January 13, 2014
Oates (Evil Eye) offers unexpected glimmers of redemption amid the grotesquerie, degradation, and exploitation that fill this collection’s eight tales. The volume picks up momentum after the predictable and slow-paced opener, “The Home at Craigmillnar,” as Oates delves into denser, more complex realms in the subsequent entries. Several stories—notably, “High” and the novella-length “The Rescuer”—deal with privileged white women who (perhaps) naively force themselves from their sheltered academic world into situations fraught with economic, racial, sexual, and social tensions. Monstrosity, apathy, and despair plague family relationships in “The Rescuer,” “Demon,” and “Toad-Baby.” Many of the characters’ most intimate connections are with strangers, or with the potential those strangers have to indelibly alter the narrators’ lives for better or worse. Oates is at her best depicting characters who seem perplexed by their own needs, desires, and obligations, and readers seeking tidy resolutions and clear endings won’t find them in these tales. Agent: Warren Frazier, John Hawkins and Assoc.
February 15, 2014
Among the most compelling of Oates's many literary personae is the one with a deep-rooted interest in the pathology of criminals and their crimes. Her latest story collection opens with a Roger Ackroyd-like confession that elicits the reader's sympathy before the crime itself is described ("The Home at Craigmillnar"). The other stories range from horror to dark comedy, including a revenge fantasy perpetrated on a misogynistic world-renowned writer ("The Last Man of Letters"). Oates is particularly adept at revealing the lure of the criminal element among failed or failing academics who drift well beyond the statute of limitations of their doctoral degrees. VERDICT These stories take the reader to desolate intersections and grimy tenements that mirror the dark reaches of the human soul; the combined elements of literary fiction with genre fiction and true crime offer added audience appeal. [See Prepub Alert, 10/20/13.]--Sue Russell, Bryn Mawr, PA
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July 28, 2014
Each of the six performers chosen to narrate Oates’s collection of dark character studies suits the atmosphere of malaise and despair that emerges from the author’s odd, elegant prose. Ray Chase starts the collection by portraying an orderly at a facility for the elderly in “The Home at Craigmillnar,” with a dispassionate voice as the character describes the discovery of the body of an aged, unloved nun. Chris Patton provides a tense, anxious history of the child in “Demon,” who has suffered most of his young life, while Tamara Marston employs a plaintive yearning in “Lorelei,” in which the title character searches for a touch of humanity in the subways of New York. Donna Pastel uses a dry and mildly distracted approach for “High,” in which a middle-aged widow tries to cope with the loss of her husband, first with marijuana, then by courting danger. Whelan shifts from determined to dreamy in “The Rescuer,” as the promising grad student who travels to Trenton, N.J., to save her brother from a druggy vortex, only to find herself slipping in. Finally, reader Luci Christian finds the perfect hardboiled teenager voice for the 13-year-old narrator of “Toad-Baby,” a grim, not-quite-nuclear family tale that, surprisingly for Oates, ends with more than a hint of hope. A Mysterious hardcover.
February 15, 2014
From Oates (Carthage, 2014, etc.) comes this collection of eight stories, seven previously published, that explore the depths of human despair and cruelty. A retired nun is found dead with a muslin veil over her face in "The Home at Craigmillnar." Although the nun was a cardiac patient, the orderly who reports her death knows enough about her dark past to suggest that she might have died from something other than natural causes. In "High," a lonely widow seeks escape from her grief even as she opens herself up to exploitation by those she once tried to help. A 13-year-old girl has to protect her half brother from an indifferent world and their alcoholic mother in "Toad-Baby." "Lorelei" is a needy woman who searches the subways for love and hopes that people will notice her. In "Demon," a mentally challenged youth goes to extremes to eliminate the sign of the devil in his own body. The would-be heroine of "The Rescuer" is a cultural anthropologist who leaves her ivory tower to save her brother from a terrifying local culture and is slowly pulled into it. "The Last Man of Letters" is an arrogant author who thinks he's receiving the adulation he deserves until he realizes how much he's hated. Finally, an idealistic young teacher in 1967 Detroit has to face the fears that are personified by the man following her in "High Crime Area." Oates is at her best here when she's writing about floundering academics thrust into situations for which they're hopelessly ill-prepared. Oates' mastery of imagery and stream of consciousness enhances the gritty settings and the frailties of her grotesque and pitiable subjects.
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February 15, 2014
Oates (Evil Eye, 2013) carries forward the great American dark-tales tradition with spellbinding craft, a cutting female eye, and a keen sense of how the diabolical infiltrates everyday existence, masterfully conjuring realms grotesque, erotic, and ironic. She begins with a neatly feinting revenge story about a conscientious orderly and a nun who once ran a notorious orphanage. We meet an ethereal, wealthy widow who naively decides that marijuana will ease her pain, a prescription for mayhem. Oates portrays with forensic exactitude misshapen and abused children and a sexist celebrity writer who gets his comeuppance. The Rescuer is a complex and haunting tale about family and race centered on a dutiful young woman trying to help her brother in the drug-poisoned heart of Trenton, New Jersey. Oates extends her inquiry into the racial divide and returns to another of her signature settings, Detroit circa 1967, in the exquisitely frank and distressing title story about the fears of a young, white English teacher. Powerhouse Oates brings both exterior and interior worlds into excruciatingly sharp focus, evoking dread, grim exaltation, and the paralysis of prey. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Oates' potent dark tales are addictive, and her readers' habit must be fed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)