Cephalopod Coffeehouse - Unmade by @CarolOates

I've joined a new blog group that I'm very, very excited about: The Cephalopod Coffeehouse, brainchild of The Armchair Squid.  In Squidward's own words, the idea is that "each month, participating book enthusiasts shall post about a favorite book from the previous month's reading.  Bloghop meetings are held the last Friday of the month." If this sounds fun to you too, you can join the club in the linky below.

I'm going to warn you all from the get-go that I'm a slow reader. Marry that with me being knee deep in writing a new manuscript, an editing assignment on the verge of being dropped into my lap, and all the other things I call "my life" and I don't see my book-reading rate increasing any time soon. So, there will be many months in which I only read one book, and sometimes I won't like that book, but still, I hope that sharing my thoughts even on books that I don't enjoy will make for interesting discussion within the group.

For my first contribution, I very happily get to report on a story that I loved: Unmade, a novella by Carol Oates. With limited reading time, novellas and short stories have become my new best friend. It's wonderful to be able to experience a whole arc within a short time, and this is one story that's still living large in my head even though it was only 51 pages.

I share my thoughts about everything I read at Goodreads, and these are my copied and pasted thoughts on Unmade:

Great, great story. A classic. From the very first words, Unmade has an eerie tone that gets steadily darker as you--- wait, no, I don't want to give away any spoilers. Just know that this is a beautifully-written story that had me riveted throughout, wanting to know where it was going, and where it went was highly satisfying. For a short novella, it brought up a lot of interesting themes that have kept me thinking. I'd classify it as dark NA with explicit scenes that are wonderfully and tastefully handled. 

One of the very subtle themes in the story that particularly struck me was regarding a specific dynamic of relationships---at what point does being a "good influence" become controlling behavior that discounts your friend/mate's ability to think and choose for him/herself?

I think that what I love most about this book is that it follows through on all the ominous prospects promised by its opening. I hate having my expectations built up at the beginning of a story only to have the ending fall completely flat---this story does NOT do that.  If you're hankering for a bit of soft-core horror, I highly recommend this short novella.

And now I get to hop around and see what the other CC members have been reading. Here are links to the other Coffeehousers if you'd like to join me. New members are being accepted if you'd like to add your link.