The Frenzy
Stories
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The Frenzy
Narrated by:
Cassandra Campbell, Linda Jones, January LaVoy, Ann Marie Lee, Kelli Tager, Jeremy Carlisle Parker, Matt Godfrey, Amy Jensen, Max Meyers
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“A genius in the truest sense of the word.”—Rebecca Makkai
“One of the greatest writers among us today.”—Gillian Flynn
“Haunting . . . masterfully orchestrated . . . Oates’s best work is simmering and remorseless.”—Vogue
“Astounding . . . Oates imbues this entire book with psychological suspense and high stakes.”—Harper's Bazaar
“[A] terrific collection.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR: Vogue, Haper’s Bazaar, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Lit Hub, AARP
Frenzy (noun): a temporary madness; a violent mental or emotional agitation; intense usually wild and often disorderly compulsive or agitated activity
Joyce Carol Oates is a master of the short story and one of the legends of the form. Her collections of short fiction have twice been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and have won numerous awards, including the O. Henry Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Art of the Short Story. In The Frenzy: Stories, Oates plunges us into the lives of her characters at moments of crisis and confusion, when much of what they understand about themselves and those they love comes undone.
A young woman on a supposedly romantic weekend trip to Cape May, New Jersey, turns the tables on her older, married lover. A freak bicycle accident on a bridge haunts one family for decades. A girl jealous of her popular cousin discovers she is the lucky one. A widow waits at her riverside house for her dead husband's return. A young man hiking in the woods comes upon a couple in a heated, possibly violent argument—should he intervene?
Suspenseful and psychologically astute, Oates's short stories enthrall and captivate as they dissect her character's deepest fears—revealing our own in turn. "Literature is a texture of words," says Oates of her short fiction, "evoking life in the most vivid ways—psychologically, physically." These new stories blazingly evoke life at its most vivid and perilous, when fate and free will intersect, and one ominous encounter or bad choice can be the difference between an ordinary day and the point of no return.
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Critic reviews
Praise for The Frenzy
“Haunting . . . masterfully orchestrated . . . Oates’s best work is simmering and remorseless.”—Vogue
“Barely a year after the release of her last novel, Fox, prolific American writer Joyce Carol Oates returns with this astounding collection of short stories. As the title suggests, agitation and turmoil form the emotional foundation for all of these tales. Whether she’s writing about a young woman on vacation with her older and married lover or about a hiker coming across an arguing couple in the woods, Oates imbues this entire book with psychological suspense and high stakes.”—Harper’s Bazaar
“Yes, Oates’s fiction dwells on the dark side of life—‘I’m holding a mirror up to the world we’re in,’ she explained to AARP last year—but it’s also brilliant, as evidenced by these engrossing short stories that dive into the minds of characters prone to cruelty or struggling with destructive desires.”—AARP
“This terrific collection from Oates includes nine sly and sinister stories of human behavior at its most unsavory. . . . Delightfully subversive . . . Full of parenthetical asides that call much of what the reader knows into question, the stories range from sharply compressed to vertiginously recursive. Oates has few competitors as a purveyor of deeply disturbing fiction about the porous border between life and death.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
Praise for Joyce Carol Oates
“Oates is one of the greatest writers among us today.”—Gillian Flynn
“Oates is a genius in the truest sense of the word.”—Rebecca Makkai
“Nobody else writes like the great Joyce Carol Oates. It’s remarkable.”—Joseph Finder
“Protean and prodigious are surely the words that describe Ms. Oates.”—Richard Ford
“[Oates] is one of the handful of great American novelists of the last hundred years.”—Edmund White
“That rarity in American fiction, a writer who seems to grow with each new book.”—Time
“Haunting . . . masterfully orchestrated . . . Oates’s best work is simmering and remorseless.”—Vogue
“Barely a year after the release of her last novel, Fox, prolific American writer Joyce Carol Oates returns with this astounding collection of short stories. As the title suggests, agitation and turmoil form the emotional foundation for all of these tales. Whether she’s writing about a young woman on vacation with her older and married lover or about a hiker coming across an arguing couple in the woods, Oates imbues this entire book with psychological suspense and high stakes.”—Harper’s Bazaar
“Yes, Oates’s fiction dwells on the dark side of life—‘I’m holding a mirror up to the world we’re in,’ she explained to AARP last year—but it’s also brilliant, as evidenced by these engrossing short stories that dive into the minds of characters prone to cruelty or struggling with destructive desires.”—AARP
“This terrific collection from Oates includes nine sly and sinister stories of human behavior at its most unsavory. . . . Delightfully subversive . . . Full of parenthetical asides that call much of what the reader knows into question, the stories range from sharply compressed to vertiginously recursive. Oates has few competitors as a purveyor of deeply disturbing fiction about the porous border between life and death.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
Praise for Joyce Carol Oates
“Oates is one of the greatest writers among us today.”—Gillian Flynn
“Oates is a genius in the truest sense of the word.”—Rebecca Makkai
“Nobody else writes like the great Joyce Carol Oates. It’s remarkable.”—Joseph Finder
“Protean and prodigious are surely the words that describe Ms. Oates.”—Richard Ford
“[Oates] is one of the handful of great American novelists of the last hundred years.”—Edmund White
“That rarity in American fiction, a writer who seems to grow with each new book.”—Time
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