High Crime Area: Tales of Darkness and Dread - Softcover

Oates, Joyce Carol

3.23

735 ratings by Goodreads

9780802123749: High Crime Area: Tales of Darkness and Dread

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802123740 ISBN 13: 9780802123749

Publisher: Mysterious Press, 2015

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Joyce Carol Oates is an unparalleled investigator of human personality. In these eight stories, she deftly tests the bonds between damaged individuals—brother and sister, teacher and student, two lonesome strangers on a subway—in the fearless prose for which she’s become so celebrated. In the title story, a white, aspiring professor in Detroit tries to shake a black, male shadow during the summer of the city’s 1967 race riots. In The Rescuer,” a promising graduate student detours to inner city Trenton, New Jersey, to save her brother from a downward spiral, but finds herself entranced by his dangerous new world. Meanwhile, a young woman of a much different breed prowls the New York City subways in search of her perfect man in Lorelei.” In eight these biting and beautiful pieces, Oates confronts the demons within us. In the end, sometimes it’s the human who wins, and sometimes it’s the demon.

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About the Author:

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of such national bestsellers as The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys. Her other titles for The Mysterious Press include High Crime Area and The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares, which won the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Short Horror Fiction. She is also the recipient of the National Book Award, for them, and the 2010 President’s Medal for the Humanities.

Review:

These tales of darkness and dread’ won’t put you to sleep, but they’ll give you more interesting nightmares. . . . In a way, every story is a character study . . . sure to focus a basilisk eye on the weak spot that reveals our own ugly impulses and make us defenseless against the terrors of the night.” New York Times Book Review

[In High Crime Area], there’s little overt violence; it’s all in the mind, as [Oates] slowly tightens the noose. Drenched in clammy atmosphere, Oates’ work explores the heads of both ordinary people and those who are at least a little damaged.” Seattle Times

This writer is extraordinary not because she produces such huge amounts, but because what she produces is so consistently good. And short stories show her invention, economy and control at its best . . . Oates perfectly captures the atmosphere of fear and well-meaning misunderstanding.”—Times (UK)

Scary, brooding and entertaining. . . . The despair is palpable and the tension always high in these stories told in a combination of hyper-realism and emotionally charged suspense. Horrific and creepy, High Crime Area still manages to smartly critique American society and its uneasy feelings on race, sexuality, gender, academia and family dynamics.” Bookreporter

Oates 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. . . . Powerhouse Oates brings both exterior and interior worlds into excruciatingly sharp focus, evoking dread, grim exaltation, and the paralysis of prey. Oates’ potent dark tales are addictive.” Booklist

Oates’ mastery of imagery and of stream of consciousness enhances the gritty settings and the frailties of her grotesque and pitiable subjects." Kirkus Reviews

Exquisitely written . . . there is no better stylist alive than Joyce Carol Oates. . . . Read High Crime Area and prepare yourself for eight surprises, the number of stories in the book.” Huntington News

Oates offers unexpected glimmers of redemption amid the grotesquerie, degradation, and exploitation that fill this collection’s eight tales. . . . Oates is at her best depicting characters who seem perplexed by their own needs, desires, and obligations.” Publishers Weekly

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.” Library Journal

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