Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque by Joyce Carol Oates

From the Publisher

Novelist, poet, dramatist and author of many of the best American short stories of our time, Joyce Carol Oates shows yet another aspect of her unbounded creativity in these tales of the grotesque. Haunted, a collection of sixteen tales that range from classic ghost stories to portrayals of chilling psychological terror, raises the genre to the level of fine literature - complex, multi-layered, and gripping fiction that is very scary indeed. In the title story, "Haunted," the pubescent Melissa and her best friend, the sexually precocious Mary Lou, ignore "no trespassing" signs to explore forbidden houses. But the deserted Minton farm is one place where they should not have gone, and years later Melissa is tormented by her memories of its malevolence...and the murder of Mary Lou. In the novella, "The Model," a sexual threat seems to underlie the interaction between young Sybil Blake and "Mr. Starr," who asks her to be his model, but the truth about her own identity, and his, shows that the danger is lurking in a different part of the heart. The "Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly," a macabre reworking of Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw," resurrects the evil of Miss Jessel and Quint, who are up to their old tricks with the children, Miles and Flora, but with new, perverse, and brilliant revelations. The tales in this collection plunge the reader into nightmare worlds where violence slips in unexpectedly, where reality turns into a funhouse mirror, and where American culture goes awry in shocking, provocative ways. Joyce Carol Oates is a master storyteller of the dark side. She writes with skillfully controlled prose, tightly woven plots, and deep psychological insight that make her fictional horror worthy to set alongside the stories of Edgar Allan Poe - and far above all the rest.

Publishers Weekly

The prolific NBA-winning author presents 16 multifarious horror stories ranging from a reworking of James's The Turn of the Screw to macabre, contemporary thrillers. (Feb.)

Library Journal

The prolific Oates here offers 16 high-class horror tales, including a reworking of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw.

BookList

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.

Kirkus Reviews

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 testthe pulse on your throat or wander into your ears. Like swallowing live mice.

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Table of Contents