A gripping and moving new collection of stories that
reimagines the meaning of loss—through often unexpected and
violent means.
Joyce Carol Oates is not only one of our most important
novelists and literary critics, she is also an unparalleled
master of the short story. Sourland—sixteen previously
uncollected stories that explore how the power of violence,
loss, and grief shape both the psyche and the soul—shows us
an author work-ing at the height of her powers.
With lapidary precision and an unflinching eye, Oates maps
the surprising contours of “ordinary” life. From a desperate
man who dons a jack-o’-lantern head as a prelude to a most
curious sort of courtship, to a “story of a stabbing” many
times recounted in the life of a lonely girl; from a
beguiling young woman librarian whose amputee state attracts
a married man and father, to a girl hopelessly in love with
her renegade, incarcerated cousin; from a professor’s wife
who finds herself tragically isolated at a party in her own
house, to the concluding title story of an unexpectedly
redemptive love rooted in radical aloneness and isolation,
each story in Sourland resonates beautifully with Oates’s
trademark fascination for the unpredictable amid the
prosaic—the comming-ling of sexual love and violence, the
tumult of family life—and shines with her predilection for
dark humor and her gift for voice.
© 2003-2025 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy