Review by Booklist Review
A master storyteller pays homage to the horror genre via a collection of superbly twisted tales. Oates, an author who has consistently displayed a decided penchant for the peculiar and the macabre in her mainstream fiction, gives free rein to the dark side of her imagination, producing 16 gruesome, titillating, and bizarre short stories. These spine-tingling, surrealistic yarns represent yet another aspect of Oates' unparalleled literary genius and remarkable versatility. ~--Margaret Flanagan
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Fiction machine Oates ( Foxfire ) industriously cranks out her 18th short-story collection, a wide-ranging offering of 16 grisly tales. She knows which literary buttons to push, and while there's certainly suspense in these selections, it's accompanied by the recognition of a tried-and-true formula at work. ``The grotesque always possesses a blunt physicality that no amount of epistemological exegesis can exorcise,'' writes Oates in an afterword, and this broad definition characterizes the multifaceted and invariably disturbing selections here. These include the previously unpublished ``Blind,'' a first-person account of an old woman who awakens during a thunderstorm to find herself blind and her husband dead; the similarly horrifying ``Poor Bibi,'' about a couple that mistreats a dog; and ``Accursed Inhabitants of the Bly,'' a reworking of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw . All the pieces here have a redeeming literary bent, although some are transparent in their motives. Undoubtedly a master of this form, Oates plies her craft like a skilled seducer, setting the mood and moving in for the conquest night after night after night. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
From the first rank of American writers comes this anthology of 16 short stories and a short essay on the literary lineage of horror fiction and the grotesque. The stories, written between 1980 and 1993, are reprints. Oates pays curious homage to James and Poe; retelling James's ``The Turn of the Screw,'' she defuses the fright and makes the tale darkly comic. Likewise her ``The White Cat'' is more misadventure than horror with just a twist of Poe-like irony at the end. Some of these stories will disturb, some will require literary analysis to appreciate. Of special interest is her essay, which spans film, painting, and the theater seeking to identify the source of society's craving to be frightened. While all the tales are beautifully written, overall they are a departure from the genre and may leave horror enthusiasts disappointed. For literary collections rather than public library fiction collections.-- Robert C. Moore, DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Co. Information Svcs., Wilmington, Del . (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Surging intensity floods nearly every page of Oates's 18th hardcover collection (Where Is Here?, 1992, etc. etc.), these devoted to explorations of the grotesque. It's not as if Oates needs the fantastic to release her imagination: even in her calmer or more domestic outings she baits steel springs for snapping the reader's neckbones. Of the 16 tales here, only one is new (``Blind''), the others--nearly all quite recent--having appeared in well-heeled surroundings (Glamour, Omni, Playboy, Antioch Review, etc.). A collection such as this succeeds if it has even one masterpiece, and here there's at least one, perhaps two or three, while the rest run over with imaginative fury. Top honors go to ``The Premonition,'' in which the deepest horror remains unnamed but is hinted at in the brilliance of a bathtub just scrubbed of blood and gleaming from kitchen cleanser. Oates's variation on Henry James's ``Turn of the Screw'' is ``Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly,'' in which James's characters reappear incorporeally but are drenched with lust for the unachievable orgasm. In the title story, Oates brings an abandoned farm house to life as if she'd been fed all her life on hot tarpaper roofing and worn kitchen linoleum. ``The White Cat'' is a variation of Poe's ``The Black Cat,'' and the longish ``The Model'' of Robert Nathan's Portrait of Jennie, though that sentimental fantasy here turns into a murder/suicide. Least happy story is ``The Bingo Master,'' in which a spinster fails to get herself deflowered. Of the others, especially ``Thanksgiving,'' a grotesquerie on consumer America's Thanksgiving dinner, all rise to a level few living masters of the genre can equal as Oates's forefingers test the pulse on your throat or wander into your ears. Like swallowing live mice.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
