Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense

by Joyce Carol Oates

In the title story of her taut new fiction collection, Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense, Joyce Carol Oates Life was not of the surface like the glossy skin of an apple, but deep inside the fruit where seeds are harbored. There is no writer more capable of picking out those seeds and exposing all their secret tastes and poisons than Oates herself―as brilliantly demonstrated in these six stories.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.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Fiction, Thriller, Suspense, Mystery, Gothic

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel Them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).
Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Oates was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.

Reviews

[Sandysbookaday (taking a step back for a while) · Rating 2 out of 5]

EXCERPT: (Taken from the title story - Night-Gaunts) St John's Episcopal Church was a weak place, the boy sensed. The white-haired priest could not have defended the altar against an assault of night-gaunts if the malevolent creatures went in on the attack and swarmed over it and for this reason Horace did not bow his head, did not shut his eyes to pray, for shutting his eyes could be a mistake, like reaching your hand into a pool of dark water in which (it was given to you to know) water-serpents might be waiting.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: In the title story of her taut new fiction collection, Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense, Joyce Carol Oates writes: Life was not of the surface like the glossy skin of an apple, but deep inside the fruit where seeds are harbored. There is no writer more capable of picking out those seeds and exposing all their secret tastes and poisons than Oates herself―as brilliantly demonstrated in these six stories.

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.

MY THOUGHTS: I think that readers of Joyce Carol Oates fall into one of two camps. You either love her, or you don't. After finishing this, the second collection of short stories by this author that I have read, I have come to the conclusion that I am firmly in the second camp.

Oates has a very distinctive writing style, one that I find difficult to enjoy. It could almost be described as 'stream-of-consciousness'. I find it difficult to follow, and largely pointless. I hate to get to the end of a story and wonder why I bothered. There were several stories in this collection that I considered abandoning, and now I wish I had. I won't be bothering to read this author again.

I did enjoy The Woman In the Window, but the rest of the stories left me feeling dissatisfied and disgruntled. I didn't find any of the stories suspenseful.

Just because I found this to be an unsatisfying read doesn't mean that you won't love it. This is my personal opinion, my reaction to the book. Most reviews for this book are positive, so if you enjoyed the excerpt, please go ahead and read Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense by Joyce Carol Oates. You may well be one of the many who enjoy this book.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Night-Gaunts by Joyce Carol Oates for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

Please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the 'about' page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com for an explanation of my rating system.

This review and others are also published on my blog sandysbookaday.wordpress.com https://sandysbookaday.wordpress.com/...

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

No-one does poisonous little tales like JCO! Weaving together strands of power, sex, desire, disgust and death, she works in liminal spaces where nothing is ever what it seems.

My favourite story is in dialogue with an Edward Hopper painting, prising it apart to give a subjectivity to the woman pictured as a faceless though naked object imprisoned by a claustrophobic domestic interior.

Clever writing, and with intellectual heft intertwined with something uneasy glimpsed in the corner of the eye, this is unsettling fiction.

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley.

[Char]

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.

[Martie Nees Record · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pub. Date:          June 15, 2018
Publisher:          Grove Atlantic
Genre:                 Psychological Thriller

Joyce Carol Oates is a literary powerhouse. A recurring theme in her work is the abuse of women: “Do With Me What You Will,” 1973, “We Were the Mulvaneys,” 2002, “The Gravedigger's Daughter,” 2007, “Blonde: A Novel, 2009,” “The Sacrifice”, 2016. I have read them all. Oates is a favorite author of mine. I admit that when I read her memoir, “A Widow’s Story,” 2001, I was surprised to see how very ordinary her marriage was (her husband, Raymond Smith, is deceased).  Like most wives, she used to share many moments of her daily life with her husband. For Oates, this was about her 36 years as a professor in Princeton’s University creative writing program, where she was nicknamed dark lady of fiction.  “Widow” is filled with the pros and cons of a typical long-term (almost 50 year) marriage. How lost, angry and disoriented she felt after the death of her husband. I assumed incorrectly that her grief would be atypical and written with a screaming evil rage as if it were one of her novels. But it was simply Oates, writing as any other woman would to describe their feelings after the loss of a spouse. I chose to begin my review of Oates’ “Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense" with the above summary because all in the collection are, as the title suggests, dark. In this book, there are six previously published stories. All characters are written with a piercing, uncomfortable clarity that will terrify the reader more than once.

“The Woman in the Window” was inspired by Edward Hopper’s painting titled “Eleven A.M., 1926.” Oates’ imagination turns a lovely and demure painting of female sexuality into a tale of suspense. We meet a naked woman, sitting in a window of her home, waiting for her married lover, where the time is always 11AM because that is when he will arrive. But he is always late. She is never naked for he feels that naked is a coarse word. She is always nude. She wears only a pair of high-heeled shoes. After years of this arrangement, both of them begin to despise each other for different reasons. Their two points of views are woven into a story-line that revolves around sex and violence. (The rest of this review is a potential spoiler.) This taut story had me biting my fingernails, wondering who would kill and who would be killed. But then, I began to question if Oates is playing with her readers. How could anything happen when it is always 11AM? She is still sitting in the window.  He hasn’t even arrived yet. Damn the author is good. You will have to read the story yourself to make your own conclusions.

"The Long Legged Girl" Oates writes about a middle-aged housewife of a college professor. They live in a house on or near campus in a college town that reads like a map of Princeton University. She is an understandably jealous wife since “her husband might be distracted by a girl—or two, or three—but after graduation the girls disappeared.” And frankly, in her younger years, she was so busy with the children and her own career as a food writer that she was glad to have her husband out of her hair for awhile. But now that she has time on her hands, and age has seriously tainted her self-image, well what woman could fault her jealousy. She now believes a certain long-legged girl is her husband’s latest interest. And this one is especially pretty. “A girl with long straight silver-blonde hair that fell past her shoulders, a perfect patrician profile, gray-green eyes…skintight jeans curved down at her impossibly narrow hips.”

For these reasons, she doesn’t feel that any seasoned married woman would point a finger at her for inviting the girl over for afternoon tea.  A special kind of tea.   A deadly kind of tea that will turn the delicate Wedgewood teacups into a game of Russian roulette. The reader is aware of her intentions early on. I imagine that in the hands of a lesser author that the story might lose its punch. How many pages do you want to read speculating which one will drink the poison? But this story’s suspense is not about who lives and who dies. It is about how the author manipulates the reader to lose themselves inside of the wife’s insanity. She appears to have lived a normal life. When did her mind snap? Or, was she always unstable? It is nerve wrecking to read this one alone, at night, when your own brain is tired and vulnerable to confused thoughts.   You may end up questioning your own mental health.

For me, out of all in this collection, “The Experimental Subject” is the most unsettling. First, there is abuse against chimpanzees, which is disturbing. Then there is the mental and physical abuse against the main female character, which is heartbreaking. The reader will meet a male professor and his male senior technician in a government-funded primate laboratory. The heroine is an unattractive, friendless college girl with a family who wants no part of her. It is not a spoiler when I mention that there is something unethical in this experiment, something unholy. The first paragraph begins with “She was a solid-bodied female of perhaps twenty years of age with a plain face, an unusually low, simian brow, small squinting eyes…full bosom of an older woman, thick muscled thighs and legs, thick ankles…and a center of gravity in the pelvic region.” In the next paragraph, we meet this lonely girl as she enters the professor’s lecture hall. The technician sights her and is certain that she is a good candidate for the experiment. He befriends her and she begins to shine for the first time in her life. She falls in love with the technician and believes that he also loves her. But then the experiment begins and she is unaware that her life is now in danger.  If I go on anymore it will become a spoiler. Be prepared, this is a truly unique and bone chilling tale.

Not all of the stories were as thought provoking as the ones I chose to review. I didn’t find the title story, “Night-Gaunts," as a stellar read. The haunted house setting just lost me. Still, there is no denying Oates’ enormous talent. She manages to turn a collection of thriller stories into a piece of literary fiction. Oates has been criticized for writing female characters with masochistic traits. It has been noted that there is a lack of strong, independent female role models in her fiction. In 1981, Oates wrote an essay titled “Why is Your Writing so Violent?” In it, she comments that she finds that question always insulting, always ignorant, and always sexist. Oates feels that “rape and murder fall within the exclusive province of the male writer, just as, generally, they fall within the exclusive province of male action.” She points out that, “in fact, my writing isn't usually explicitly violent, but deals, most of the time, with the phenomenon of violence and its aftermath.” I believe the tales in “Night Gaunts” prove her point. To understand why that question is so insulting to the world famous writer, I suggest that you remember her words while you read this collection. She gets inside her characters’ psyches, and the reader learns of their hidden interiors. If you are brave enough to look, you may also find what you keep hidden about yourself. Oates will make you squirm. She forces you to look at your own sexual desires, your own feelings of loneliness, and your own death. These are the musings that will scare you more than any straight psychological thriller.

I received this Advance Review Copy (ARC) novel from the publisher at no cost in exchange for an honest review.

Find all my book reviews at:

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Twitter: Martie's Book Reviews: https://twitter.com/NeesRecord

[Chavelli Sulikowska · Rating 5 out of 5]

So disturbing! I haven’t yet read much of Oates’s work, but she clearly cuts to the bone and is particularly skilled at the short story genre. I was particularly thrilled that my copy had that haunting image on the cover - an Edward Hopper painting Eleven A.M., 1926: A woman, naked except for her high-heels, waits for her lover near the window in a blue armchair - which is the inspiration behind the first story in the collection, “the Woman in the Window”.
The whole collection is an eerie and voyeuristic assemblage of seduction and suspense. The tales are equally disturbing - none more so than the one about the ape experiment - I can’t even imagine where Oates conjures some of her depraved ideas - highly original to say the least!
Do not expect to be sympathetic to any of these characters, they are deeply flawed, odd and generally disagreeable. Operating on the fringe of society or sanity! Squeamish in parts, I can say that while I didn’t enjoy the stories, I did read them with a compulsiveness - they were just so strange! And Oates is without doubt a highly skilled writer of both novels and stories.

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Joyce Carol Oates, and it immediately becomes clear why this woman is a much-lauded writer: She is a master of psychological exploration, and her unsettling storylines are prowling forward while there is always something boiling below the surface, something the reader can’t quite pin down and that is only slowly and never completely revealed.

This collection consists of six short stories that have already been published separately between 2015 and 2017. Here’s a quick overview to show you what we’re dealing with:

- “The Woman in the Window” was inspired by Edward Hopper’s painting “11 A.M.”: A naked woman is waiting for her married lover, both of them have by now begun to despise each other. Oates paints a fascinating picture of their contradictory and changing feelings – great stuff.

- “The Long-Legged Girl”: Russian roulette in the times of the Opioid epidemic: The wife of a professor invites a student whom she suspects to have an affair with her husband and serves tea – one of their cups is poisoned with a mix of medications. For me, the real suspense lay in witnessing the inner workings of the mind of the murderous wife: Is she neurotic? Is she insane? Where did her life go wrong and what was her responsibility?

- “Sign of the Beast”: This story does not really tell us what happened here, which is the whole genius of it: Did the (female!) Sunday school teacher not only pick on, but also sexually harass her students? Did the protagonist kill her? And if not, why did he confess to it?

- “The Experimental Subject”: A research technician in a Life Sciences lab helps a professor and his team of scientists to conduct an unethical (and this is very mildly put) experiment on a woman without her knowledge. Will his psychologically marred personality really make him go through with this? Frankly, this is pretty sick and I was absolutely disgusted, but still I could not put this story down (partly because I am pretty sure that similar experiments are probably conducted somewhere, if not under the same, rather improbable circumstances). Warning: Also contains violence against animals (and yes, this is a clue).

- “Walking Wounded”: A middle-aged man has to undergo a severe operation for cancer and can’t deal with the fact that he is now a permanently handicapped person – but who killed the woman at the lake, he himself (because he thinks he can't get a woman in a normal way anymore) or the dead historian whose manuscript he is completing? While the psychological repercussions of illness are a highly interesting and really scary topic (as it can happen to all of us, and quick), I found this to be the weakest story, because it was pretty confusing (at least for me).

- “Night-Gaunts” is an ode to the fantastic H.P. Lovecraft: The man invented fictional creatures named “nightgaunts” which were inspired by his childhood nightmares. Oates takes these creatures and puts them into a shortened, vignette-like re-telling of Lovecraft’s life.

All in all, a nice collection that really makes me want to read more Joyce Carol Oates.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Night-Gaunts and other Stories is a short collection of six previously published works that at their best not just get inside the characters’ minds, but in their skins, where Oates finds things hidden, secret, unknown. Death, sex, loneliness, estrangement, separateness are all concepts that are strewn throughout this collection. There’s an oddness to some of these prose pieces as if you are walking into the middle of someone’s story. Often, Oates doesn’t fully resolve things,leaving the reader to wonder. And, in many of these pieces, the problem of the unreliable narrator looms large, particularly when the narration is a character’s thoughts. I will discuss only a few of these tales.

The first story in this six-pack short story collection also appeared in Lawrence Block’s collection of stories by various writers of Edward Hopper paintings (Sunlight or in Shadow). Oates takes the painting “Eleven AM” and turns it into an -depth portrait of the inner stream-of-conscious thoughts of a woman who sits in the chair by the window each day wearing only heels 👠 waiting for the man she is the mistress of, musing about their relationship and how she ended up here. Beautifully written, poetic prose, catching but a moment in Time. Very evocative and complex, though not in a traditional format.

"The Long Legged Girl" has a similar inner thought format rather than a traditional story format. A jealous wife, a college professor, his young blonde protege. The wife’s frustrations spilling out. The thoughts cascading through her mind. Or is it all just in her head?

"The Sign of the Beast" is a story about childhood, infatuation, religion, obsession, bullying, mental difficulties, and outsider status. It is once again narrated through the eyes of one character - a student in Sunday school who is fascinated by his teacher -or is she flirting?

"The Experimental Subject" is almost weird and offbeat, touching on subjects of sex, race, fetishisms, beasts, unattractiveness, naïveté, and using people. It’s a really odd story that will make the reader a little uncomfortable.

And that’s all before we get to the Lovecraftian world.

Thanks to Mysterious Press and Grove Atlantic for providing a copy for review.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oates has many fans, who enjoy prose like this:

And she'd taken his hands that had killed (she supposed) (but only in wartime) and kissed them, and brought them against her breasts that were aching like the breasts of a young mother ravenous to give suck, and sustenance.

I don't.

[Marjorie · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Jaksen · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of my fav. books is 'The Accursed' by JCO. Some of her other books I really love, but this collection of short stories? I read halfway through and was totally weirded out - and not in a good way. So now I have to say sayonara and not waste time and effort on a lengthy review. It was just ... awful.

Sayonara!

One star

[Meow · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is my humble opinion that Joyce Carol Oates is an absolute master when it comes to stories that explore the human condition. She subtly throws in the reader’s face the very things we think about but don’t speak about. The thoughts we experience when it comes to the “taboo”.

This collection of six stories runs the gambit of such things. From a story about a young man’s obsession with his Sunday School teacher to a woman sitting in her apartment naked except for a pair of high heels waiting for her married lover who she both loves and loathes. An especially compelling story was that of a senior technician working in a college professor’s primate laboratory. It’s his responsibility to identify prospective subjects for a secret experiment that has the potential to win said prof the Nobel Prize (if he’s not felled by ethics violations). What begins with the technician’s pure, ambition-driven zeal gradually transforms into something deeper, and he soon realizes that the consequences of his actions may prove deadly.

All six stories are filled with suspense and so much more. As always, Joyce Carol Oates’ pacing is akin to walking a tightwire. I believe because the reader can, in some sort of subconscious way, identify with the characters despite the character’s dark behavior and deeds, it is that very reason we don’t forget these stories long after they are read. These stories provide the reader with a door unto themselves - a door we often keep closed very tightly.

I recommend “Night Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense” highly.

[Bandit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long ago I tried Oates’ Zombie, which for genre fans, has about as much to do with the great undead as Cranberries’ Zombie, and unlike the latter (RIP Dolores O’Riordan, so sad) wasn’t particularly good either. So for the longest time that was my Oates experience and I wasn’t looking to repeat it, but something about this anthology attracted me…was it the title? was it the second chance spirit? Who knows. At any rate I’m very glad to have read it, because these stories were good, great and even exceptional and, as far as second chances go, an absolutely redeeming one. Of course, I’m now a more mature and versatile reader and tastes do change no matter what anyone tells you, so maybe I’m just more in a place to appreciate the author. Night Gaunts is haunting, mesmerizing, hypnotic, it’s a quality of Oates’ writing, the psychological insight, the expertly crafted atmosphere. The collection drew me in from the very first story, reminiscent of a David J. Schow’s tale in the similar vein of a love affair where you really, really don’t want to know what the other person is thinking, because if you did, you’d get away as far and as fast as you can. And from there on the book just holds attention not quite like a tight hug, more like a staggeringly disturbing scene one cannot look away from, reaching a sort of emotional crescendo with the tale of an experiment gone off the rails. Seems, as this review will certainly attest to, that titles don’t stick in my memory, but plots do and this collection features some very memorable ones. In all fairness the later stories didn’t quite wow me as much, but were still very good, ending with the eponymous one no fan of genre classic ought to miss out on, a very clever biographical reimagining set in Providence, that’s it, think cosmic, think Night Gaunts. While that might be the only story definitively horrific, the rest are scary in their own way, specifically the darkly psychological one, my favorite. Terrific tales of terrible things (as the alliteration addict might add). Disquieting, fascinating, thrilling, so well written and strange in all the best ways…these stories were a great read. So glad to have comes across this book. Thanks Netgalley.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughout her writing career, Joyce Carol Oates’s fiction has frequently self-consciously tapped into the gothic and horror genres. She’s previously described how this form of writing seems to be linked to a quintessential kind of American experience born out of the country’s largely puritan roots. Examples of her fiction in this genre can be seen in many of Oates’s story collections and her 2013 novel THE ACCURSED is probably the most sustained instance of her utilizing this curious blend of horror, death, romance and a pleasing sort of terror. There are two established masters in particular Oates frequently references when discussing this form. In Oates’s 1996 NY Review of Books article titled ‘The King of Weird’ she observes that for “Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft the gothic tale would seem to be a form of psychic autobiography.” She goes on to observe how H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction appears to have been motivated by a particular kind of sensitive sensibility and a childhood overshadowed by his father’s severe mental illness, prejudices and early death from syphilis. From a young age Lovecraft was plagued by nightmares that were populated by a monstrous race of entities he labeled “night-gaunts” who were faceless beings that snatched him up and terrorized him. Lovecraft wrote a poem about these creatures which Oates includes in the epigraph of her story collection which is also called NIGHT GAUNTS. This entire collection is inflected with the twisted imagination and preoccupations of Lovecraft, but rather than depicting fantastical worlds they are stories set in starkly realistic and (mostly) contemporary settings.

Read my full review of Night Gaunts by Joyce Carol Oates on LonesomeReader

[Laura Spira · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I have read almost all of Joyce Carol Oates' fiction over the years. It has not been easy to keep up as she is so prolific and I have marvelled at the speed at which she must write, a speed which amazingly does not seem to adversely affect the quality of her work. But I find I have to brace myself to open one of her books: the reader is constantly challenged but the direction from which that challenge emerges is not always clear.

This volume of short stories pulls no punches and the title makes clear what the reader can expect, although I'm not sure about the word "suspense". These stories are truly horrific in a way that the notion of suspense trivialises because it suggests some kind of resolution at the end. On reflection, perhaps the reader is indeed left suspended, above the chasm of bleak nastiness that Oates reveals concealed behind the faces of ordinary people.

But are her characters ordinary? Why does she often deny them names, referring to them only by their initial? I found this stylistic quirk irritating, harking back to early examples of the genre in what seemed a very obvious and unnecessary way as her own working of gothic literature is so different. But not that different, maybe. I was interested to note that the acknowledgements indicate that the final story incorporates sentences taken directly from Lovecraft. Is this pastiche or homage? By that point I was past caring and yearning for a dose of humour.

I think I prefer to be frightened by Shirley Jackson.

(I received an ARC from Netgalley.)

[jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written, but such dark and depressing tales I had to go for a walk and enjoy the spring landscape while comfort eating chocolate.

[Jo Dervan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author has written 6 short stories in which she examines the innermost thoughts of people. The first story, The Girl in the Window, is about the mistress of a wealthy man who is basically a prisoner in the apartment that he provides. Although she caters to his needs, she has come to hate him and even contemplates doing him harm. The next story, The Sign of the Beast, finds a flirty Sunday School teachers dead and the large pre-teen boy that she had alternately teased and taunted, confessing to the murder. At the end of the story the reader is really not sure whether he did it or not.

Then there is The Long Legged Girl where the dumpy, jealous wife of a renowned college professor concocts a lethal with tea . The wife is convinced that her husband is sleeping with a lithe dancing student and plays a game where she mixes teacups knowing that either she or the student will die.

The other three stories are not as memorable as these but still will interest those readers who enjoy this master’s work.

[Erin]

ARC for review - expected publication date June 15, 2018.

A quick read of six more of Oates's gothic tales. One I had already read as Amazon published it as a Kindle Single ("The Sign of the Beast") and all seemed very similar in tone, save one and that's the one I truly enjoyed - Oates delved deeply into some scientific research and away from haunts for a bit - it was so unlike her I think that's why I enjoyed "The Experimental Subject" so much....quite a departure from the other stories in the volume.

But, overall, it's Oates doing what she does best (other than churning out work at a remarkable rate of speed), writing vaguely unsettling stories that are often not quite resolved and that's always for the good. Fans will enjoy.

[Lorrie McCullers · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have tried to get into Joyce Carol Oates' type of storytelling. I have read several of her previous novels, and I just find myself either bored, utterly underwhelmed, or frustrated with a disjointed, strange plot. So I had hoped that a collection of short stories would be different.

It wasn't.

I found myself vacillating between "Yawn" and "WTF did I just read?" (and not in a good way). Maybe if you are a fan of Oates' previous works, this may be your cup of tea, but it definitely wasn't mine.

[Maddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think I am really that into Joyce Carol Oates stream of consciousness writing, believe me I have tried, but I think that's about it for me now!

[Flavia · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is nothing that Carol Oates writes that isn’t good. These six (long) short stories are no exception. Themes of creativity and mental illness run through them; a couple have writers as main characters (and libraries); the terror when fantasy and reality, fiction and life (which is what libraries represent), mingle and become impossible to distinguish. One of the stories is inspired by Edward Hopper’s painting ‘Eleven A.M., 1926,’ another is a rendition of HP Lovecroft’s life, echoing and incorporating his demons and style/genre. (I personally liked ‘The Experimental Subject’ best – the longest story in the book – She has such brilliant titles too!). Carol Oates captures a destabilising tension and danger under the stillness, silence and withdrawal from reality of her main characters. Nameless protagonists, whose names are not their names or are allocated with a letter. Half formed (emotionally and socially lacking) and suffering. These stories linked and snuggle in well together; numbers, birthmarks, sin and betrayal connect to her characters psychological imbalance. I was sucked deeply into all of these stories; the open-ended finales leave you bubbling with thought and working for their conclusion. Very clever and so much fun!

[Kirsty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense presents six short stories. I chose to read them on holiday, as I felt that they would be quite good to dip in and out of when I only had a few minutes here or there to read. I have read and enjoyed a couple of Oates' books in the past, but must admit that I found this particular tome incredibly underwhelming. I liked the first two stories well enough, but the rest did not personally appeal. Oates can undoubtedly write, but this did not feel like a cohesive collection to me, despite the collective 'Tales of Suspense' which the title promises.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you Netgalley for my free copy of this book!

This is a really interesting set of short stories. I particularly like the connection between certain stories, reminding me how Stephen King mentions certain characters in numerous books. While some shorts are better than others, my absolute favorite was The Experimental Subject. It is one of the weirdest and most memorable short stories I will ever read... I wish it was a full-length book!!!

[Leslynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Copy courtesy of NetGalley

Disclaimer: I am not a fan of short stories. However, these tales were brilliantly written and draws the reader in. Only 3-star because I would have like more, fleshed out, stories.

[Kelly K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Joyce Carol Oates for allowing me to read and review Night-Gaunts. All I can say is that it was fabulous. Read it!

[Edward Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is my first time reading J__ C__ O__ and whereas I found the stories along the lines of what I am used to, there were somethings about her writing style that bothered the hell out of me. I understand that she is one of the few writers that still does longhand and then translates it later (like the great Jack Flynn) but that is no excuse for the constant underscoring.

The first few stories seem to be tied together with a thin thread as the characters have the same names (like Mrs. S__ or L__) but there is no real proof of such.

The first story, “The Woman in the Window” switches back and forth between the thoughts of a naked woman and her married lover. Both of them share their thoughts, fantasies, and goals for the dark relationship. Neither of them is particularly interesting, but the overall story keeps you guessing where it is going until the end. Spoiler: it's nowhere.

In “The Long-Legged Girl”, a jealous older woman is pretty sure her husband is sleeping with one or more of his dance students. She plans an intricate (yet slightly over the top) poisoning of the student (or was it herself?) - After a few pages I checked out.

“Sign of the Beast” is a story about a boy and the devil. Not terribly memorable nor something I care for.

"Experimental Subject" is an interesting tale of how cold and callous scientific research changes a man for the "better" and can be seen as a "love story" in the loosest sense.

In “Walking Wounded”, an interesting tale of a man who finds scenes from his own life that are written in an author's final work as he compiles & edits it for publication. The experiences have an added flair of eroticism and lust that was not present in the editors (real life) past.

The titular tale: “Night-Gaunts”, is a reimagining of the real life of H.P. Lovecraft and how his formative years, fraught with madness and heartbreak changed him from an innocent boy in New England to one of the modern literature's most famous epistemologists. This alone brought the book to two stars and without it, I would have only allowed for one.

Needless to say, I will not be seeking out more of J__ C__ O__'s works in the near future.

[Rupsa Pal Kundu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow!
The only word comes in my mind as I finished the last story.

Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense was my first Joyce Carol Oates and I am absolutely awestruck with her amazing plots and the narrative. She is brave and she doesn't dither from throwing away the subtle things on the face of the readers which we-the-readers think but never speak out.

There are six stories and each has unique plots and unsettling endings. A jealous wife of a middle aged man makes tea with lethal dose of medicinal concoction and preperes for a round of Russian roulette. In another story a your man is haunted by apparitions at his home after the death of his tortured father.

But my favourite is The Woman In The Window. A woman, naked except for her high heel shoes sits on a blue armchair with tailoring shears under a cushion and waits at an expensive apartment in Newyork. Meanwhile her married lover who is similarly conflicted by their coupling rushes to her door. The parallel perspectives are brilliant and heighten the tension.This story literally kept me glued to my Kindle until I finished it off.

Oats observes and knows the inner, deeper and the darkest secrets of human mind and she spins strange tales of nameless protagonists with whom the readers can relate well. The stories are slow burn, and needless to say, are not at all as they appears—there are long-held secrets, when exposed, reframes everything. One can expect a few sleepless, contemplative nights because of the author’s exploration of the things that collectively haunt everyone, i.e the human conditions.

See, I know people who actually hates reading Oats and after my first tryst I can tell easily that the world can be divided into two groups, Oats-lovers or Oats-haters, but nothing in between. ONE CANNOT IGNORE HER!

Highly recommended

[Momma Says: To Read or Not to Read · Rating 2 out of 5]

If ever a cover would catch my eye, it would be this one. It hints at a bit darkness and mystery and even the colors seem to draw the eye. That said, what I found inside didn't quite deliver for me. I usually enjoy collections of stories in one book. They're perfect for reading a story here and another there as time permits, but after reading the first in this collection, I have to say that I wasn't left with much inclination to move on to the next. I did eventually finish the book in hopes of finding at least one story that I could connect with, but only found more of the same. The writing felt choppy and abrupt, which may have played a part in my lack of connection to the characters or their stories. I also did not find anything particularly mysterious or suspenseful in these tales, which could also lead back to that lack of connection. From the ratings, I realize that I am indeed in the minority here, so I'm going to chalk this one up to not the book for me.

[Ruthanne Johnston · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book of novellas by the always-fabulous Joyce Carol Oates. And she always leaves you wanting more! A sometimes frustrating example of this is her semi-sadistic way of ending a story abruptly and without always tying everything up neatly. Because she also happens to be a professor of Literature at Princeton University, I sometimes wonder if this is an exercise for us to end the story for her!
NIGHT GAUNTS is an exercise in wild imagination and chilling horror and, because she is such a prolific writer, there is a near-endless supply of great novels and short-story collections for those who, like me, can hardly wait to see what imaginative treasures come next.

[gorecki · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am very fascinated by Joyce Carol Oates and definitely plan to read more of her, but somehow I keep feeling a bit underwhelmed and not really in love. I like her writing a lot, but I can't say much more than that.

As for this collection specifically, I felt a lot of the suspense was achieved by leaving some of the stories unfinished. While a certain part of the storyline will be closed neatly and nicely, another would be left unanswered which made me feel a bit cheated.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a few stories that felt worth reading. I skipped one completely and another one I had to flip through because it was so overlong and so annoying I couldn't stand it--but I wanted to know how it ended (disappointingly). Be warned: she refers to an Asian-American character as "inscrutable" several times. Ugh. And there are other similarly bigoted and sexist phrases. She feels outdated now, which is sad, because she had a great run and she can write beautifully, if never succinctly.