Review:
"A dazzling, disturbing, tour de force of Gothic suspense: four odd, compelling, ingeniously narrated tales that gain in power and resonance when read in conjunction with each other."--Boston Globe "These potboilers about murder, obsession and death have a genre funkiness, a greasy pulp seaminess, that is reminiscent of forgotten subscription serials and old "Twilight Zone" installments. . . . For Oates, whose worldview is as flinty as that of any of her male peers, true horror is rooted not in the supernatural--that would be almost reassuring--but in the things that men and women do to each other under the spell of attraction."--Washington Post "These four Gothic tales run the gamut from creepy to mesmerizing. . . . All the while, [Oates] slyly critiques our culture, from parents who don't protect their young daughters from sexual predators to killers hopped up on prescription meds."--Cleveland Plain Dealer "Exquisitely suspenseful. . . . The relationships between the damaged, sometimes monstrous individuals who people these pages will keep the reader riveted."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Love doesn't just go wrong between Oates' characters, it blows up, drips poison, tortures, kills. . . . This is among her better quick-turn efforts. Each of its novellas makes your skin crawl even as it also seems completely believable, like something you heard once, from where, you can't remember."--Star Tribune (Minneapolis) "This is familiar Oates territory, mapped with artistry and care; dark, bloody, and unforgiving."--Barnes & Noble Review "Immediately engaging . . . [the] suspense is palpable."--Shenandoah "With her focus on deviant and twisted characters, Oates continues to be a worthy descendant of the gothic tradition of Edgar Allan Poe."--Kirkus Reviews "A quartet of shrewd and unnerving novellas. . . . Oates has a superbly disconcerting gift for orchestrating slowly coalescing realizations that something is horribly wrong."--Booklist "A proper definition for the word love is as slippery and ambiguous as the future of Oates' seemingly doomed characters. . . . Oates makes the reader feel as if an evil eye is trained upon them with the passing of each hour and the turning of each page."--Missourian (blog) "A stunningly written, disturbing masterpiece. . . . The four worlds that Oates gives us here pull in the reader until she finds herself too fascinated to leave--even when everything gets creepy."--Bustle.com
About the Author:
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of such national best-sellers as "The Falls, Blonde, " and "We Were the Mulvaneys." She has been nominated for six National Book Awards, winning for "Them."
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