This story started out as a story I might like: an older couple is newly married but both have previous marriage that ended in death or divorce. One night, the husband thrashes, groans and grunts with a bad dream. And it happens again. And again. When the wife confronts him with it, seeking to comfort him, he denies he was dreaming and accuses her of being the one that had a bad dream. This goes on and on and on. Leeches enter the plot. It morphs into horror. Has he killed his first wife. The second wife can find out little about her even from people who should know the story. The reader doesn't know if she is mentally ill or if he is trying to kill her. It ends ambiguously and is apparently part of a longer work.
This was so, so long. Although the writing was good, I just don't care for horror stories on the whole. You can listen to JCO read it on THE NEW YORKER website. If you dare....
Jerry House
TracyK
George Kelley
Kevin Tipple
9 comments:
Sorry, but just not a fan of Oates, never have been. I read one of her stories occasionally, but I can't read her novels at all. I did read her memoir, A WIDOW"S STORY.
I've been alternating two collections of Peter Tremayne's short stories (one story in each per day; most are about 25 pages long), WHISPERS OF THE DEAD (15 Sister Fidelma Mysteries) and AN ENSUING EVIL AND OTHERS (Fourteen Historical Mysteries). Fidelma is a lawyer, a religeuse, and the sister of a King in 7th C. Ireland. As a dalaigh, an "advocate of the seventh-century law courts of Ireland." In the other, stories range in time. There feature Master Hardy Drew, Constable on the South Bank of the Thames in London during Shakespearean times. Another features MacBeth some years before the actions of the play. And yet another is on a British ship during the Napoleanic Wars. If I had to choose, the topics of the second book are more to my taste in general, but both collections are very good and well worth reading. I'll take them over Joyce Carol Oates's depressing writing.
I liked her first novels-maybe about six or eight of them. But since then, not so much.
Have never read Tremayne. So much still to read.
You'd probably enjoy the ones set in 1600. Shakespeare himself has a brief cameo in one of the stories, and they have plenty of authentic-seeming atmosphere.
Horror stories aren't really my thing either, Patti. I ought to read more Oates, though, so it's good to hear about this one.
What makes it horror? As opposed to a suspense story (the question of whose perceptions are deviating from consensus reality?). Oates can do powerful work in this mode, but the long neo-gothics are not my favorite examples of her work, and this might well turn out to be something along their lines.
Patti, I read everything by Joyce Carol Oates in the 1970s and early 1980s. Then, I stopped reading her novels. I reader her non-fiction (she's an excellent essayist and reviewer) and some short stories. Diane and I went to the State University of New York at Buffalo when she appeared on their lecture circuit. She's a very good speaker, but it was evident JCO was wary of the crowded auditorium. Apparently, she had some incidents during other speaking engagements.
Megan has gotten to know her and is very fond of her. I remember Phil taking her to hear JCO speak when BLONDE came out. And now she has dinner with her.
Margot I was planning to try see you in CA and it got away from me this year. Sorry to miss you.
I guess the leeches mostly made it horror for me.
I have not liked any short stories I have read by Joyce Oates, and I have not tried any of her novels. I will try more when I find some shorter ones. This one does not sound like I would like it either.
THEM, a novel that took place in Detroit, was good. She lived here for a few years.
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