“Cardiff, by the Sea” by Joyce Carol Oates

Genre: Suspense
Publisher: Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press
Publication Date: October 6, 2020

How does a reviewer review anything written by the living legend, Joyce Carol Oates?  Is there any new critique one can possibly add? It is fair to say that Oates is one of the great writers of our time. For decades, she has written in a variety of styles and genres. Particularly effective are her portrayals of violence and evil in modern society. She is a master storyteller in all genres: “We Were the Mulvaneys,” is the family saga that explores its breakdown, “Blonde,” is the ultimate study of Marilyn Monroe through a bio-fiction, or in “The Accursed” she is at her gothic best.  “Cardiff, by the Sea” consists of four previously unpublished novellas. (I am interested in learning when the author wrote these stories). In these four, we get a good understanding as to why she has been dubbed the “grand mistress of ghoulishness.”  Or her more personal nickname of, “Princeton’s Dark Lady of Fiction.” 

Oates’ protagonists are usually feminine as they are in this book. The title novella, “Cardiff, by the Sea,” which is my favorite in the collection, reads like a fever dream. A young woman in academia, who was adopted at the age of two, receives a phone call from a lawyer concerning her birth family. She inherited a house in Cardiff, Maine from her biological grandmother whom she has never heard of before.  Let the terror begin. She travels to Maine and for the first time and meets her great-aunts and their nephew who is her uncle.  The aunts in this short reminded me of the eccentric aunts in the black and white Cary Grant movie, “Arsenic and Old Lace.” The aunts in the film are portrayed as sweet loving old ladies who just happen to poison lonely men to put them out of their misery. Also, the psychopath uncle from the old movie reminds me of the uncle here in Oates’ imagination. In “Cardiff” the aunts speak so rapidly, without a breath in between words, that the young woman as well as the reader can get a headache. I believe that this is a trick by the author to confuse us. No one is poisoned in the novella but this is best that I can do to get my point across without spoilers. However, I can share, while the young woman stays with her biological family she remembers her traumatic early childhood. These memories are written in a manner that reads as if they are outbursts from the young woman’s unconscious.  She, nor the reader, is ever sure if they are real or fake memories. Either way, they are blood curdling scary.

My least favorite and the most bizarre in the collection is “Miao Dao.” The story centers on a young teenage girl who’s one of the first in her class to reach puberty. Bad things have been happening to her as she has begun to mature. Unfortunately, her new breasts make her a target for boys who like to bully by “accidentally” bumping into her while making lewd remarks.  Simultaneously her parents divorce and she now lives with a lecherous stepfather.  She shuts down from all in her life and becomes almost a hermit.  Her only friends are a pack of feral cats living in her neighborhood. Oates does such a good job of making us feel the girl’s loneliness, and how these cats become her lifeline.  She has taken to sneaking out at night and sleeping with them. And, here is where things get weird. Her new friends become her fierce protectors. One of them grows large and turns into a ferocious cat that may or may not have killed one of the boys who tormented her.  In this novella, the famous author reminds me of a modern day Kafka. In his novella, “The Metamorphosis,” did the salesman really turn into a bug, or was his transformation a psychological interpretation of his feelings towards his family and his life. In a way, the same could be said here. Did the cat magically grow strong enough to become able to kill a human or is Oates using its transformation as an analysis of her character?  On the other hand, is her character the actual killer and there is nothing mystical at all going on?  Damn, Oates is good. The reason I was a bit disappointed in “Miao” is that the teen is written more like a girl obsessed with feral cats than a girl expressing her feelings through them. Still, the author gets her point across.

The other two stories revolve around plotlines that Oates has looked at before. One is about a female student who is obsessed with her older professor including all the crap that goes into such a relationship. The other explores motherhood when a female poet has a fatal attraction to a man whom she marries. They are both top quality reads and as always between the horrors, Oates makes you think about aggression against women by the hands of men. “Cardiff” carefully goes back and forth from psychological suspense and supernatural events, but the tales are always creepy.  I do not believe that I have ever not recommended a book by my favorite author.  This one is no different. As usual, when reading, “Princeton’s Dark Lady of Fiction” you will probably end up having nightmares.

I received this Advance Review Copy (ARC) novel from the publisher at no cost in exchange for an honest review

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“Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.” by Joyce Carol Oates

Genre:  Literary Fiction/Family Saga
Publisher:  HarperCollins
Pub. Date:  June 9, 2020

Joyce Carol Oates has long been a favorite literary author of mine. Just when I think that she can’t do it again—write another gripping family saga—she does. The book’s title comes from the closing lines of Walt Whitman’s “A Clear Midnight.” The poem “refers to the moment of transition that happens from one day to the next. The moment is used as a metaphor from changing corporeal existence to the spiritual existence.” The interruption of the poem is from PoetAndPoem.com. Yes, I needed to look up its meaning. Once I got it, I could easily see how its message is used repeatedly throughout this weighty novel of 800 pages.

The theme of “Night” is familiar to fans of Oates. Once again, she is writing about love and loss, which most would agree are preoccupations in our lives as well as in our literature. Oates has lost two husbands, one after forty-seven years of marriage, and the other after ten. I read her 2011 memoir, “A Widow’s Story,” which she wrote after the death of her first husband. There she suggests that to get through the agonizing grief, “the widow should think I kept myself alive.” In this novel, the author holds nothing back when writing on the psychological effects of grief on Jessalyn, who is one of the main characters, and a grieving widow. The novel is filled with her emotions of shock, loss, feelings of unreality, and thoughts of never loving again. Oates didn’t write personally after the loss of her second husband. I can’t help but wonder if she chose to tell any of that story here. The author has said no such thing, to be sure.

In this big, sprawling tale, Oates takes her readers to a small town located in upstate New York. Along with examining grief, healing and a family coming undone, the author takes on race and class issues. The story revolves around John Earle “Whitey” McClaren, a successful 67-year-old husband and father with a big personality. He is the anchor of the family as well as the respected former mayor of the town. When he sees two cops beating a defenseless, nonwhite man, he stops his car to intervene. The police do not recognize him and they use their taser guns on him repeatedly. Consequently, he has a stroke. And that is it for Whitey. Oates has him die in the hospital soon afterward.

The rest of the tale centers around Whitey’s widow and five adult children, all with very different personalities.  All the kids lose their footing after their father’s death. Their fragile mental states are not immediately noticeable as with their mother, but they all experience life-altering changes. Oates writes the family’s pecking order at a pace that begins slow and controlled, but builds up angrily. Out of all of the kids, the youngest son is the most sympathetic character. He is the black sheep of the family and at the bottom of the pecking order. The author portrays him with bone-deep loneliness. The middle daughter is a high school principal. She transfers her anger onto her students. She actually (spoiler) sabotages some kids by editing their transcripts so they will not get into their first choice colleges. The author has never shied away from writing on the dark side of human nature.

“Night” has been compared to Oates’ 1996 “We Were the Mulvaneys,” which is a saga about another family living in a small, rural upstate New York town, which happens to be where she grew up. “Mulvaneys” is one of my favorite novels by the author. I believe that it is superior to “Night.” An argument can be made that “Night” takes on too many characters with too many details. It can leave the reader thinking that each character’s story should be a novel in itself, making the story feel bloated. Indeed, the master storyteller’s latest novel (according to her website, this is her 59th) is long. Whether it’s too long is debatable—at times yes, at times no. Still, the poetic quality of the author’s prose is worth your time. When all is said and done, the thing about Oates, is after reading her work, it becomes impossible not to notice when you are reading a mediocre novel. That is the power of Joyce Carol Oates.

I received this Advance Review Copy (ARC) novel from the publisher at no cost in exchange for an honest review.

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“My Life as a Rat” by Joyce Carol Oates

Genre:  Literary Family Drama
Publisher:  HarperCollins Publishers
Publication Date:  June 4, 2019

Oates’ latest novel is raw.  It is hard to read, yet hard to put down.  The story is fiercely written in an urgent tone to expose every nasty aspect of paternalism and male entitlement.  We follow a 12-year-old girl from a working-class tight-knit Irish Catholic family.  The setting is South Niagara, New York during the 1990s.   Her life as a “rat” begins after she accidentally slips to her school nurse that her two eldest teen brothers were involved in a racially motivated attack that left a male African American honor student dead.   Once her father’s favorite, she is now exiled to live with her aunt.  Her dad has forbidden her mother and sisters to visit or even phone her.  She is in a new home that doesn’t feel like home and friendless in a new school.  Confused and in shock, she is easy pickings for a male teacher to sexually abuse.  It seems fitting that her family begins a slow mental and financial decline after banishing their youngest child:  A just punishment for deserting a child who did nothing wrong.

This storyline is nothing new for the acclaimed writer.  Violence against women is a recurring theme in her work: “Do With Me What You Will,” 1973, “We Were the Mulvaneys,” 2002, “The Gravedigger’s Daughter,” 2007, “Blonde: A Novel, 2009,” “The Sacrifice”, 2016.  Just when you think Oates must have finally run dry on the subject she pulls off another winner.   So why does Oates’ unwavering theme on the abuse of women keep working for her?  Possibly, it is her willingness to unabashedly dive into the darkest cavity of the human psyche.  And let’s face it—such tales are fascinating to read.   More importantly, her work has been part of  #MeToo decades before the movement existed.  She forces the reader to acknowledge that her male protagonists seeking emotional release by abusing women are mentally ill men.  And her female characters are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse because of a male-dominated society.   Unlike other writers, Oates does not use violence in a sensational manner.  She uses violence to echo the misogyny found in modern times, which is where her characters dwell. At least, that is what this reviewer thinks.

“Rat” has a lot in common with Oates’ 1996 novel, “We Were the Mulvaneys.”   The Mulvaneys are another large Irish Catholic family living in upstate New York. This once-proud family also began a descent into financial ruin after a disgraced daughter was either raped or had consensual sex with a high-school boy.  This reviewer preferred “Mulvaneys” over “Rat.”  The litany of traumas inflicted upon the female protagonists in “Rat” can seem like they are one too many.  This may be because the author expanded on what had been published as a short story a decade and more ago.  Still, this doesn’t mean that “Rat” isn’t another literary success in the world of JCO.  The characters are painfully real.  Oates is begging the question, how does a child feel safe and loved in a universe with rules one doesn’t quite understand.

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“With Shuddering Fall” by Joyce Carol Oates

Genre:          Literary Gothic
Publisher:    Vanguard Press
Pub. Year:    1964

It was such a joy to find Joyce Carol Oates’ debut novel, “With Shuddering Fall.”  She is an all-time favorite author of mine.   Written in 1964, when the author was in her mid-twenties, the novel does not disappoint.   In a previous review of  “Night-Gaunts,” 2018, I wrote that a recurring theme in her work is the abuse of women, as portrayed in  “Do With Me What You Will,” 1973,  “We Were the Mulvaneys,” 2002, “The Gravedigger’s Daughter,” 2007, “Blonde: A Novel, 2009,” “The Sacrifice”, 2016.  I have read them all. They are flawless.  (I admit that when I read her memoir, “A Widow’s Story,” 2011, I was surprised to see how very ordinary her own marriage was).   So I wasn’t overly surprised to read that she began her career on a theme that we have come to associate with this author— a dark tale of two lovers entwined in sexual chaos.

On Oct. 25, 1964, the NY Times reviewed “Shuddering” and wrote of the female protagonist, “Karen Herz at 17 is fragilely beautiful, and, as she herself recognizes, a little “queer in the head.” Her impulses are ungovernable; her whims must be carried to the limit.”   Her being queer in the head actually reads as if she may be autistic. If she is autistic, I did wonder if Karen embraces a twisted love affair as a means to feel. I have no idea if that is how Oates meant for her character to present, but that is my take on Karen.  Her born angry 30-year-old racecar driving lover is Shar.   He appears to have a death wish.  There is little doubt that his violent occupation symbolizes their relationship.  Karen marries Shar and things go from bad to worse.  Remember the Billie Holliday song “My Man?”  “My life is just despair, but I don’t care, He beats me, too, what can I do?” Well, that can be Karen singing about her man Shar.  But then again, Shar’s feelings about Karen are just as bizarre.  He literally cannot live with her (he never was a one-woman kind of guy) or without her (he stays since he is obsessed that he cannot bring her to sexual orgasm).  There is a constant struggle of brutality and indifference between them.

Although the story may revolve around sex her prose is never porn-like.  The Times reviewer also wrote, “This material is not as garish as it sounds _because of the clarity, grace, and intelligence of the writing.”  For Oates to pull this off at such a tender age is nothing short of amazing.  This does not mean “Shuddering” is flawless.  The story can wander off at certain times with unneeded subplots, which detract from the real tale.   She was still in the process of learning her craft.

So why does Oates’ unwavering theme on the abuse of women keep working for her?  I believe it is her willingness to unabashedly dive into the darkest cavity of the human psyche.  And let’s face it—such tales are fascinating to read.  She always seems to ask the question just what is insanity?  Aren’t we all just a little scared to find bits of ourselves in her unstable characters?  You might cringe, but Oates has a unique voice and is one hell of a storyteller.

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The Reading Woman 2018 Calendar: June

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” ― Joyce Carol Oates

The Reading Woman 2018 Calendar: June

 

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.”—Joyce Carol Oates

 

 

“Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense” by Joyce Carol Oates

Pub. Date:          June 15, 2018
Publisher:          Grove Atlantic
Genre:                 Psychological Thriller

Joyce Carol Oates is a literary powerhouse. A recurring theme in her work is the abuse of women: “Do With Me What You Will,” 1973, “We Were the Mulvaneys,” 2002, “The Gravedigger’s Daughter,” 2007, “Blonde: A Novel, 2009,” “The Sacrifice”, 2016. I have read them all. Oates is a favorite author of mine. I admit that when I read her memoir, “A Widow’s Story,” 2001, I was surprised to see how very ordinary her marriage was (her husband, Raymond Smith, is deceased).  Like most wives, she used to share many moments of her daily life with her husband. For Oates, this was about her 36 years as a professor in Princeton’s University creative writing program, where she was nicknamed dark lady of fiction.  “Widow” is filled with the pros and cons of a typical long-term (almost 50 year) marriage. How lost, angry and disoriented she felt after the death of her husband. I assumed incorrectly that her grief would be atypical and written with a screaming evil rage as if it were one of her novels. But it was simply Oates, writing as any other woman would to describe their feelings after the loss of a spouse. I chose to begin my review of Oates’ “Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense” with the above summary because all in the collection are, as the title suggests, dark. In this book, there are six previously published stories. All characters are written with a piercing, uncomfortable clarity that will terrify the reader more than once.

“The Woman in the Window” was inspired by Edward Hopper’s painting titled “Eleven A.M., 1926.” Oates’ imagination turns a lovely and demure painting of female sexuality into a tale of suspense. We meet a naked woman, sitting in a window of her home, waiting for her married lover, where the time is always 11AM because that is when he will arrive. But he is always late. She is never naked for he feels that naked is a coarse word. She is always nude. She wears only a pair of high-heeled shoes. After years of this arrangement, both of them begin to despise each other for different reasons. Their two points of views are woven into a story-line that revolves around sex and violence. (The rest of this review is a potential spoiler.) This taut story had me biting my fingernails, wondering who would kill and who would be killed. But then, I began to question if Oates is playing with her readers. How could anything happen when it is always 11AM? She is still sitting in the window.  He hasn’t even arrived yet. Damn the author is good. You will have to read the story yourself to make your own conclusions.

“The Long Legged Girl” Oates writes about a middle-aged housewife of a college professor. They live in a house on or near campus in a college town that reads like a map of Princeton University. She is an understandably jealous wife since “her husband might be distracted by a girl—or two, or three—but after graduation the girls disappeared.” And frankly, in her younger years, she was so busy with the children and her own career as a food writer that she was glad to have her husband out of her hair for awhile. But now that she has time on her hands, and age has seriously tainted her self-image, well what woman could fault her jealousy. She now believes a certain long-legged girl is her husband’s latest interest. And this one is especially pretty. “A girl with long straight silver-blonde hair that fell past her shoulders, a perfect patrician profile, gray-green eyes…skintight jeans curved down at her impossibly narrow hips.”

For these reasons, she doesn’t feel that any seasoned married woman would point a finger at her for inviting the girl over for afternoon tea.  A special kind of tea.   A deadly kind of tea that will turn the delicate Wedgewood teacups into a game of Russian roulette. The reader is aware of her intentions early on. I imagine that in the hands of a lesser author that the story might lose its punch. How many pages do you want to read speculating which one will drink the poison? But this story’s suspense is not about who lives and who dies. It is about how the author manipulates the reader to lose themselves inside of the wife’s insanity. She appears to have lived a normal life. When did her mind snap? Or, was she always unstable? It is nerve wrecking to read this one alone, at night, when your own brain is tired and vulnerable to confused thoughts.   You may end up questioning your own mental health.

For me, out of all in this collection, “The Experimental Subject” is the most unsettling. First, there is abuse against chimpanzees, which is disturbing. Then there is the mental and physical abuse against the main female character, which is heartbreaking. The reader will meet a male professor and his male senior technician in a government-funded primate laboratory. The heroine is an unattractive, friendless college girl with a family who wants no part of her. It is not a spoiler when I mention that there is something unethical in this experiment, something unholy. The first paragraph begins with “She was a solid-bodied female of perhaps twenty years of age with a plain face, an unusually low, simian brow, small squinting eyes…full bosom of an older woman, thick muscled thighs and legs, thick ankles…and a center of gravity in the pelvic region.” In the next paragraph, we meet this lonely girl as she enters the professor’s lecture hall. The technician sights her and is certain that she is a good candidate for the experiment. He befriends her and she begins to shine for the first time in her life. She falls in love with the technician and believes that he also loves her. But then the experiment begins and she is unaware that her life is now in danger.  If I go on anymore it will become a spoiler. Be prepared, this is a truly unique and bone chilling tale.

Not all of the stories were as thought provoking as the ones I chose to review. I didn’t find the title story, “Night-Gaunts,” as a stellar read. The haunted house setting just lost me. Still, there is no denying Oates’ enormous talent. She manages to turn a collection of thriller stories into a piece of literary fiction. Oates has been criticized for writing female characters with masochistic traits. It has been noted that there is a lack of strong, independent female role models in her fiction. In 1981, Oates wrote an essay titled “Why is Your Writing so Violent?” In it, she comments that she finds that question always insulting, always ignorant, and always sexist. Oates feels that “rape and murder fall within the exclusive province of the male writer, just as, generally, they fall within the exclusive province of male action.” She points out that, “in fact, my writing isn’t usually explicitly violent, but deals, most of the time, with the phenomenon of violence and its aftermath.” I believe the tales in “Night Gaunts” prove her point. To understand why that question is so insulting to the world famous writer, I suggest that you remember her words while you read this collection. She gets inside her characters’ psyches, and the reader learns of their hidden interiors. If you are brave enough to look, you may also find what you keep hidden about yourself. Oates will make you squirm. She forces you to look at your own sexual desires, your own feelings of loneliness, and your own death. These are the musings that will scare you more than any straight psychological thriller.

I received this Advance Review Copy (ARC) novel from the publisher at no cost in exchange for an honest review.

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Thank you for all the likes on my Joyce Carol Oates quote. She is one of my favorite authors. I forgot to ask, who is yours?

via “Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” Joyce Carol Oates