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Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense

door Joyce Carol Oates

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925294,020 (4)7
"The book opens with a woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window in an apartment she cannot, on her own, afford. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining of Edward Hopper's Eleven A.M., 1926, the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door. In "The Long-Legged Girl," an aging, jealous wife crafts an unusual game of Russian roulette involving a pair of Wedgewood teacups, a strong Bengal brew, and a lethal concoction of medicine. Who will drink from the wrong cup, the wife or the dance student she believes to be her husband's latest conquest? In "The Sign of the Beast," when a former Sunday school teacher's corpse turns up, the blighted adolescent she had by turns petted and ridiculed confesses to her murder--but is he really responsible? Another young outsider, Horace Phineas Love, Jr., is haunted by apparitions at the very edge of the spectrum of visibility after the death of his tortured father in "Night-Gaunts," a fantastic ode to H.P. Lovecraft. Reveling in the uncanny and richly in conversation with other creative minds, Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense stands at the crossroads of sex, violence, and longing--and asks us to interrogate the intersection of these impulses within ourselves"--… (meer)
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Toon 5 van 5
Joyce Carol Oates seems to be one of those authors that everyone hates or everyone loves...I seem to be more the latter. I love her short fiction. She writes weird, just-this-side-of-expected stories that are a pleasure to read.

This was a pick-up from the library new-book shelf that I did not expect. Every time I see a new Oates book I check it out and read it. She is an excellent writer and I am never dissatisfied.

Excellent. ( )
  DarrinLett | Aug 14, 2022 |
This relatively recent collection from Joyce Carol Oates offers a half dozen "tales of suspense." They are not supernatural horror, despite the title's allusion to the monstrous phantasms of H.P. Lovecraft. Although all written in the third person, each is thoroughly psychological, tracking the thoughts of villains and victims on the cusp of horrible events. There is a lot more person than plot in these stories, and the substance of them is the interaction of character with circumstance.

The first story "The Woman at the Window" was (according to its prior publication) inspired by an Edward Hopper painting, and I'm sure the painting in question must be 11 A.M. (1926).

These tales tend toward novella length, typically on the long side of what can be read in a single sitting, but often subdivided into chapters. The longest story in the collection is "The Experimental Subject," which is trained on the interior world of a scientific researcher seducing an undergraduate student into being unwittingly inseminated with chimpanzee sperm. Strangely, it is probably the closest of any of the stories in the book to having a "happy" outcome.

The title story that concludes the book is an account of "Horace Love, Jr.," a fairly transparent fictionalization of the biography of Lovecraft. It takes for its premise the same thesis set forth in this bit of criticism from Kenneth Callaghan:

"Lovecraft was masquerading, for the purposes of fiction, as both the son and as his own father, thereby giving himself permission to use his own father's madness for fictional purposes, and informing both himself and us, the readers, of the secret facts of his pathology that his own father was unfortunately unable to provide to him. In his fiction, if not in his life, Lovecraft was able to assume the mask, and the role, of the father, and with none of the messy aftereffects of STDs, wives, or possession by an all-consuming and all-destroying sexuality." (Lovecraft's Dark Arcadia, 86)

There is a bit of thematic resonance between "Night-Gaunts" itself and the other pieces of the collection, particularly "Sign of the Beast" and "Walking Wounded." All of these stories have vivid characters with their subjectivities unravelled in engaging prose. The endings are sometimes like a song finishing on a suspended chord--you know where the story might go, and Oates allows you to do the work of taking it there.
2 stem paradoxosalpha | Oct 14, 2021 |
These weren't the greatest of Oates' short stories but they were good. The Long-Legged Girl, I just know must be inspired by the relationship of Shirley Jackson and her husband Stanley. The Experiment Subject was one of the most disturbing stories I think I've ever read. ( )
  viviennestrauss | Mar 16, 2021 |
NIGHT GAUNTS AND OTHER TALES OF SUSPENSE sounded so promising to me when I requested it from Edelweiss months ago. Since then, I've only managed to complete one story, and it's one that I already read in another collection.

I've repeatedly attempted to read two other stories and I just couldn't get into them, so I'm calling it quits.

No rating, no review. Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for letting me take a shot at this for free. I'm sorry it didn't work out.
  Charrlygirl | Mar 22, 2020 |
The first story, “The Woman in the Window”, opens with a naked woman sitting in a window waiting for her married lover. Is there still love in her heart for this man or has it turned to hatred? Have her feelings for her remained the same?

In “The Long-Legged Girl”, a woman has decided to play Russian roulette with poisoned tea with her husband’s beautiful dance student.

“Sign of the Beast” is a disturbing tale of a young boy who Sunday School teacher shows him unwanted attention.

In “Walking Wounded”, a man working on a well-known author’s posthumous work keeps finding erotic references that seem to reflect what’s happening in his own life.

The title story, “Night-Gaunts”, explores the damnation of heredity is such a frightening way.

If I had to pick a favorite out of all of these unique stories, it would be “The Experimental Subject”. This is a nightmarish story about a lab technician who lures a naïve, unattractive young woman to be the unknowing recipient of a chimpanzee’s sperm in the hopes that she will give birth to the first “Humanzee”.

I have never been disappointed by the work of Joyce Carol Oates and she certainly doesn’t let her readers down with this selection of short stories. They are some of the most unusual, creative, horrific stories I’ve ever read. If you like your stories all neatly tied up at the end, these won’t be your cup of tea. Most of the stories leave the reader hanging but I actually enjoy wondering what happened and letting my imagination fill in the blanks. This is an excellent selection of horror tales from an author who just keeps improving.

Most highly recommended.

This book was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review. ( )
1 stem hubblegal | May 31, 2018 |
Toon 5 van 5
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"The book opens with a woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window in an apartment she cannot, on her own, afford. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining of Edward Hopper's Eleven A.M., 1926, the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door. In "The Long-Legged Girl," an aging, jealous wife crafts an unusual game of Russian roulette involving a pair of Wedgewood teacups, a strong Bengal brew, and a lethal concoction of medicine. Who will drink from the wrong cup, the wife or the dance student she believes to be her husband's latest conquest? In "The Sign of the Beast," when a former Sunday school teacher's corpse turns up, the blighted adolescent she had by turns petted and ridiculed confesses to her murder--but is he really responsible? Another young outsider, Horace Phineas Love, Jr., is haunted by apparitions at the very edge of the spectrum of visibility after the death of his tortured father in "Night-Gaunts," a fantastic ode to H.P. Lovecraft. Reveling in the uncanny and richly in conversation with other creative minds, Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense stands at the crossroads of sex, violence, and longing--and asks us to interrogate the intersection of these impulses within ourselves"--

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