Review by Booklist Review
J. C. just doesn't stop. Another new book! Her latest one is a collection of 27 horror stories, and as anyone who has read any of her fiction will attest, darknesses of the mind, soul, and heart are familiar Oates' terrains. She taps into these reservoirs of personal knowledge and interest to depict various forms and shades of hauntedness in stories ranging from three to many pages. "The Sepulchre" involves a phone call from a woman's mother, begging her to come home because her father is lost. But this is no typical missing-persons case. And a phone call figures prominently in another story, "The Hands," in which a man gets a 6 a.m. call from his father, who complains about the stranger upstairs who has some bizarre control over his hands. These stories are not especially deep or thoughtful. They have surface appeal; they are good entertainment. Oates fans will be interested, as will any reader with an interest in horror fiction. --Brad Hooper
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Although these 27 macabre stories will trigger familiar fears (of death, of the human potential for violence), they provide many surprising turns as they tour familial traumas and human isolation. In general, Oates's characters are hapless victims of fate. In "Death Mother," a woman recently released from a psychiatric ward attempts to reclaim her daughter, a college student who has never been able to escape her traumatic memories. In "The Hand-puppet," a ragged toy alters a child's voice and behavior hideously, to the terror of her unsuspecting mother. The most disturbing stories have a frightening sheen of plausibility; the occasional monsters and phantoms are far less convincing than the human beasts. Oates can inhabit many different voices and psyches, from the tormented Elvis worshipper of "Elvis Is Dead: Why Are You Alive?' to the homicidal teen of "The Sons of Angus McElster" or the omniscient invalid of "Intensive." These individuals' cosmic predicaments dictate the shape of each tale, related in Oates's characteristically breathless style. While some of the stories lack clear resolutions, Oates generally succeeds in conveying a truly ominous atmosphere and in chilling the reader's blood. Oates proves yet again that she is an equally intrepid navigator of reality as well as its negative image. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Combining Edgar Allen Poe's imagery with Raymond Carver's insights into the human condition, Oates creates 27 views of imaginary horrors. In "Shroeder's Stepfather," rage becomes a murder weapon; in "Scars," a returning hometown hero has physical reminders of emotional slights; and in the haunting "Shadows of the Evening," a beautiful singing voice ages the innocent. The stories are effectively frightening, especially as the endings are implied rather than described. Oates has followed up her award-winning Haunted (LJ 1/94) with stories that were published previously in journals, but having them together in a single volume makes for a powerful reading experience. Recommended for public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/98.]ÄJoshua Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. System, Poughkeepsie, NY (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
Oates's newest collection (and, to nobody's surprise, second major work of fiction this year) intriguingly revisits the ``gothic'' terrain surveyed in such earlier volumes as Night-Side (1977) and Haunted (1994). As is generally the case with Oates, the result is a mixed bag, containing several flimsy (though invariably atmospheric and suggestive) vignettes and anecdotes (``The Sky Blue Ball,'' ``Intensive''); affecting dramatizations of intense relationships among children and their elders (the nerve-rattling ``Death Mother,'' and a story entitled the ``black rectangle'' that symbolizes its narrator's repression of a traumatic visit to menacing relatives); and breathless portrayals of the enthusiasts-cum-fanatics who have long since constituted a subgenre of Oatess work (``Death Astride Bicycle,'' ``Elvis is Dead: Why Are You Alive ?''). A few stories employ overworked supernatural conventions (an Indian relic comes voraciously to life in ``The Dream-Catcher''; a child's grotesque plaything menaces her apprehensive mother in ``The Hand-puppet''). And literary influences are sometimes strongly felt, even if ingeniously made new (Poes tales in the parable-like title piece; Hortense Calisher's ``The Scream on Fifty-Seventh Street, to which Oates previously demonstrated indebtedness in ``Unprintable''). A choice few belong among the authors very best: notably the swift tale of a vacationing family's lost little boy and his likely fate, recounted in a chillingly bland colloquial voice (``Labor Day''); the story of a painter who makes inimitable art out of the disease that plagues him (``The Affliction''); and two superbly imagined and skillfully constructed exercises in psychological horror (``The Crossing'' and ``Shadows of the Evening''). The paradoxical momentum frequently traced in these storiesof escape from an impoverished or frightened childhood into a stable world of culture and order, though it may be snatched away violently at any timegives them the further dimension of close relationship to Oatess more purely realistic fiction: the ``night-side,'' as it were, of her oeuvre. One of Oates's more interesting recent books, and impressive further proof of her continuing mastery of the short story.
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
