jwdenson's review against another edition
5.0
I've liked Joyce Carol Oates since I first read her in high school. She's a little dark, and a little sinister, so reading this entire volume of short stories together like a novel may be a little overwhelming. She's great, though. Reading her stories is almost like watching a performance of them because so much is going on between the margins. It's almost like you can see the looks on the characters' faces, the way she uses silences and words that go unspoken.
catherinejay's review against another edition
3.0
I don't usually enjoy short stories but I really loved this. Dark without being totally depressing.
litdoes's review against another edition
4.0
This collection merely offers a peek at the tip of the iceberg that is Oates' massive talent... Despite spanning four decades, Oates tells us in the afterword that she had to leave out many of her defining works like the miniature narratives and gothic/mystery stories.
She's brilliant at crafting characters who are just short of likeable, and yet you feel drawn in enough to want to know what happens to them.
Her female protagonists especially, seem to invite some of the catastrophes that happen to them, and there's that sense of inevitable disaster even as she lays out the path leading to their destruction, either by a seemingly harmless flirtation, or vain indulgence in (unwanted?) attention.
A sense of unease underlies most of these stories, and you go away from them wishing the characters could have made better choices. But perhaps this mirrors real life and makes her stories more painfully realistic. Painting pretty pictures was never Oates' intention to begin with...
She's brilliant at crafting characters who are just short of likeable, and yet you feel drawn in enough to want to know what happens to them.
Her female protagonists especially, seem to invite some of the catastrophes that happen to them, and there's that sense of inevitable disaster even as she lays out the path leading to their destruction, either by a seemingly harmless flirtation, or vain indulgence in (unwanted?) attention.
A sense of unease underlies most of these stories, and you go away from them wishing the characters could have made better choices. But perhaps this mirrors real life and makes her stories more painfully realistic. Painting pretty pictures was never Oates' intention to begin with...
amandar9fa2f's review against another edition
4.0
This generously proportioned book shaped up to be a well-balanced collection by the incomparable Joyce Carol Oates.
It is an ideal anthology to dip into while enduring a fallow period on the novel front. I bought it for its inclusion of Where are you going, where have you been? a story dedicated to Bob Dylan, inspired by his song It's All Over Now, Baby Blue, and based on the case of serial killer Charles Schmid, otherwise known as The Pied Piper of Tuscon. But there are so many gems here, spanning JCO's long career, that I'm hard pressed to find favourites.
The stories are populated by characters always on the outside looking in, the lonely, the leavers of things unsaid. Oates's skill is in putting the reader inside the head of her characters.
It is an ideal anthology to dip into while enduring a fallow period on the novel front. I bought it for its inclusion of Where are you going, where have you been? a story dedicated to Bob Dylan, inspired by his song It's All Over Now, Baby Blue, and based on the case of serial killer Charles Schmid, otherwise known as The Pied Piper of Tuscon. But there are so many gems here, spanning JCO's long career, that I'm hard pressed to find favourites.
The stories are populated by characters always on the outside looking in, the lonely, the leavers of things unsaid. Oates's skill is in putting the reader inside the head of her characters.
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