✍ Scribed by Oates, Joyce Carol
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The heart is a lonely hunter, and it also is vengeful, untrusting, and cruel, as Oates (The Female of the Species) proves in this fine collection of 10 tightly focused tales about love and its aftermath. In the epistolary title story, a young woman writing after many years to her alleged abuser, a biblical scholar, inspires sympathy at first, but a very different emotion by the end. Hidden snapshots propel a man into obsession about his wife's past in "The First Husband." The ambiguous memories of a woman with a history of drug and mental problems build to a crescendo in "Smother." A 13-year-old girl finds her resolve when she's the only female with a group of drunken, threatening men in "Strip Poker." A naïve college student's attempt to help a nine-year-old girl goes horribly wrong in "Bleeed." Each story shows the power of Oates's never-ending clear, clean prose. (Jan.)
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An Otto Penzler Book
The need for love—obsessive, self-destructive, unpredictable—takes us to forbidden places, as in the chilling world of_Give Me Your Heart,_a new collection of stories by the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates.
In the suspenseful “Strip Poker,” a reckless adolescent girl must find a way of turning the tables on a gathering of increasingly threatening young men—Can she “outplay” them? In the award-winning “Smother!” a young woman’s nightmare memory of childhood brings trouble on her professor-mother—Which of them will “win”? In “Split/Brain” a woman who has blundered into a lethal situation confronts the possibility of saving herself—Will she take it? In “The First Husband,” a jealous man discovers that his wife seems to have lied about her first marriage, and exacts a cruel revenge, years after the fact. In these and other powerful tales, children veer beyond their parents’ control, wives and husbands wake up to find that they hardly know each other, haunted pasts intrude upon uncertain futures, and those who bring us the most harm may be the nearest at hand.
In ten razor-sharp stories, National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates shows that the most deadly mysteries often begin at home.
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In the chilling world of Give Me Your Heart, the need for love is obsessive, self-destructive and unpredictable. It takes us to forbidden places, confronts us with gruesome truths, and leads us beyond our control. In the unsettling 'Strip Poker,' a reckless teenage girl must turn the tables on a gro
“Haunting . . . Written in the author′s classic, clear style, these narratives enchant.”—*Boston Globe* The need for love—obsessive, self-destructive, unpredictable—takes us to forbidden places, as in the chilling world of *Give Me Your Heart*, a new collection of storie