Dis Mem Ber
And Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
In this disturbing short story collection, Joyce Carol Oates explores the inner lives of vulnerable girls and women.
Joyce Carol Oates is renowned for her rare ability to “illuminate the mind’s most disturbing corners” (The Seattle Times). That genius is on full display in this collection of seven feverishly unsettling works, DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense.
In the title story, a precocious eleven-year-old named Jill is in thrall to an older male relative, the mysterious, attractive black sheep of the family. Without telling her parents Jill climbs into his sky-blue Chevy to be driven to an uncertain, and unforgettable, fate. In “The Drowned Girl,” a university transfer student becomes increasingly obsessed with the drowning/murder of another female student, as her own sense of self begins to deteriorate. In “Great Blue Heron,” a recent widow grieves inside the confines of her lakefront home and fantasizes about transforming into that great flying predator unerring and pitiless in the hunt. And in the final story, “Welcome to Friendly Skies,” a trusting group of bird-watchers is borne to a remote part of the globe, to a harrowing fate.
At the heart of this meticulously crafted, deeply disquieting collection are girls and women confronting the danger around them, and the danger hidden inside their turbulent selves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Greater variety along the lines of Oates's outstanding 2016 collection, The Doll-Master would have enhanced these seven well-crafted stories of menace, madness, and murder. The first four each feature a psychologically vulnerable female protagonist, whose obsession will land her in life-threatening jeopardy, starting with Jill, the title tale's awkward young narrator, who lets the thrill of Elvis-slick looks and a sky-blue Chevy blind her to a distant relative's menace. The atmosphere becomes downright miasmic by the fourth tale, "The Drowned Girl," in which the narrator, a university transfer student, becomes fixated on student Miri Krim's demise in a rooftop water tank months earlier. In the final trio, Oates shuffles the deck plotwise but maintains the creepiness quotient. In "The Situations," a father flings the three newborn kittens his children want to keep off a bridge; in "Welcome to Friendly Skies!," a plane's passengers appear to be winging to something more sinister than an anticipated polar bird-watching expedition. All in all, dis turb ing.
