. Lawrence figures so prominently as an influence on some of the characters in the story. I recently read two of Lawrence's novellas,"St. Mawr', and 'The Man Who Died', and was strongly impressed by his powerful evocation of the life-force as opposed to convention and sentimentality. But Oates shows us the other side of the coin in this story; what can happen when the life-force, or Eros, becomes the object of worship.

The concept of self-fulfillment as self-gratification explored in this book leads to a shocking manipulation and degradation, albeit a willing one, of a seemingly weak personality by a pair of predatory ones hiding behind a cloak of authority and prestige. We see how some who betray their trust as mentors can find philosophical justification for what can only be termed acts of evil. And we see how that evil people can have a charismatic and seductive appeal to young and unworldly admirers.

The skill of Ms. Oates is evidenced by the fact that there is not the faintest hint of moralizing in the way she presents the story. The only clue we might take as to her personal view on the matter is that the weaker party in these goings on turns out to be more resilient than might have been expected, with a subsurface level of survivalist cunning working against her conscious, masochistic vulnerability, and against the perverted wiles of her tormentors.

Nonetheless, this is a sad little story, and while skillfully wrought, doesn't do much to elevate the spirit. I'm sure Ms. Oates didn't write it from any crusading motivation, but simply to give proper expression to a creative idea, as all good writers do.

Obsession, Sex and Higher Learning
While I've liked all of the books and stories I've read by Oates, I'm always a bit put off by the sexual violence and the attraction/obsession her main characters have for the behavior. I think it's bold to address how the intertwining of brutality and sex can be both repellent and desirous at the same time -- but when this becomes a recurrent theme in almost all of her work, it borders on being an unwanted exposure of the author's personal psychological issues. I'm all for writers going to dark and dangerous places in their stories, but I think I am tiring of Oates' repetition in this area.

That said, there are quite a few things to like in this novel of poetry, love, obsession and college in the 1970s. Gillian, the first-person narrator, opens the book in Paris, reminded by a totem sculpture in the Louvre of a time in her past, sixteen years prior to the present moment. She quickly leaves the City of Light and travels back to a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts, where she is enrolled in a poetry seminar with the object of her affection, Andre Darrow. Soon the professor's wife, Dorcas, enters the story, and things escalate to a fever pitch within a scant hundred pages or so.

At first, it felt like I was reading a Young Adult novel, beause the language was so simple (but not simplistic) and the narrator spoke as a 20-year-old would, not as the thirtysomething woman she is at the start of the novel. Having finished it, I still think it could fall into that category, if not for the heavy sexual and drug content, and the overall creepiness of the tone. The writing is strong and compelling, but I found it to be a bit too precise, too controlled -- Oates' specialty, but a writing style I get a little weary of at times. It serves to distance the person behind the author from the story they are telling -- a kind of, "I am in this story, this story comes from me, but it is NOT me" message she is conveying to the reader. This leaves little room for the narrative to contain any "beautiful mistakes," and I think the experience of her prose suffers for this unyielding control.

At least it was short?
In finishing the novella, I remain wholly unenthusiastic about its premise and conclusion. The characters were adequately developed: Gillian, Andre, and Dorcas made the [un?] holy trinity of main characters. The peripheral, secondary characters seemed heavy handed: Sybil? Marisa? ...They seemed written in as part of another story line that was never quite developed or integrated.

It's incidental to me that while the book takes place at a women's college, ostensibly among close friends, each action and behavior seemed totally encapsulated in the individual character. There is little non-superficial interaction between anyone, excite for Gillian's insipid fawning. Maybe that was the point, that each individual is completely isolated from one another ... but were that the intention, I remain even less impressed with this work.

I expected the book to fit more into the tradition of being John Fowles-esque, insofar as the character becomes very much a victim of others behaviors. For me, the main problem was that there wasn't enough struggle, there wasn't' enough conflict internalized by the characters.

At the very least, the novel was short (<150 pp), and was easily read through in the course of a couple hours. Admittedly, this was my first foray in JC Oates, and - really - will likely be my last. It wasn't an irredeemably awful book, but I found little going on (intellectually), and a plot that - at first glance - seemed powerful and with great potential.

Gothically deeply disturbing
Deeply disturbingly Gothic in the portrayal of "innocent" college girls infatuated by their manipulative professor who seduces and uses them to the point of their self destruction.

Set in the backdrop of a small New England college, the literal coldness of the winter frames the cruely of the professor and his wife as the young college girls happily feel honored to trek to the snow covered, pine-tree laden house of bizzare beastly happenings.

This is one of Oates darker books exploring the nature of self destruction. ... Read more

Product Description
The first book in Oates’s famous trilogy that includes Expensive People and the National Book Award winner them

In her second novel, Joyce Carol Oates, author of many bestselling novels, including We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde, created one of her most memorable heroines, Clara, the beautiful daughter of migrant farmworkers. Intent upon rising above her haphazard life of violence and poverty, Clara struggles for independence while relying on four men to fashion her destiny: her father, a hardened laborer simmering with resentment; Lowry, who rescues the teenage Clara from her family and offers her a first glimpse of love; Revere, the wealthy married man who promises Clara stability; and Swan, Clara’s son, who bears the burden of his mother’s mistaken identity.

For this Modern Library 20th Century Rediscovery edition, Joyce Carol Oates has revised and rewritten three fourths of the novel, originally published in 1966, a feat comparable to Henry James’s revisions of his early novels in 1908, when he was at the height of his artistic powers. With a new Afterword by the author, this is the definitive edition of an early masterpiece by one of our greatest living writers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Riveting Read...A Wonderful Book!!!!
I believe I read this book some years ago, but forgot that I had, as Joyce Carol Oates has rewritten it. It is a wonderful story about migrant farm workers living during the depression, and what one of the characters, Clara, the daughter, does to get away from this miserable existence to a place where she feels she has some power. In essence, this book is the story of a woman who is realized by the company she keeps (the men in her life)...all of them are interesting characters, and bring out both of her worst and best values ...The ending is devastating, profound...and a surprise...Joyce Carol Oates has written a riveting story in her 30s, and has rewritten it so well, and so profoundly that you can't imagine not being part of the people and places she takes you into...

Unrelieved dreariness
Unrelieved dreariness and misery.I kept on reading hoping the story would pick up and there would be at least one bright spot or two but there was none.There was no pleasure in reading this book.

Excellent quality of writing
The plot was all right, but I was most impressed by Ms. Oates's lyrical use of language.She has the ability to transform the most mundane actions, feelings, or settings into something that seems really unusual or noteworthy just by describing it a certain way.I love the way the the main character, Clara, sees the world...it is very refreshing and unusual.I can't really tell if the awesome descriptions throughout the book are because of Clara's candid and innocent way of seeing the world, or because of Oates's special way with words.It's nothing big really.Throughout the book, she notes the little things, like how the migrant farm workers don't care how they look while picking fruit, and how they make weird faces as they think things to themselves or how they mumble sorta as they replay conversations that theyve had in their minds.But for me, it's the little things like that that make a book really come alive.This novel is full of really sweet quotes, and the language just really blew me away.

Three Novellas Describe a Woman's Path through Life
This book has recently been rewritten by Ms. Oates.I am reviewing the original version.I suggest that you begin with this one, and move on to the revision if you like this edition.

A Garden of Earthly Delights looks at life's challenges as seen by an exploited, powerless woman who lacks a religious foundation . . . but has a crude beauty and appeal that are irresistible to men.Through her eyes, we see the importance of being self-confident and focusing on the main chance . . . whatever that might be.In the process, her heart is darkened and her life damaged by the hard choices she has had to make.That darkness and damage seep out of her to contaminate those around her.In the end, a fresh young beauty leaves behind her a morass of rotting vegetation.

The book has three parts.In the first part, we meet Clara Walpole who is the much-loved daughter of her father, Carleton Walpole, who is a rough and tumble migrant farm worker who drags his wife and family behind him like torn cobwebs as he focuses on his own pleasure.The family gradually disintegrates under the pressure of the hard living and Carleton's inability to provide loving support.In the second part, Clara develops relationships with two other men as a teenager after she leaves her family.In the third part, Clara devotes her life to her son, Swan (aka Steven), who must stake a life for himself in Clara's husband's family.Each of these parts is written like a novella, but the three are connected through Clara.

The first part struck me as extremely fine writing of the sort that reminded me of John Steinbeck's novels about migrant farm workers.Unlike Mr. Steinbeck, Ms. Oates has a way of capturing only moments and events that crystallize our understanding of her characters and their lives.To me, reading this part was like occasionally glimpsing through a peephole into someone's life . . . but only at the most revealing moments.Interestingly, Clara often doesn't quite know what's happening since she has had both a deprived childhood and is a child.You as the reader have to interpret what is happening, which makes for a story element that makes the book read a little like detective fiction.This aspect of the book reminded me of William Faulkner's writing about the Snopes.If the book stopped with part one, I would have rated it as five stars and praised the book to the heavens.But I would have wondered what happened next to Clara.

In the second part, we find out how a young teenager builds a life for herself through the aid of Lowry, the man who helps her escape from her family.To me, Lowry is the most interesting character in the book.Ms. Oates reveals his nature very slowly, and he brings many surprises to the story.Although deeply flawed as a person, he tries to do the right things for Clara . . . and ends up leaving her at a very difficult crossroads.From her experiences with him, she learns the duality of love/hate that comes to dominate her life.This part of the book is very fine and I highly recommend it.

In the third part of the book, Ms. Oates seems to fall into clichés.Everything is so foreshadowed that I felt like I could have written out the plot in detail before reading it.There were few surprises, and those were unimportant.I would have enjoyed the book much more if I had skipped this part.I would rate the third part as a two star book if it were a stand-alone.Unless you feel compelled to find out what happens to Clara and her son, I suggest that you consider skipping this part.Perhaps you could read the first 25 pages to see how it sits with you.

As I finished the book, I came away thinking how important it is that those who are deprived of love and care receive attention from everyone else.One of the book's lessons, however, is that such attention must be effective . . . rather than simply well-meaning . . . or it will do more harm than good.

Not Her Best
I am a very big Joyce Carol Oates fan, however, I was a little dissapointed in this one. Don't get me wrong it was still a good read and included her trademark detailed description, as well as intricate character development. The problem for me was mainly the ending. It almost seemed like Oates could not think of a way to tie everything up neatly so she relied onan over used cliche to be done with it. If you are an Oates fan you will enjoy it simply to see how she revamped one of her earliest novels, but I would not suggest this one to those who are new to her work. ... Read more

Product 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 between 15-year-old Enid Maria and her uncle Felix, a professional boxer twice her age. While brilliantly re-creating a decade that worshipped conformity, You Must Remember This presents the lives of family members that break every convention in the search for meaning and fulfillment. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

Oates rocks!!
Oates is such an interesting writer!Every one of her books seems to have a different writing style.This one is long and intricate and I enjoyed it thoroughly.Didn't want it to end.

You Must Remember This
When it is good, it is really good, but at other times, the story draaaags!

Overrated
The most overrated book I've ever read.The occasional flashes of Oates trademark:her brilliant capture of human undercurrents rising to the surface, written so ethereally but grippingly (Felix picking Enid up during high school lunch; the boxing/maiming passages; Warren's dissolving himself into Miriam; yes, that first sex between Felix and Enid; and a good dozen others) unfortunately get lost in this basically plotless, tedious novel.
All her characters are essentially cardboard, two-dimensional; no one really `develops,' they just get older (well maybe Warren develops, but he's dropped 2/3 of the way through) - lengthy scene-settings and irrelevant detours and minor characters who (other than Miriam) are boring foils for the protagonists ...endless, endless pages to have to wade through.Then there's Ms. Oates other trademark, those `pushed' descriptions:the plump (sic) shoulders; the oily nose wings (honest!); the `thin' ankles.Geez.Add in the `pushed' relationships (go figger why Felix and Sanson are together) and the `pushed' events (Lyle getting picked up and grilled for what, 8? hours, by the FBI because he showed a redneck how big China was in an Atlas).
After 406 pages I should know whether Felix`s IQ is 100 or 140.I have no idea.Ditto for just about everyone else in the book.

WORSE THAN TABLOID TRASH - UNFIT FOR HUMANS
If you are a sex offender, pedophile, or sadist you will certainly like this. No decent person should ever bother with this garbage.
The authors imagination has gone crazy wild in this fanciful dungeon of horror that is neither entertaining, educational, or useful in any way.
What a waste of ink and paper. We were shocked to find this assigned to our 15 year old child as a reading assignment. Welcome to Public Education. The nightmares our poor child suffers because of this utterly
worthless read may not end for a long time. If you like explicit sexual scenes with violence , rape, molestation. And lots and lots of graphic language buy this book. Worse than any 10 cent romance novel ever written. And all the glowing reviews ? What has happened to our society ?
Are we so desperate for something current to be great literature that we settle for tabloid sensationalism ? Writing that lacks eloquence, charisma, and innuendo ? Are we this pathetic ?

Disturbing in its innocence and maturit
One of the best books I have ever read. An insightful account of sexual abuse and incest from the point of view of a young girl. ... Read more

Product Description
This exciting anthology by one of America's finest storytellers provides over ninety works of narrative art. With the reading list for her writing seminar at Princeton University as a model, Joyce Carol Oates chose pieces that will inspire beginning and experienced writers alike. Here are classics and relative unknowns, short vignettes and long genre fiction, tragic tales and humorous character sketches--models for just about any writer. Section introductions and an Afterword on the writing workshop provide a glimpse of Oates's own understanding of the storyteller's craft.Amazon.com Review
"Every book, every story, every sentence we read is apart of our preparation for our own writing," suggests JoyceCarol Oates in her introduction to Telling Stories, "soit's wise to choose our reading carefully." Easily said. Butapart from sticking to the classics and canceling that subscription toPeople magazine, how does one go about choosing wisely? One wayis to find a reliable anthologist, and in Oates we have justthat. Prolific a writer as she is, Oates also teaches creative writingat Princeton, and she uses many of the stories, prose pieces, andpoems collected in Telling Stories as material for her writingworkshops. Among the nearly 100 authors included in the volume are AntonChekhov and Lydia Davis, Ovid and Angela Carter,H. P. Lovecraftand StephenKing, GishJen and ThomJones. A rich stew it is indeed, and a terrific jumping-off placefor those writers who wish, as Oates recommends, "to read widely,to read with enthusiasm, to read for pleasure, to read with an eye foranother's craft." --Jane Steinberg ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Best reading assignments ever...
If you are looking to take a writing class, save your dollars and buy this book, read your eyeballs out, and turn yourself loose on the personal style you are going to be so amazingly aware of... A ton of great reccommendations, and as always she writes with an ease and flow that is bewildering...

A wide and incisive collection
I've used this text for my Writing Fiction 281 class, and it's fantastic!I especially like the "flash fiction" section in the beginning.If you're looking for a reader that includes cannonized authors as well as fresh young voices, this is a solid choice.

This is an excellent collection of stories but...
don't buy it if you're looking for guidance on writing-there is very little about craft here but there are some excellent examples of different types narratives and they're grouped in an interesting way.One section,for example, has stories that retell fairy tales, bible stories etc. usingmodern story lines.Other sections cover such genres as dramaticmonologues, miniature narratives and memoir.Useful if your looking forpositive examples, but be prepared to draw your own conclusions.

An excellent anthology for creative writers and readers.
Joyce Carol Oates combines the best of classic literature by Kafka and Faulkner with contemporaryworks by Garcia Marquez and King.Each story and poem exemplifies a writing technique or strategy. An example being the two versions of James Joyce's short story "Sister;" the first his original draft and the second a revision. "Telling Stories" is a wonderful anthology for anyone wishing to broaden their knowledge of literature from Homer to today. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (14)

where was the tattoo - right or left thigh?
It's odd how a writer of Oates' standing can allow errors to slip through yet again.
In one of her books a character's name changed for a number of pages and then reverted.In this one a tattoo starts out on the heroine's left thigh, then pages later is mentioned as being on her right thigh.Attention to detail please, or at least wake up the sub editors if they're snoozing.But then who wouldn't snooze through this one?

eh.
joyce carol oates is one of my favorite authors. this book was okay, but it seemed like there just wasn't enough, i don't know. i don't even know how to review this novel. if you're a fan, read it. i did and i don't regret it. it's very short, so it's not a waste of time or anything. but maybe because of the way it was so short there wasn't enough story to lead up to an ending like that to make much sense. i know this isn't a good review, but i guess i don't have much to say.

Couldn't even finish it
I usually will finish a book even if I'm not particularly enjoying it, but I couldn't in this case.I found this book extremely boring and slow and the characters unlikeable.I won't go into the plot, that's covered in the other reviews and the descriptions.

The story is from the point of view of the 16-year-old, to the point that even the narration appears to be Katya's thoughts, so why does Oates pepper the narration with language that Katya wouldn't use. e.g. "recalcitrant child"?

I couldn't waste one more moment on this story.Thank goodness the book is from the library and I didn't waste money buying it.

Disturbing
There is one aspect of Joyce Carol Oates' writing that most readers, I believe, would agree: and that is "disturbing". This writer can conjure the macabre in a way that sizzles under the surface, keeping the reader turning the pages, not knowing where the tale may lead.

The last novel that this reviewer read so long ago by this master was "Beasts":another, of course, extremely disturbing tale. It astonishes that I have not read more of her work - but as the saying goes - so many great books and so little time.

In A Fair Maiden, without question, the novel could not be put down until the last page.

We have the main character, Katya Spivak, a woman of about 16 years of age, from the suburbs of New Jersey. She is the youngest sibling and daughter to a single mother because her husband deserted the family as he was a consummate gambler and can be deduced he left because of heavy gambling debts. Katya is a pretty girl: blond, athletic body and beautiful eyes. She also has a terrible confidence problem that she shields from the world. Katya lands a job as a nanny for a well-to-do family in the very wealthy Bayhead Harbor, New Jersey. Bayhead is a mixture of new money and old; her employers are of the new variety. Katya is happy with her job, particularly because she's away from her lower middle class roots. As Katya is happily feeding the birds in Bayhead Park with the three year old, Trisca and baby Kevin, enter the elegant yet eccentric older gentleman, Marcus Cullen Kidder.

Kidder is old money and refers to the new inhabitants of Bayhead Harbor as "Mayflies". As the reader discovers, Kidder is a true American Aristocrat: highly educated, painter, writer, musician, and philanthropist that becomes obsessed with Katya.

A Fair Maiden is about Katya's and Kidder's growing relationship. As the story evolves, the reader is lead to believe one thing, however, it turns out much different.

To say the least, A Fair Maiden, is the most sophisticated and alluring piece of literary fiction that I've read for some time.

About a third way through the reading, I was making comparisons to Nabokov's "Lolita", but nothing can be further from the truth.

A Fair Maiden stands alone - a strange and touching love story.

My suggestion is to put A Fair Maiden on your reading list.

This novel will not disappoint.

Not her best work
I have loved Joyce Carol Oates since high school when I picked up Black Water and couldn't put it down, so I was naturally inclined to pick this up as soon as I saw it.The story starts off slow.Neither main character, Katya or Marcus are particularly likeable. Even once you know their motivations it doesn't make them much more sympathetic. Maybe Katya's story is a little sadder since she has been so abandoned and neglected her whole life; she doesn't even have a chance.

For a short novel, this moves very slowly until the very end where there is a quick acceleration.What happens is predictable so I only kept reading to see how it would unfold.The final revelation isn't shocking or worth the build up.When I finished I really felt cheated.If this book didn't have Oates name on it, it never would have been published.The story just isn't very good or very interesting. 6.30.10

... Read more

Product Description
In her most ambitious work to date, Joyce Carol Oates boldly reimagines the inner, poetic, and spiritual life of Norma Jeane Baker -- the child, the woman, the fated celebrity and idolized blonde the world came to know as Marilyn Monroe. In a voice startlingly intimate and rich, Norma Jeane tells her own story of an emblematic American artist -- intensely conflicted and driven -- who had lost her way. A powerful portrait of Hollywood's myth and an extraordinary woman's heartbreaking reality, Blonde is a sweeping epic that pays tribute to the elusive magic and devastation behind the creation of the great twentieth-century American star.Amazon.com Review
Penzler Pick, April 2000: It is surprising and shocking to realize that Joyce Carol Oates, one of the great writers living today, has never made The New York Times bestseller list (at least not in recent memory). Far less talented (and less famous) authors have made it while she, in all likelihood not caring much, has been shut out. That could easily change with her new novel, Blonde, which may be the masterpiece of a staggeringly distinguished career.

This 700-plus-page tome is based on the life of (you guessed it) Marilyn Monroe. In fictional form, with names changed (husband Joe DiMaggio is referred to as "The Ex-Athlete," Arthur Miller as "The Playwright," John F. Kennedy as "The President," for example), this may be the most accurate and compelling portrait of this beautiful and complex woman that one is ever likely to read.

But why discuss it on the mystery page, you might well be asking yourself. It was the author's intent to structure the book as a mystery, and of course she succeeds, as she seems to succeed at everything she attempts in the world of letters. And there is a murder, apparently arranged by a secret government bureau (FBI? CIA?), although that could be the victim's hallucination. Of course, it could also be both real and hallucinated (remember, even paranoids have enemies).

If you like biographies, you'll like Blonde. If you like novels, you'll like Blonde. If you like mysteries, you'll like Blonde. And if you fear that more than 700 pages by one of the greatest of living literary lions might be tough slogging, here's a little excerpt from the chapter titled "The President's Pimp:"

Sure he was a pimp.

But not just any pimp. Not him!

He was a pimp par excellence. A pimp nonpareil. A pimp sui generis. A pimp with a wardrobe, and a pimp with style. A pimp with a classy Brit accent. Posterity would honor him as the President's Pimp.

A man of pride and stature: the President's Pimp.

At Rancho Mirage in Palm Springs in March 1962 there was the President poking him in the ribs with a low whistle. "That blonde. That's Marilyn Monroe?"

He told the President yes it was. Monroe, a friend of his. Luscious, eh? But a little crazy.

Thoughtfully, the President asked, "Have I dated her yet?"

Nothing inaccessible about Joyce Carol Oates, especially in this most readable and relentlessly fascinating study of the lovely woman with whom the whole country was at least a little in love. --Otto Penzler ... Read more

Customer Reviews (179)

Traumatic Read, Amazing Read
This was a ridiculously powerful book. This book focused on the deep isolation and otherness that Marilyn suffered from her entire life. Some of the questions Marilyn asks and some of the comments she makes show how dark she really was.She was mysterious. To go from Dimaggio to Miller, what a range! and so real! That was the reality of her flexibility.

I didn't really care at all about Marilyn Monroe when I bought this book. I bought it because I read some Joyce Carol Oates' essays/articles, and I loved them. I thought I'd try a book and this one was heralded as one of her best. So I went for it. I don't regret it one bit. It's hard to give a straight-forward recommendation of this book. It's too dark. Too sad. Too many traumas. Too many disappointments. But it was so carefully structured. The effort that must have gone into structuring this book is mind-boggling. So many themes, carefully elaborated, keeping close control of the reader, who could be easily overwhelmed and washed out by the story-upon-story-upon-story of Marilyn's life.

What an achievement!

one of the best

Joyce Carol Oates picked a memorable person, Marilyn Monroe, for her theme. Oates shows mysteriousness, attractiveness, and ambiguity through depicting Monroe's co-existence of her intelligence and illiteracy, maturity and naiveness, success and ill-fate. There are some chapters, which consist only of episodes, letters, and conversation interrupting chronologically ordered chapters. This is unique way of formation of chapters.
This novel is one of her best works. Oates fans must read it. I am sure that you will like this award winning and dramatized novel.

Blonde is Brilliant
This epic new novel by Joyce Carol Oates is mesmerizing. The author captures the angst of young Norma Jeane and breatheslife into the iconic figure. I, literally, could not put this book down. Bravo!!!!

The author breathes life into her character... Excellent!
This is an excellent biographical fiction of Marilyn Monroe - for fans and non-fans alike. I am still perplexed that such an amazing author as Joyce Carol Oates never won a Pulitzer! You can say that she almost literally breathes life into her characters, as is the case in this book... This one is highly recommended!

Heart-wrenching
Blonde is a fictionalized account of Marilyn Monroe's life, and she appears, by turns, as Norma Jeane, "Marilyn", and The Blond Actress. But the story Oates tells is Norma Jeane's. She, alone of the three, is the real person.

Norma Jeane is the child whose mother, an employee of the (movie) Studio, showed her at age six a picture of Clark Gable and told her he was her father, knowing the little girl had no way to know who Clark Gable was or who he wasn't. Norma Jeane never, to the end of her life, knew who her father truly was, but her mother, in one of her faux-"generous" moments, told Norma Jeane that her father would come back for them both someday, the ultimate, empty feel-good dream which not only would remain unfulfilled but which would set the stage for many more empty dreams.

Norma Jeane is the young girl whose mother never allowed hugs, never allowed her daughter to call her "Mommy." Norma Jeane is the young girl whose mother tried to drive herself and Norma Jeane headlong into raging California fires before being stopped by a policeman, and she's the young girl whose mother tried to dunk her into scalding water to drown her. And Norma Jeane is the young girl who, managing to escape her mother's unreasoning rage, was placed in a state orphanage after her mother was taken to the state mental hospital.

Norma Jeane is the adolescent who wound up in a foster home where she yearned for the love and acceptance of Elsie, her foster mother. And as soon as Norma Jeane felt free to trust her foster mother, Elsie married Norma Jeane off at sixteen because she was jealous of how her husband was looking at Norma Jeane.

And Norma Jeane is the young woman who wanted so desperately to be the Perfect Wife Whom No Man Could Leave that her young, first husband felt suffocated by her neediness and joined the military to escape.

Norma Jeane is the young woman who, for fifty dollars, posed for nude photographs because she badly needed the money, photographs that later made men millions of dollars, photographs for which she asked not to have to show the soles of her feet -- she wished, at least, to be spared that indignity -- but even that wish, however small, was denied.

Norma Jeane is the young woman whose personna became known as Marilyn Monroe, who made the Studio millions of dollars of which Norma Jeane got only a small part. And Norma Jeane is the young woman behind the personna who felt both suffocated by and apart from it. Norma Jeane wanted a loving husband and children, but Marilyn, whom Norma Jeane thought of as the Big Blond Hairless Doll, wanted adoration, attention, and stardom. And "Marilyn" always won because she was stronger.

In Oates's novel, "Norma" was what Norma Jeane wanted to be called by people she loved and trusted, and by people she wanted to trust and love her. Not "Marilyn." And after reading this book, it seems more appropriate to think of "Marilyn Monroe" not as Marilyn but as Norma Jeane Baker, a testament to the sheer power of Oates's storytelling.

If Marilyn Monroe is the suffocating (to Norma Jeane) Studio personna, then the Blond Actress is the woman who lives to play roles, though she has no role, no identity, of her own. And both women are facets of Norma Jeane. The two facets served as tools in Norma Jeane's hands to try to get what she craved most -- approval, love, acceptance -- and they are the two facets under whose ponderous weight she ultimately was crushed. A common mantra Norma Jeane repeats to herself throughout the book is if I fail, I die. Every single day of her life she felt she was required to earn the right to exist.

I don't have to warn about spoilers in this review, since everybody knows what happened to Marilyn Monroe. But Joyce Carol Oates does an incredible job of getting the reader inside Norma Jeane's mind, from her painful childhood to her troubled adolescence to the roller-coaster ride of her Hollywood stardom. Oates lets us into other people's heads, too, among them the Ex-Athlete and the Playwright, two men who loved Norma Jeane and were loved by her but who either would not or could not help her off the path to self-destruction.

We also see into the mind of the cold, cunning President to whom "Marilyn Monroe" was nothing more than a perk of Presidential power, some"thing" tawdry to use then discard, a metaphor for what, in the greater picture of history, happened to Norma Jeane herself if not to "Marilyn", who continues to thrive today.

Blonde tells the story of the shadow-side of Marilyn Monroe's success. Oates's Norma Jeane is a tragic figure. Perhaps nobody could help Norma Jeane but the Dark Prince, the man in her mind who was sometimes her faceless father but who, more often, was the Man in the Movies opposite the Fair Princess Norma Jeane became, a man who never existed for Norma Jeane in her real life but who, as long as she lived, she could imagine might exist someday as long as the camera, the only eye whose acceptance she could always count on winning, was turned her way. ... Read more

Product Description

A tribute to the brilliant craftsmanship of one of our most distinguished writers, providing valuable insight into her inspiration and her method

Customer Reviews (13)

Writers in rabbit holes
"Art," writes Joyce Carol Oates, "is the highest expression of the human spirit." And while humankind has often struggled to express why it is that art is so very necessary to our spirits (why is art the first course cut in public education when budgets require constraint?), we cannot exist without it. Art is, in great part, our communication with each other, our attempt as social animals to connect, but first and foremost, as Oates goes on to describe, it is our solitary striving to go deep - into ourselves, connecting with our innermost and hidden hearts.

In this collection of essays, Oates, known perhaps more for her amazing ability to be one of the most prolific writers of all time (something she says in one of her essays that she does not quite understand, that is, why she is seen as prolific ... to which point, I urge the author to check out her own list of published works, in and of itself a short book), examines the art and craft of writing. These are not necessarily essays written one to build upon another, but separate and independent pieces, including an interview done with Oates to discuss her fictionalized history of Marilyn Monroe, "Blonde."

Included in this collection are biographical essays on how Oates grew up, her childhood and one-room school days, a time of discovery that reading books was entering a new world beyond this one. Fittingly, "Alice in Wonderland" was the first book that so mesmerized her and has kept its hold on her lifelong. Dropping down the rabbit hole into a world that was a surprise at every turn, where all things were open to re-creation, where one is never quite sure one will be able to return fully to that other reality, is not unlike the life of a writer.

Also, essays on honing the craft prior to the art - and that would always begin, and never end, with reading. Reading and reading, endlessly reading, and she puts an almost equal importance on reading the classics, but no less the not quite classics, such as comic books. All can teach the writer - something about language, something about storyline, something about plot movement and suspense and conflict and resolution. It is not so much what one reads as that one reads.

There are also essays on a writer's space, what it might and should contain, the art of self criticism, the squishy business of inspiration, surely important notes on failure, and others along that vein. Even a piece on running and writing, how Oates finds that much of her writing happens first in her head, long before it reaches paper (she writes her first drafts always in long-hand), and so running seems to be an activity especially conducive to unstringing such creative and transportive trains of thought.

Above all, Oates states, immerse yourself. If writing is about craft first, the learning of grammar and sentence structure (and she is one of those writers who revises as she writes) and other such primary tools, then it enters that ephemeral world of Art - like dropping through the rabbit hole - when one dares to leave this world and fully enter into that one. Immersion. Nothing less.

"I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely finite and ephemeral; to participate in something mysterious and communal called 'culture' - and that this yearning is as strong in our species as the yearning to reproduce the species."

Perhaps because fine art, in any medium, is itself a kind of reproducing the species. And giving it new life.

While this is not my favorite book of writer writing about writing - that spot is reserved for Annie Dillard's "The Writing Life," Bret Lott's "Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of a Writer's Life," and Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life" - it was satisfying. I found in some ways a kindred spirit, for I, too, prefer a first draft in longhand, revise along the way, feel that writing is like entering a trance not unlike madness, and wrote my first "masterpieces," just as Oates did, even prior to knowing HOW to write. I saw my parents writing, and although I had no idea what those scribbles meant, I was well amused to sit for hours doing the same. Rows and rows of looping and connected lines, containing magic. With a writer's faith that someday, somehow, someone will read my scribbles and sense the magic, too. As did Oates, today as mesmerized by that process as she was as a child. Therein, one suspects, lies the explanation to her ability to be that prolific.

A fantastic trip into Ms. Oates world
Joyce Carol Oates created a wonderful insight to her literary world. I'm a big fan of Ms. Oates and it was a special treat for me to read about her writing process and her love for the written word.Highly recommend.

Educational, but still a wonderful read.
I thought this memoir of Joyce Carol Oates life and career was just a wonderful piece of literature. The twelve essays were given in such a way that I could easy understand. The essays explore Ms. Oates' driving force in her career as a writer. These essays are very educational for aspiring authors and even for those folks like me that just want to learn about a great writer such as Ms. Oates. There were detail discussion by the author on her daily life; her creative condemnation sessions and many others. Overall, I thought the book was fantastic and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to my friends.

Inside the Mind of a Genius Writer
This amazing, awesome little book was totally NOT what I was expecting.Like a previous writer said, it was more of a memoir, but a memoir of her writing history, her early inspiration (Edgar Allen Poe/Lewis Carroll) and her early schooling.

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I discovered she read and has been influenced Poe.I won't give away why he left such an impression on her at such an early age (eight!), but suffice it to say, it was enlightening and made me think about the books that formed my early thinking.(Besides the comic books I loved!)

If you're a fan/reader of Oates or a writer or wannabe writer, then you will definitely be encouraged and challenged by this tiny tome.It's an unexpected treasure that I highly recommend.

Very Inspirational
This review was written as an assignment for a graduate school course in the creative writing program at Northwestern University:

"The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art" by Joyce Carol Oates

Publisher: Ecco
Number of Pages: 176
Year Published: September 23, 2003
Price: Paperback version is $11.95; hardcover version is $21.95 (Paperback is widely available and discounted at Amazon.com; Hardcover version is available through Amazon.com, but via other sellers (used); also available at the Northwestern University Library).

Ideal Audience:This book would be useful in many classroom settings.The youngest audience would probably be high school level junior and senior "Introduction to Creative Writing" students.If used in an undergraduate or graduate level creative writing setting, the essays would be best utilized as both inspiration and models for future individual writing.This would also be very helpful in a "Continuing Education" program, possibly associated with a local community center, library or community college.

Brief Summary: This book contains 12 essays and a brief interview with Oates (led by Greg Johnson).The essays explore Oates' inspirations and motivations for becoming a writer.She offers specific advice to young writers ("write your heart out" and to read as often as they can.Oates touches on her first memories as a child and how the book, "Alice in Wonderland," had a profound affect on her life.She also examines her passion for running and illustrates how running feeds her mind and allows her to be very creative.Other essays discuss failure, inspiration (of other writers), how to read as a writer, the process of self-criticism, and a glimpse of Oates' writing studio.The interview was conducted shortly after Oates published her longest novel (752 pages) in 2000, "Blonde."

Representative Section/Excerpt:

(From "To a Young Writer"):
Write your heart out.Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject.Your "forbidden" passions are likely to be the fuel for your writing... What advice can an older writer presume to offer a younger?Only what he or she might wish to have been told years ago.Don't be discouraged!Don't cast sidelong glances, and compare yourself to others among your peers! (Writing is not a race.No one really "wins."The satisfaction is in the effort, and rarely in the consequent rewards, if there are any).And again, write your heart out.



(From "First Loves: From "Jabberwocky" to "After Apple Picking"):
There are two primary influences in a writer's life: those influences that come so early in childhood, they seem to soak into the very marrow of our bones and to condition our interpretation of the universe thereafter; and those that come a little later, when we are old enough to exercise some control of our environment, and our response to it, and have begun to be aware not only of the emotional power but the strategies of art.

Strength:This book is very inspirational and filled with models that can be used a "jumping off" points for writers in their own work.It can be a great tool to use in a classroom setting if a teacher prefers not to use writing triggers or prompts to engage the class in an exercise.

Weakness:A big weakness of this book is Oates' inability to dig deeper and reveal her main inspirations for writing.Although there are sections within the material that Oates' opens up and offers a glimpse of herself, overall, the book is about other people and their techniques/inspirations, etc.

Urgency Rating:Moderate; if you plan on teaching any genre of writing it can be useful in many ways, especially as models (versus triggers or prompts).The most useful parts were the following essays: "My Faith as a Writer," because it made me think about my own "faith" as a writer and think about my earliest memories of the importance of writing in my life; "To a Young Writer," because it is very inspirational/motivational--great advice from an accomplished writer; and "Reading as a Writer: The Artist as Craftsman," because it offers great advice about the craft of reading to expand knowledge in our own writing versus reading for enjoyment.

... Read more

Product Description

When The Sky Blue Ball comes soaring over the fence, a high-school girl is confronted with the haunting memory of childhood. A jealous teen lets her cousin go off alone with a dangerous Capricorn, aware of the terrifying possibilities. A vulnerable young girl cunningly outwits a menacing stranger and exults in her newfound power, surviving the first of many Small Avalanches.

In these twelve riveting tales, master storyteller Joyce Carol Oates visits the dark, enigmatic psyche of the teenage years. Intense and unnerving, uplifting and triumphant, the stories in this collection explore the fateful consequences of the choices we make in our everyday lives.

Customer Reviews (3)

Do adolescent teens like reading about stupid adolescent teens?
I was on a 7-hour train ride, and figured I'd give the book a shot. My first sign of trouble was the dedication of the first story to Bob "Lingerie" Dylan, but I pressed on. A lot of seemingly intelligent people are still under his spell, blissfully coasting on the remnants of his image from the days when he wasn't a Starbucks sellout.

Anyway, the first story is about a bad thing that happens to an innocent teen-aged girl. Throughout the story you feel like you're watching a bad horror movie, screaming "don't go into the attic." This feeling, I would learn, is the unifying theme of this book.

Exhausted after one story, I put the book down and looked at the bland countryside passing by. Boredom took over after 15 minutes, and after cursing myself for not bringing along a backup, I went back to the book.

I stopped reading the next story, "The Sky Blue Ball," after it looked like another horrible thing was going to happen to another stupid little girl. She may have turned out fine, but I just didn't have the emotional energy. I took another break and headed to "Small Avalanches." This one, again, is about a stupid teen girl and a horrible thing that could happen to her. This 13 year-old girl, incidentally, is the one portrayed on the cover. Maybe it's the hormones in the food, but the person on the cover looks a little too busty to be 13.

I skipped around a bit, figuring the stupid little girl theme was bound to run out. "Haunted" and "Capricorn" were, refreshingly, about TWO stupid teen girls hurtling blindly into certain doom. The book finally abandons the idiot theme in the last two stories, "The Visit," and "The Model." These are excellent stories about strong girls who, instead of being thrown to the wolves by their own ignorance, make their own decisions, explore their feelings, and are active participants in their lives.

Maybe this book was meant as a series of cautionary tales about how teens should avoid danger (it mostly boils down to "don't talk to slimy looking strangers"), but for anyone with half a brain, it's an extremely frustrating and annoying read.

For the Bad Girls
Joyce Carol Oates dedicates her latest collection of short stories, �Small Avalanches� to �The Bad Girls.� Be it Ingrid in �Man Crazy,� or Anellia in �Ill Take you There,� Oates has always been fascinated, really infatuated with the outcasts, the fringe dwellers, the lonely hearts. More to the point, Oates enjoys writing female characters that struggle and fight against what society considers �normal� behavior�whatever the heck normal means in the society of Oates� world and in the world in general. It is the tension of this ambiguity that Oates revels in.
�Small Avalanches� begins with the story, �Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?� which was the basis for the film �Smooth Talk� starring Laura Dern as Connie and Treat Williams as Arnold Friend. Reading it again now, and even with the visuals of the film spinning around my head, I was struck by the smoldering sexuality of the story. Connie is 15 and she has one foot stuck in childhood and the other one, always ready to high-tail it to the highway roadhouses, in adulthood. Oates describes her: ��Everything about her as two sides to it, one for home and for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make someone thinking she was hearing music in here head�her laugh, which was cynical and drawling at home but high pitched and nervous anywhere else.�
Arnold Friend becomes Connie�s �friend,� stalker really. Arnold is older, handsome, drives a spiffy car and is definitely dangerous and what he offers Connie is a view of adulthood she cannot turn down: it�s glamour and attraction cannot be ignored. The denouement finds Connie more experienced in the adult world that she craves but is not ready for. The inevitability of the situation is decidedly sensual yet undeniably moralistic: Connie�s story is ultimately a cautionary tale. One in which a bad girl gets what she deserves or is asking for. But is she better for it?
Oates mines this particular subject matter again in the more up to date, computer savvy story �Capricorn� also included in this collection.
The title story of this collection, �Small Avalanches� is cruel but slight: a young girl Nancy, through the unaffected, natural conceit and innocence of youth avoids the advances of an older man: �He looked so funny, bent over and clutching at his chest, pretending to have a heart attack or maybe having one, a little one, for all I knew. This will teach you a lesson, I thought.�
It is this youthful innocence and lack of foresight that also imbues �Bad Girls� a story about three daughters who set out to investigate their mother�s boyfriend: �Nor did we set out to destroy our mother�s man friend Isaak Drumm, exactly�(but we) confirmed the neighborhood�s and our relatives� judgment of us, that we were bad. And not only bad in ourselves but the cause of somebody else being bad, too.�
Throughout �Small Avalanches� we encounter writing of uncommon grace: �Her eyes were like washed glass, her eyebrows and lashes were almost white, she had a snub nose and Slavic cheekbones and a mouth that could be sweet or twisty and smirky depending on her mood.� Or razor sharp writing that cuts to the heart of a matter: �It�s true, all you have heard of the vanity of the old. Believing ourselves young, still, behind our aged faces�mere children, and so very innocent!�
�Small Avalanches� was intended for the young people�s market as was Oates� earlier �Big Mouth and Ugly Girl.� But Oates� has not toned down her natural gift for revealing the underside and the emotional truth of her characters actions and words. Far from it, she pulls no punches in revealing her patented, twisted yet humanistic worldview. Be forewarned, though: a visit to Oatesiana will leave you a bit shocked and warm under the collar but startlingly as refreshed as having just stepped out of a cool shower on a hot day.

Adolescent Tales
Small Avalanches is a collection of short stories previously published by Joyce Carol Oates whose thematic link is that each centers around the life of an adolescent or teenage girl. The focus on this age group is appropriate for this extremely talented writer who has written in an incredible range of styles and voices, but has often focused on the lives of young woman especially in her novels such as Man Crazy, Blonde and I'll Take You There to name just a few.
Oates has said in an interview with Diane Rehm in 2002:

"I feel probably quintessentially very adolescent... I guess it's just that age of romance and yearning and some scepticism, sometimes a little bit of cynicism."

The temperament of this age group that Oates so readily identifies with is something that the author is able to ingeniously capture in this series of tales. She shows in her female characters those intense feelings she marks as emblematic of this age group from a variety of perspectives.

Despite the close ages of all these girls there is a tremendous diversity of voice within the stories. They are sometimes vulnerable as the girls are primarily perceived or surprisingly self-aware which gives them the ability to manipulate their own situation. This occurs in some of the stories like Capricorn where a girl named Melanie meets a man on the internet who begins obsessively watching her play tennis and Small Avalanches where a girl walking home is followed by a suspicious looking man she nearly escapes. Some of the girls from these stories are timid, naive and orbit danger with curious innocence. In others, like Bad Girls where three close sisters invade the privacy of their mother's new boyfriend and The Model where a girl meets a man in the park who starts paying her large sums to pose for sketches, the girls are defensive to a militant degree. These diverse perspectives give a refreshing perspective when contemplating an age group so heavily stereotyped. Oates also uses multifarious structures to tell the girls' stories producing a wide range of possible meanings and giving a unique accent to their particular situations. Some take on a creepy gothic tone as in The Sky Blue Ball where a girl begins throwing a ball back and forth with a faceless participant over a wall and Haunted in which a mysterious violent woman appears to two curious girls who were searching a house they thought was empty. The most experimental structure Oates uses is in the story How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again where you read a girl's notes for a school paper that descend into an intense disjointed personal deliberation about her past and future. However, all the stories are incredibly accessible to read while still challenging the reader to think complexly about growing up and the nature of identity. Each gives a deep focus on the consciousness of these girls and presents in some way a close perspective of their point of view. The stories also examine the process in which these girls become self conscious about how they are viewed by the rest of the world. It is an extremely emotional, varied and pleasurable read. ... Read more

Product Description

I Am No One You Know contains nineteen startling stories that bear witness to the remarkably varied lives of Americans of our time. In "Fire," a troubled young wife discovers a rare, radiant happiness in an adulterous relationship. In "Curly Red," a girl makes a decision to reveal a family secret, and changes her life irrevocably. In "The Girl with the Blackened Eye," selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2001, a girl pushed to an even greater extreme of courage and desperation manages to survive her abduction by a serial killer. And in "Three Girls," two adventuresome NYU undergraduates seal their secret love by following, and protecting, Marilyn Monroe in disguise at Strand Used Books on a snowy evening in 1956.

Customer Reviews (11)

a word of caution
not since dos passos wrote `usa' has one writer generated an endless production of stories as joyce carol oates. her vast output and enegetic fast paced writing style compels a frenetic reading just to keep up with the words spilling across the page.although `i am no one you know',probably could be read in one sitting, i would not advise reading all of the stories at once at risk of doing damage to the spirit.with the exception of one or two stories, the stories contained in this volume are about violence, not just violence to the human spirit, but physical violence of horrific magnitude.included are serial killers, husbands who kill their wives, gangs of whites who kill a black student; and where there is no violence there is the suspicion that someone is a bad story waiting to happen.

in most cases, where suspicion in society is given the benefit of the doubt, oates has provided an onslaught of examples of viciousness for her reader not to give that benefit of the doubt to the felons who served their time and appear in college classrooms and appeal to college professors for educational opportunities. oates' victims are generally white women. and you feel oates is dishing out punishment to them, as she hammers away like a blackamerican speaker of high morals on the importance of a good education -- the majority of her stories' victims are without college educations, while the women with higher educations are spared in oates' dangerous society.

would it be too much to read the grisly theme running through these stories as a take on a black cautionary tale?there is the story `instructor' in which erma schegloff, ph.d candidate, teaching english composition to non-academic students in a night class, introduces a piece of writing by `the brilliant black woman writer', zora neale hurston, met withemotional protests from her students.

but it's not the ghost of zora neale hurston who walks the pages of oates' fiction, it's nella larsen, another black american writer,author ofthe two novels, `quicksand', said to be a horror story, and `passing', of a light skin black american woman who chose to live visibly as a white woman, which fits wellthe invisible sensibility of joyce carol oates, writer of the moral cautionary tale in the usa.

Not Her Best Effort
Although her wonderful, intriguing novel "Mulvaneys" was one that was hard to put down, this collection of short stories leaves me wanting; I read it in the wee hours when I can't sleep, and I'm usually asleep within 20 minutes. Knowing she usually writes on the dark side of life's issues, these stories seem to me to be redundant and have excessively similiar themes...rape, illicit sex, fear, murder, alcoholism, etc.With a short story, we expect the unexpected, of course, but many of these shorties just left me asking "what was that all about?" There are a couple of exceptions: "Fire" had some depth and was emotive, but, sadly this book is not one I will put in my bookcase - it will go in the "give away" box.

Oh My! Oh My! Where is the Six Star Button ?
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 and other works. The present work is a selection of short stories that have mostly appeared in print before as individual pieces.

If you have read some of her novels and not been terribly impressed, then read this collection of nineteen short stories, and keep on reading until the end. Oates gives us a treat at the end with her story on Marilyn Monroe at a bookstore. You will understand why she is a professor at Princeton. I got interested in Oates after reading a short story by her and I still think that it is her best area, better than the long novels. She has a number of short story collections.

Oates is known for her emotional and dramatic stories, often with women caught in stressful situations, and often set in her native upstate New York. The present collection contains many of these elements plus a lot more. Most stories involve women, women and families. or women and other family members.

The stories are short and intense and some involve crimes, criminals, or people just released from prison. A few involve people with mental handicaps.

This is a dramatic and entertaining stuff that most Oates fans will love.

As a bit of a bonus, one story takes place in a book store and Oates gives us an interesting reading list which I will repeat here:

Freud, "Civilization and Discontents,"
Crane Brinton, "The Age of Reason,"
Margaret Meade, "Coming of Age in Samoa,"
D.H.Lawrence, "The Rainbow,"
Kierkegaard, "Fear and Trembling,"
and
Mann, "Death in Venice."

Stories that grab you and hang on
Ms Oates is one of the finest living writers, particularly in the short story form. As only the most skilled storytellers can, she can hook you with the first line and deeply involve you in the lives of her characters in the first paragraph.

I must object to a comment that the reviewer from Booklist made about the story "Me & Wolfie, 1979." The reviewer completely missed the point of a moving story about a bright, sensitive boy and his bi-polar mother. Despite the problems she created for him, she also introduced him to a world of magic and beauty. Moving and not soon forgotten.

America's Master Short Writer
Again Joyce Carol Oates is gritty, frightening, writting with humanity and beauty (it is there, just open up your mind's eyeand look). And with apparent ease she is a great stylist. This a great collection of stories, written by Chekov's spiritual daughter. ... Read more

Product Description

I'll Take You There is told by a woman looking back on her first years of college, at Syracuse in the 1970s. Her story, softened by the gauze of memory and the relief of having survived, nonetheless captures a harrowing ordeal of alienation and despair, heightened by a wrenching interracial love affair and her father's death.

Customer Reviews (28)

Go to College in the Early 1960s with Joyce Carol Oates
This novel is one the best by Joyce Carol Oates.It is my favorite of hers, and I've read many, and reviewed a few here.

I'll Take You There by Joyce Carol Oates is, like many of Oates' novels, told in the first person.It is divided into three almost-independent parts.I'll discuss the first two.

The first part of I'll Take You There, titled "The Penitent," is a disturbing and gripping account of a girl's sophomore experiences at Syracuse University.We never discover the narrators real name, evidently, so let's call her "Anellia" which is the name she uses in the second part.Anellia is a pitiable character.We learn a great deal about her life in rural upstate New York.Her mother died shortly after she was born, her father was mostly absent, and she was raised by a resentful grandmother.She has no sisters and her four older brothers mostly ignore her.They all blame her for her mother's death, or at least Anellia thinks they do.When she gets to college she attempts to make up for her lack of family by joining a social sorority--Kappa Gamma Pi.She would have sisters!This turns out to be a disaster and leads to a mental breakdown for poor Anellia.

Anellia is poor.A major part of her problems are financial.Anellia is a scholarship student who is studious, obsessed with philosophy, and is a straight A student.She had graduated valedictorian from her high school.Thus she does not fit in with her supposed Kappa "sisters."Oates, through Anellia's account, gives a nightmarish portrayal of sorority life.The other girls, sisters, are insensitive, arrogant, rich, promiscuous, and budding alcoholics.They are airheads.Their life consists of hair spray, makeup, beer, parties, fraternity boys, and spitefulness.Evidently they admitted Anellia to Kappa, because they expected her to help them with their papers and assignments, and she did to some extent.Anellia also has a terrible struggle with the Kappa house mother, Mrs. Thayer, who is a control freak and also mentally unbalanced.Anellia comes to detest her Kappa "sisters," and the house mother, and they in turn despise her.She cannot afford the sorority and is in constant financial difficulties to the extent that she forages food in alleys behind restaurants.This whole episode is a personal disaster for Anellia.She feels guilty about everything, blames herself, is in despair, but she is still a star student.Eventually Anellia is ejected from the sorority when she commits some embarrassing acts and claims that she is Jewish.The sorority does not admit Jews or negroes.

This part of I'll Take You There is an intense, and compelling, narrative of rejection, loneliness, and mental breakdown.It is also an intense, compelling, and frightening portrayal of college life.I assume that much of this part of the novel is autobiographical, since it fits the known the facts of Joyce Carol Oates' life.She grew up in rural Upstate New York, attended Syracuse University, and was valedictorian of her class at Syracuse like Anellia.The novel takes place in the early 1960s when Oates would have been in college.I do not believe, however, that Joyce had the lack of loving family life that Anellia suffered.One minor quibble:I was a college student in the early to mid-1960s and I fleshed out my meager finances with loans.Why couldn't Anellia get loans to supplement her scholarship?

Oates weaves a lot into this narrative:The brooding, unsettling weather of the Lake Ontario storm country of which Syracuse is the capital; the loneliness, the feeling of being trapped in an unbearable social situation; the pervasive guilt and self-torment; the yearning for impossible companionship; and the edges of mental derangement.This is not easy reading.It is painful and true.I suffered along with and for Anellia.

Oates also weaves a lot of philosophy into the narrative.Anellia is a philosophy major (like Oates was, I believe).The second part is the story of Anellia's obsessive love affair with a much older philosophy graduate student.Vernor Matheius is a brilliant man; and like Anellia a loner, but far more sophisticated, and jaded by the ways of the world.He is writing a Ph.D. dissertation on Wittgenstein, and is compulsively intellectual.He wants to be alone with his philosophical thoughts and does not welcome Anellia's monomaniacal adoration. Vernor reluctantly succumbs to Anellia's attentions, but neither is happy in their stormy relationship.

Vernor is a negro in a very white setting.He attempts to rise above his nature and ignore the civil rights movement that was so much in the forefront in that era.He fails in this misguided attempt at total devotion to philosophy.Still, he cannot ever connect with or understand Anellia.

In many ways Anellia and Vernor are "made" for each other.They are lonely, devoted to philosophy, troubled, and scholarly.Ironically Anellia destroys her relationship with Vernor in much the same way, and for similar reasons, as she destroyed her membership in Kappa.

The final part of I'll Take You There is titled "The Way Out" and refers both to a trip out West and a way out of the torment of Anellia's loneliness and guilt and forlorn search for love and "family."

In Anellia, Oates has created a character, perhaps herself as a young woman, who stands among the great characters of American literature.Oates has managed to explore and uncover many facets of life, philosophy, and the Sixties in this literary masterpiece.I'll Take You There is a wonderful and unforgettable novel.I was gripped by it and moved.Thank you, Joyce.

Book
this book arrived in good condition for a used book - it will be a Christmas gift for my daughter!

She who is not: the shadow of a young woman
The unnamed narrator of Oates's "I'll Take You There" is a shadow of a self who echoes the reality of a young woman struggling to find her place in life. She sees herself reflected in her father and brothers (who subconsciously blame her for her mother's death during childbirth), in her sorority sisters (who disdain her awkward lack of social grace), in her first lover (who treats her as little more than "a puppy eager to be touched"). She longs to fulfill others' expectations of her, she wants "to be liked," she is constantly allowing others to define who she is--yet she still manages to sabotage this image of herself and becomes an outcast to her family, her sorority, even her boyfriend. She cancels herself out. She is called "Anellia," a "scavenged" name, "she-who-is-not."

Oates's hypnotic, post-Gothic prose lends power to the character of this non-character, but her novel serves up an equally mesmerizing, tension-filled story spiced with some singularly acerbic humor and bitter satire. Borrowing a few autobiographical elements from her own life at Syracuse University, Oates introduces the narrator as a college student freshly pledged to a 1960s-era sorority--a move that shatters her financially, stresses her academically, and ultimately ruins her socially. She eats out of dumpsters, she practically lives in the library, and she stalks Verner Matheius--a much older, black philosophy student who has some issues of his own--and they eventually meet and become lovers. Together, the mismatched pair live as pariahs on the outskirts of the campus scene, but even then "Anellia" continues to fashion herself in terms defined almost entirely, and somewhat harshly, by her new boyfriend.

Like the shadow in Plato's cave, the reflection of "Anellia" becomes the reality to everyone around her, and so Oates saves her most extravagant, lifelike portraits for sorority mother Mrs. Thayer, for "bored, depressed, restless" Verner, and for her father's caretaker Hildie Pomoroy, who never once speaks the narrator's name. But the tables are turned when, through Hildie's mediation, the narrator visits her dilapidated, disfigured father, who spent his life as a drunken layabout. He insists that "Anellia" not view him directly as he gazes on her profile from behind; she alone is "evidence of the dying man's life," and he (rather than she) becomes the shadow of reality in the cave of his porch.

In the end, then, "I'll Take You There" is a journey of a young woman's liberation; what resonates for me is the story it doesn't tell, the character we never meet. Although the reader closes the book without ever really getting to know the woman called "Anellia," it's clear that she exists at last, fully formed and "immersed in her writing," after the very final page.

An Unflinching View of an Obsessive College Student
I'll Take You There is an unflinching view of the life of an obsessive college student describing her run-in with sorority life and her compulsive love for a black philosophy graduate student. As usual for Oates, this book is filled with remarkable prose that is piercing and haunting. My biggest complaint is the cover, which makes this book look like Chick Lit.It's not.Recommended.

Intense!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE by Joyce Carol Oates
September 25, 2007


Amazon Rating: 5/5 stars


I'LL TAKE YOU THERE by Joyce Carol Oates focuses on a young woman (who is never named but calls herself Anellia) who is neurotic, obsessive compulsive, and has a hard time fitting in anywhere. She is 18 at the start of the story and has just joined a sorority. The reader is going to wonder why in the world she even thought she could fit in after reading this first section of the story. She continuously sabotages herself, behaves in such a way that the other girls abhor her, and the one woman in the sorority, the house mother, who sees some true character in the girl and almost likes her, she alienates. You know there is something wrong with this girl, whether it was in-born or because of her environment while growing up. And her memory flashbacks tell us that story, a family background in which she grew up in a household filled with brothers and a father who she thinks hated her and blamed her for the death of their mother.

In the second section of the book, Anellia no longer is in the sorority (having been kicked out) and has found a man that she's become intrigued with, a black student that attends the same philosophy class that she does. He is brash and oftentimes comes close to angering the professor, and she soon begins to stalk him. They get into an odd relationship, an almost love-hate relationship as she becomes obsessed with him, most likely because he is black, during a time where racially mixed relationships were not accepted.

And finally in the third section, she receives a call regarding a man that had a big impact on her life and is told he is dying, someone that had disappeared years ago and was thought to be dead. This third section ties everything together, and in some ways gives closure to the main character as she comes to terms with her childhood.

I'LL TAKE YOU THERE is an intense character-driven story of a woman that is unlikable and all around not a very pleasant person to be with. But for those who enjoy character driven books may appreciate I'LL TAKE YOU THERE... Or maybe not. But I am giving this book 5 stars for the very detailed-oriented character descriptions that easily allows the reader to get inside the head of this unloved and unlikable woman. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Provocative
If I were stuck on a desert island and could only bring one author with me, I would definitely bring something by Joyce Carol Oates.I've probably read about 15 of her books over the last several decades and she never fails to deliver.

Sexy is part of her young adult series.It is every bit as good as Big Mouth and Ugly Girl, although frankly, I felt that the endings in both cases left something to be desired.Perhaps Oates believes that adolescents need more cheer than adults and has skewed her endings to be slightly more positive for the teens.

At any rate, Sexy is about Darren, a 16-year-old pretty boy who is coming to terms with his sexual identity.It discusses ethical issues like loyalty and betrayal and how hard it is for Darren to take the high road and do the right and decent thing when he's placed in a moral dilemma.

As always, Joyce Carol Oates writes a character driven novel with incredibly well developed and believable main characters.
She also strives to address certain social issues -- for example, homosexuality and false accusations in this book and hysteria regarding school shootings or bomb threats in Big Mouth and Ugly Girl -- and never sounds preachy while doing so.

Highly recommended.

Sigrid Macdonald
Author of D'Amour Road

Ms. Oates Conquers Yet Another Genre
I am always delighted to find that a writer whose works I admire branches out into yet another genre, in this instance children's and young adult literature. Reynolds Price, Ian McEwan and Toni Morrison-- just to name three fantastic writers-- have done it; and now Ms. Oates, who apparently is capable of anything when it comes to writing, has written SEXY, the story of Darren Flynn: "Soon as he turned sixteen, put on weight and began to get attention for his looks, things began to turn weird." And weird they do. He becomes visible to both women and men, including his high school English teacher Mr. Tracy. Darren is on the swimming team, is from rural New Hampshire, is very shy-- he has a girl friend who is sort of just his best friend. He is still chaste as the New Hampshire snow when it comes to girls. He faces all the dilemmas of a teenage boy and certainly doesn't always make the better decision. Without giving away the plot of this short work, I refer to his handling of "the thing" with Mr. Tracy as well as his participation in the bashing of a gay kid at the mall.

Ms. Oates is ambiguous about the character Darren. Perhaps that is as it should be since heaven knows being sixteen has its own set of problems. It speaks multitudes I believe that this fine writer dedicates this volume "For All The Darrens."

This thoughtful book about teenage angst is a great read for adults. I'd love to know how it is received by high school students. I suspect they could relate completely to Darren.

Sexeptional!
Ideal for anyone who likes sex and bargain prices. ... Read more

Product Description

Nikki Eaton, single, thirty-one, sexually liberated, and economically self-supporting, has never particularly thought of herself as a daughter. Yet, following the unexpected loss of her mother, she undergoes a remarkable transformation during a tumultuous year that brings stunning horror, sorrow, illumination, wisdom, and even&#8212from an unexpected source&#8212a nurturing love.

Customer Reviews (26)

Missing Mom - Joyce Carol Oates
This was well written, but I don't think I'd read it again.However, the book arrived in great shape and right on time, and was extremely cheap.

And again she aims for where we live
Like a moth to a flame Ms Oates seems to be drawn to human vulnerability.How many of us have been / or were / as good to our mothers as we should have / could have been. Realizing that fact, and living with the remorse, after it is too late to remedy such shortcomings is the horror behind this tale. And of course Oates makes mom's demise particularly difficult to live with given how she meets her end (Not to spoil the book I leave it to you to read the book to understand what I mean by that.)Along the way we are given main characters full of their own confusions and pains, desires and quirks, all of whom keep the story compelling. And maybe best of all, we are given a secondary cast of characters who are on the cusp of being misfits, but who are treated with respect and maybe even held up as examples of the people who can show us how to live life, respecting others rather than endeavoring to to be fashionable or cool.

Does she ever not write a masterpiece?
I didn't think I was going to like this one.And then I got into it.I'm in the middle of it and I can't imagine it ending.I don't want it to end.I adore it.The characters are so beautifully drawn.The deranged older sister is perfect - the befuddled married lover - the savior-cop - even the cat - all have distinct and very real personalities.I savor the appearance of each one.JCO has done something wonderful in this book and in "My Sister, My Love." She's leavened the horror, the tragedy, with some priceless, comic moments.And she's raised the tone.Her touch, lately, is lighter.Interestingly, that's right in keeping with some of the greatest writers, like Dickens and Tolstoy, who knew how to create amusing, tender buffoons in the midst of scary landscapes. A reviewer criticized the chapter in which the daughter of the murdered woman repeated "Why? Why? Why?" again and again."Sometimes less is more," was the critic's comment.I don't agree.If you have ever had a profoundly traumatic loss, "WHY?" is the one word that you will, indeed, keep repeating, screaming, crying, shouting, over and over again.This book is another JCO classic. Lucky us. I can't get enough of her work!

Sadness and self-discovery
I just finished reading Joyce Carol Oates' Missing Mom, and I really enjoyed it. The novel is about the impact that a mother's death has on her two daughters.

Brash, sarcastic, Nikki (at 31, the younger of the two sisters) was used to being the black sheep of the family. With her tight-fitting clothes, punky hair, and wild love life, she routinely thumbed her nose at her mother's value system. Pert, bossy Clare, married and with two children of her own, felt as though she'd lived up to her mother's expectations of her life. But after Gwen Eaton's violent death, both women find themselves adrift, unable at first to accept and cope with the absence of their mother. Alternately clinging to one another and avoiding one another, the two women slowly come to grips with who their mother was and what her passing means for their own lives and the life of their family.

What I like about this book: it's cerebral without being obtuse. It's original without being unrealistic. And most of all, these characters think the things that we've all thought. These are very relatable people.

I highly recommend this book.

Missing more than just Mom, but still a worthwhile read
"Missing Mom" is another outstanding effort from Joyce Carol Oates. Nikki Eaton is the narrator of this book: She's a 31-year-old reporter for a relatively small paper in the state of New York. Nikki's always been the black sheep of her family. Instead of sticking close to home with her mother, Gwen, and older sister, Clare, Nikki chose to move miles away and attempt to build a life of her own. Uncomfortable at rare family gatherings, Nikki generally prefers to do her own thing or spend time with Wally, a married DJ she's been having an affair with for three years. However, Nikki's world comes crashing down around her following the unexpected death of her mother. The novel chronicle's Nikki's struggle to maintain balance in her life while coping with loss and grief.

I enjoyed this novel very much. Oates is an extremely gifted storyteller, and I had a hard time putting the book down. There were some things about the story that bothered me, though. I hated Clare's character, which seemed to be very one-dimensional. Nikki's behavior also bothered me much of the time, and I thought her odd relationship with the police detective was very strange and unbelievable. Still, "Missing Mom" is great because of the way it depicts Nikki struggling with so many different emotions after losing her mother. This is a solid book that I recommend, although it's definitely not the author's best work. ... Read more

Product Description
Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. In Expensive People, Oates takes a provocative and suspenseful look at the roiling secrets of America’s affluent suburbs. Set in the late 1960s, this first-person confession is narrated by Richard Everett, a precocious and obese boy who sees himself as a minor character in the alarming drama unfolding around him.

Fascinated by yet alienated from his attractive, self-absorbed parents and the privileged world they inhabit, Richard incisively analyzes his own mismanaged childhood, his pretentious private schooling, his “successful-executive” father, and his elusive mother. In an act of defiance and desperation, eleven-year-old Richard strikes out in a way that presages the violence of ever-younger Americans in the turbulent decades to come.

A National Book Award finalist, Expensive People is a stunning combination of social satire and gothic horror. “You cannot put this novel away after you have opened it,” said The Detroit News. “This is that kind of book–hypnotic, fascinating, and electrifying.”

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

Customer Reviews (10)

Strange, disturbing, well written
This was my first book of JCO's, and I'm tempted to read another. I liked her writing style although it is different and more disjointed that nice, neat and literary writing. You are taken into the head of a demented young man who not only thinks but writes strangely, and that's hard to wrap around, but interesting in that you can really identify, which can terrify you once you figure out the history of him.

A few reviews here say the book is predictable, although I was almost certain of the ending once I got to it, I wasn't sure it would end the way it did. I won't give anything away (I learned long ago not to read the reviews on amazon.com before I read the book, as people are wont to give away endings) but I will say this book was captivating and worth a read. Not perfect by any means, but it certainly kept my interest up and wasn't the same old story you usually read.

Oates Ahead of Her Time
Joyce Carol Oates writes so much that a reader of my generation can hardly catch up with what she's written in the past, much less with what she continues to produce, unless they were to choose to read her work almost exclusively.I walked into a bookstore the other day, and sure enough, she has yet another new book out!Having read Them, I decided I was going to read all of The Wonderland Books, and living in a suburban area, I thought that this would be an interesting one to take on next.Oates tells a story that to me seemed ahead of its time.In our generation, we look back on Columbine as having occurred 10 years ago, only to realize that Pearl Jam wrote Jeremy a whole 10 years before that.A student shot up a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, where I got my doctorate, just a couple years ago.While Expensive People doesn't deal with school violence, it certainly begins to chip away at the psychology of troubled youth that all too often come from affluence--not poverty.And she does it 20 years before Jeremy.This book is well worth the reader's time.

Beautifully Tortured
I adore JCO enough to read a book like this that wanders about and somewhere just past the middle is it's own book.

It's own story is right there in the middle, it lasts about 3 pages and it might have been the book.

This is an uncomfortable book for any parent to read because we see our own flaws and indulgences, the ridiculousness of schooling and adulthood and the distance we create.

But it's beauty makes it less shocking.

A wonderful and engrossing read.

Funny, Tragic A Hard Read
I am reading a lot of Joyce Carol Oates books, as I love her style, and the way she takes you into her stories. At present I am reading her set of four books written in the 60s as part of the Wonderland Quartet, her first book A Garden of Earthly Delights is magnificent and superb story. Expensive People is a trying read. The highlights of this book are the way Oates describes people with money, and how little they give back to society...a commentary which still fits the high income level suburbs in Northern California as well, the plasticity of the individuals living in these areas, with their big houses, small yards, little interest but in jogging, going to teas, country clubs, etc...She is talking not about people with old monies, but the nouveau riche, and she does this very well. Oates uses a young overweight 18 year old as her primary narrator and character, he is the neglected son...is fixated with his mother, and his oedipal alliance creates lots of trauma for him and in the end causes tragedy and loss...In a sense the book has great images, it is written exceptionally well...might be that I did not read it fast enough, it surely was not a page turner for me, like other of her novels...I would recommemd it with reservation... it is an interesting book.

one of the finest American novels
Darkly funny, richly allusive, Oates' satire of the upper middle class is a wonderful read. Many Nabokovian resonances. ... Read more

Product Description
Back in print, one of the most engrossing of Joyce Carol Oates's earlier novels explores a relationship between two women. Originally published in 1985, Solstice is the gripping story of Monica Jensen and Sheila Trask, two young women who are complete opposites yet irresistibly attracted to each other. Blonde, shy, recently divorced Monica is a school teacher; dark, nocturnal, sophisticated Sheila is a painter of stature, driven by the needs of her art. Over the months, their friendship deepens, first to love and then to a near-fatal obsession. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Haunting and impressive!
This is one of Joyce Carol Oates' earlier novels written in 1985. It explores a complex friendship between two complicated women. Monica is a recently divorced woman who works as a school teacher and Sheila is a painter passionate in her art. Both women become friends and their feelings are at times strong and obsessive.
This is a haunting and impressive book!

Joyce Akesson, author of Love's Thrilling Dimensions

Oates Gets At the Heart of the Unspoken
In this novel, the relationship between two women is examined primarily from a
cerebral and highly emotional perspective.Most of the action is internal.The
book is mysterious and mystical at the same time.There are undertones of
entrapment, sexual longing and cultural taboos.Oates gets at the heart of the
unspoken and is able to communicate it beautifully.

Bucks County
Joyce Carol Oates can do anything in literary terms.Her productivity is legion.Her presentation in this book is arch, knowing. The heroine, Monica, is self-conscious.This is a story about a succubus.It is claustrophobic by intention.

Monica has a cul-de-sac in her life.Sheila Trask, an artist, is aneighbor in Glenkill.To teach at a private boys school is perceived as a downward trend for Monica Jensen, a golden girl.In October Sheila Trask pays a visit.The two women commence to see each other.They have intense conversations.Sheila had been married to an older man, another high-flying artist.She has mercurial moods.Everyone at the school knows of Monica's friendship with Sheila.

Sheila feels that Monica is being exploited by the academy.When Sheila goes away, Monica's life fills up with other people.Later on Monica becomes a sort of household manager for Sheila as the artist readies her pieces for a show.

The author's exposition of the nature of friendship is focused, anguished, and satisfactory.

I feel mystified, and distanced.But I liked it.
I stopped reading this book after 20 pages or so because I felt nothing for the characters (the two women).I returned to it after a week of bad reading (gratefully) and became hooked.I came to feel attached to Sheila and Monica, but only to a point, a very frustrating point.The author was giving me descriptions of the women's relationship instead of a direct view.

As for feeling mystified -- just a general feeling of not always knowing what in the world she was talking about.A jumble of descriptions and references on the page, and a big question mark in my head!The descriptions and references were usually psychological in nature, which is what drew me in and kept me going.

The book is weird and complex (as another reader aptly put it), in a relationship way, and will likely hold your interest if that's what you're after.

Abusive
This book was about an abusive relatiosnhip. This abusive friendship did not have enough boundaries and nothing was clear. They never had sex however they become angry if the other one does with someone else. The jealousies, possessiveness and obsessions continue into a downward spiral with an incomplete ending. I think many people have met people like both of the characters and can relate. Sheila is someone I would stay far away from an emotional leach. Monica is begging to be abused and manipulated. ... Read more

Product Description
Stories about the last days of Poe, Dickinson, Twin, James, and Hemingway ... Read more

Product Description
From legendary editor Ellen Datlow, Tails of Wonder collects the best of the last thirty years of science fiction and fantasy stories about cats from an all-star list of contributors. The Stephen King Story is UNCOLLECTED, and has not been in print since the Horrorstory III anthology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

fantasy books
This book was a real surprise for me, some of the stories were a little "dark" but all in all it was fun to read stories from authors that were new to me. My favorite was Dominion by Christine Lucas - it was light and funny and I actually "felt" like I was there watching it take place. I'm not sure if I would buy this book unless you like the "darker" side of fantasy cat stories.

"Tails of Nightmares and Torture" would have been a better title...
The only good thing about this book is the art on the cover, which is pretty cool. I realize with an anthology there's always going to be an author or two that aren't your cup of tea, so I forced myself to read the whole thing because I kept hoping it would get better. It didn't.

the cat's meow
They provide companionship and cause bad luck. They transform and entrance. They haunt and inspire. They herald change and answer questions. They summon and condemn. Kitten or jaguar, saber-toothed tiger or manticore. Malevolent or innocent, magical or mundane.

As centerpieces or incidental characters, cats are integral to every piece in //Tails of Wonder and Imagination//, and they contribute to an impressive variety of stories. Fantasy, horror, sci-fi, romance, and mystery are all represented within its pages.

The vast majority of short story collections, by their very nature, are hit and miss affairs, but for an anthology of its size, there are surprisingly few clunkers. Especially considering that I am by no means a cat person.

In Sharyn McCrumb's //Nine Lives to Live//, a man is reincarnated as a cat and seeks revenge on the colleague who murdered him. A.R. Morlan's //No Heaven Will Not Ever Heaven Be...// features a photographer amassing vintage pics of an old advertising campaign. In Peter S. Beagle's //Gordon, the Self-Made Cat//, a mouse rejects the status quo by studying to be a cat.

Those are but a few of the quality stories contained inside. Ellen Datlow, you've done it again.

Reviewed by Glenn Dallas

Force yourself past the sickening stories
I have followed Ellen Datlow's work and her anthologies for most of my adult life. I was excited to get this anthology. However.... The stories in which the cats are harmed, specifically "Catch" turned my stomach and distressed me so greatly I almost tossed the book away. I felt betrayed by this. I have never in my life gotten so angry and upset at a simple 3 page story. The most distressing point was that this story closely followed on the coat-tails of another that ended with the implied consuption of a cat.

There are other stories in this anthology, and they are worth the read. I am happy that Ellen herself has provided a guide to the stories to avoid, but to me, that isnt enough. It's like providing a fire extinguisher after a fire. To defend your position and say "This book *is* for cat lovers" while at the same time saying that you probably shouldnt have put some stories in the anthology, ALL during the same month of the release.... seems a little preposterious to me.
Source:[...]

Read if you dare. This ISNT a book for cat lovers. This is a book for people who like reading about cats. There is a difference. I wouldnt say that I would line my cat's litter pan with this book, But I definately wish that I could have kept away from some of the horrible, stomach wrenching words and images that some of the stories delivered.

A warning to the curious
Prospective buyers be aware: this is NOT a book for cat lovers. The stories in this anthology include ones in which cats are killed and tortured in many and various unspeakable ways. I'll leave it to the editor and respective authors to reconcile this with their consciences - if they possess such a thing. For myself, I wouldn't even use this to line a litter tray.

My recommendation? Avoid at all costs. ... Read more

Product Description
Sixteen neo-gothic tales of horror, the grotesque, and the dark side of the human imagination focus on the themes of violence in American society and the exploitation of women and children.Amazon.com Review
The central haunting of this collection of 16 tales is notanything so concrete as a building haunted by a ghost, but rather theinterior haunting of a human being by their ever-shifting sense ofself. As Joyce Carol Oates puts it (in a fascinating afterword on thenature and history of the grotesque), "The subjectivity that is theessence of the human is also the mystery that divides us irrevocablyfrom others . . . all others are, in the deepest sense,strangers." These stories, while all dark, cover a range ofstyles and subjects. Some are vividly violent; several are subtleand/or ironic. The New York Times praised this collection for"pull[ing] off what this author does best: exploring the trickyjuncture between tattered social fabric and shaky psyche, whileserving up some choice macabre moments." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

Disturbing and Disappointing
Joyce Carol Oates' Haunted is an excellent collection of stories that, for the lack of a better word, are "scary". However, these are not "scary" in the sense that Edgar Allan Poe or H.P Lovecraft are. These tales are much more like the plot of an episode of Twilight Zone with a twist at the end. As other reviewers have stated, her stories range from traditional scary stories that could to told on Halloween, to creepy tales with psychological implications, to horrific passages of violence.

The majority of the tales center around the relationship between a woman/girl and an abusive man. In most of the stories, the man and woman are related to each other though sometimes it takes a while to figure out their relationship. Though when reading these stories for the first time, the plots and characters may seem harmless. The terrifying elements lay just below the surface. Unlike in other scary story collections, Oates rarely shows the reader what is exactly to be feared. Instead, she describes and fear and panic surrounding the event and lets the reader infer. This technique makes the tales even more grotesque and horrific because there is no defined conclusion and it is up to the reader's imagination.

Oates also uses a variety of techniques that have become familiar to her readers. In one story, she begins each sentence with the word "because" which makes the tale almost seem like a free verse poem. Another story is segmented with each passage numbered as if the entire story is a list of some sort.

Though descriptions of the tales may sound interesting, the majority of the stories are incredibly upsetting. Instead of murderous hitchhikers or clawed murderers, these are stories that burrow deep into the reader's psyche and wreck havoc. These are not for readings around a campfire or for someone who wants chills on Halloween. The kinds of chills that these stories give are far deeper and are not easily ignored.

Not her best, but still pretty good.
Joyce Carol Oates, Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque (Dutton, 1994)

I've been a fan of Joyce Carol Oates for coming up on twenty years now. I was first introduced to her through her short fiction ("The Rose Wall", published in the inaugural issue of the sadly-defunct Twilight Zone magazine, to this day the best publication of its kind), and I've always had a soft spot for her "weird" fiction because of that; this was a book that was right up my alley, in other words. And while, like most short story collections, it was a touch uneven, for the most part it met my expectations quite nicely.

Joyce Carol Oates seems to be a writer people either love or hate. (A quick check of the Amazon ratings for the book, which are almost perfectly split between love and hate, reinforces this.) Criticizing Oates for "transparent plot[s]" and "banal characterization", as one Amazon reviewer does, is entirely justified, and perhaps more so here than in most of the Oates books I've read; there are certainly few characters here equal to those in, say, Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart or I Lock My Door Upon Myself. But one does not necessarily read Oates for great depth of character, and in this case certainly not for startlingly original plot (most of the tales here are Oates' takes on already-existing stories, e.g. "The Turn of the Screw" from the ghost's perspective; given Oates' recent spate of retelling books [Zombie, Black Water, Blonde, etc.], this should not be a surprise); one reads Joyce Carol Oates for the lushness of the language, for the sheer pleasure of reading. And from that perspective, Haunted delivers. Not as well as in Oates' best work, to be sure, but it does deliver. *** ½

No one does it like Joyce Carol Oates

The author's stories are always unsettling, and the fascinating part sometimes is trying to figure out just why you've gotten the creeps so badly. The horrors she writes about are almost never easily definable.

Bad First Experience With Oates
I really looked forward to reading this collection of short stories.I love well-crafted, gothic tales, and from what I'd heard, Oates, an author I'd never before read, is something of a master.Sadly, nothing about Haunted indicated as such.

First of all, I'm all for leaving a story off in such a manner that the reader has to work a bit to connect the dots.However, if the author does not give enough information for the reader to conceptualize a logical ending, well, what's the point?Oates started each of her stories interestingly enough, but then they trailed off into oblivion with the ending coming abruptly and disappointingly.

Secondly, I found Oates' style in this collection to be careless at best.Her sentences lacked punctuation to the point that they were sometimes indecipherable.There were moments when her sentences didn't even make sense.While this sort of thing is common in experimental writing, Haunted did not strike me as hoping to achieve an experimental tag.

I will say that the most enjoyable aspect of the book for me was the afterword.Here Oates went on an impressive, fascinating, and well-written explanation of what gothic writing is, who its masters are, and what purpose it serves.Really, really good stuff.

Haunted has not turned me off from Oates.I've heard too many good things about her to avoid giving her a second chance.However, for me, she's got a great deal of ground to make up.

~Scott William Foley, author of The Imagination's Provocation: Volume I: A Collection of Short Stories

Up and Down Your Spine I Shall Pace and Stomp Hyenas
Please permit me an introduction...this is my newest ally, the pink and fluffy malcontent known as DREAD. Wanna meet his momma? Her name is Joyce Carol Oates and she weaves ensnaring webs of dystopian mortal landscapes that cause me to raise an eyebrow towards the filthy gleaming curs of nightmarish origin that procreate and assimilate through our tenures like phantasmogorical mirthpots.

Yeah. I like the book. Read it. ... Read more

Product Description

Celebrated author Joshua Seigl, an idiosyncratic bachelor and confirmed recluse—young but in failing health—reluctantly admits to himself that he must hire a live-in assistant to help him with his increasingly complicated professional and personal affairs. Then one day at the bookstore he encounters Alma, a young woman covered with bizarre tattoos, who stirs something inside him. Unaware of her torturous past—the abuses she's suffered, the wrongs she's committed, the virulent hatred that seethes within her—Seigl decides that she is the one, and he has no idea that he is bringing an enemy into his home.

Customer Reviews (33)

An uneven blend of realism, satire, and the Gothic
Joyce Carol Oates has dedicated this novel to Philip Roth and, not incidentally, she borrows one of his stock characters: the middle-aged Jewish writer suffering a crisis in intellect, faith (or faithfulness), health--you name it. The Zuckerman/Sabbath/Kepesh here is Joshua Siegl, a curmudgeonly, one-hit-wonder novelist with two debilitating ailments: writer's block and a degenerative nerve disease, neither of which he is ready to acknowledge.

Impulsively, Siegl hires Alma, an uneducated and effectively homeless young woman, to help with his everyday household, office, and eventually nursing duties. Each of this unlikely pair comes with a fiendish sidekick: Jet is Siegl's erratic, jealous, and meddlesome sister, while Alma (unbeknownst to her employer) owes her salvation from the streets to her "boyfriend" Dmitri, an obsequious waiter who does double duty as an anti-Semitic thug.

The themes that dominate the early sections of the novel are treated with unequal success. Since the source and depth of Alma's and Dmitri's anti-Semitism remains vague and unfocused, Oates's emphasis on their bigotry--and, more important, her inability to persuade us why it is directed solely at Seigl--seems more essential to the plot than to the characters. Indeed, there are moments when the book resembles a B-movie featuring a household visitor who turns out to be a vengeful monster. In contrast, the portrayal of the lopsided relationship between Joshua as boss and Alma as employee is brilliantly satirical and wickedly funny; Siegl is an employer who can't see the contempt his helper, whom he treats like a maid and student and daughter and mistress all in one, harbors for him.

And then, about halfway into the novel, the Pygmalion-style relationship between Seigl and Alma becomes tangibly and unexpectedly believable, when the writer becomes more than just an ornery old has-been with health issues and Alma transcends her role as bruised street urchin with a mysterious past. These chapters--the best in the novel--are graced by wondrous prose. But the novel shifts yet again when Oates's fondness for the Gothic wins out over her penchant for realism: all along, Oates has been planting various (and far too obvious) plot kernels and she gathers them for a paint-by-numbers finale that seems stolen from one of her Rosamond Smith thrillers. It's an ending most readers will see coming long before they get to it, and the novel's melodramatic flourish feels incongruous to all that has gone before it.

The Tattooed Girl
The book was an entertaining read. I thought the treatment of sematism was interesting. The plot kept me wanting more. I would reccommend this book to a friend.

So who amoung us isn't flawed?
Others here have given the plot outline of this book -- hopefully none have revealed the ending, which is as dramatic as any Hollywood Thriller.What I didn't see anyone say is that this is another case of Oates giving us characters who are deeply flawed / damaged individuals who are struggling through life the best they can. And as Oates develops these characters, we, the readers, are led down the path of caring about them, hurting for them and forgiving them for their imperfections.

As you read the story you know that there are other things each character might do (this is fiction after all and the author can do what she wants with these people) but Oates won't let them do romantic things (that we the reader want them to do so we can feed on our cherished cultural myths). Oates won't let them simply solve all the problems because in reality there are no simple solutions: not in this story and not in real life

Oates makes her characters make bad decisions, she exposes how vulnerable people are (all people, her characters and her readers too) to wrong-headed ideas and unfulfilled needs: be that hate and prejudice, or pride, or envy, or the need for love and acceptance. We are all deluded in someway or another, meanwhile we imagine ourselves to be rational.The story shows us that decisions made by the intellectual and by the illiterate can be equally self-destructive. Oates makes her characters see what they want to see, not what is real or what is obviously in front of them. (For example: the girl won't/can't leave her abusive boyfriend; and the intellectual believes the girl likes him while she is contemplating killing him.)

All of this ends up being an exploration of and ultimately an exposition about the human condition. Oates makes characters that are way too much like all of us--that is like real humans. Which means they are flawed, imperfect and prone to being deluded about themselves and others.And like the tattoos on the girl that are not done well--and which she doesn't really know who put them on her or why they did it--they keep her/us from being beautiful.

But Oates doesn't leave us there in the dump. While we have all been damaged in our march through life. Oates insists on making all her characters worthy of being cared about. I think that is her genius. Over and over she tells us -in this book and in others--that being flawed does not equal bad, or pitiful, or unworthy. It is just the state of things and that we cannot understand each other--and possibly improve the human condition--if first we do not accept the fact that human are not only not perfect they are and not perfectible.

Joyce can make any story interesting.
What a contrast of two opposite people who cross paths and grow from hatred to a mutual respect and caring for each other. I think she can make anything a great tale. Oates never lets me down.

Good, But a Little Long
Like many readers here, I first encountered Oates though her short stories which I have found to be compelling and wonderfully written.I found this book to be one of her best short stories.Unfortunately, it is a 307 page novel, not a short story.Oates had a great idea,interesting plot, realistic characters (especially, and sadly, Jet), subtle message, and, as usual, wonderful use of language (I have not read any of Oates' poems, but intend to now).

The story was just too damn long:Two-thirds of the way into the book, I kept thinking "get on with it, Carol!We get the idea!Appearances!Bigotry! Destiny!Move it on!"It was all I could do not to flip to the last chapter (a peach of an ending, I might add).

It all could have been said in 70 pages, to much greater effect, especially with the evocative language skills that Oates has at her disposal.

Well, on to my next Oates novel! ... Read more