Joyce Carol Oates is a prolific, popular and well known author, but one that was new to me when I first started her new short story collection, The Frenzy: Stories. Unintentionally ignorant towards her writing and her works, I expected something scary, but instead received a good collection of well written tales about various topics, from infidelity and abuse, to grief, loss, envy, illness and suffering. The topics, themselves, create horror within the average person, and even more so those who experience them, but the stories themselves are not scary in a normal sense.
This collection is separated into three parts, which group its nine short stories into similar topics, meaning that each part contains three tales. It works well, but I must admit that the final trio is the weakest, and isn’t as strong as what comes before it.
I’ll try to provide short reviews of each story, without spoiling anything.
The Frenzy: A married, middle-aged man, is driving along the coast of New Jersey. His intention is to take his teenaged mistress, who happens to be the daughter of not so close family friends, to an out of season holiday town in order to be intimate. However, things don’t go as planned. As the title story, it starts the collection off strong, but I expected the ending to be more than it was. Still, I enjoyed this one and found it good.
The Fear: Told from the perspective of a young girl named Janette, it chronicles her early years as the younger of two similar looking cousins who are confused as being twins by those who don’t know. They’re always together, but the older cousin is the more beautiful one, making the younger one jealous. Then something happens to the older one, and they begin to lose touch. This is a story about jealousy and envy, and it touches into other subjects too. Overall, it’s quite good.
The Bicycle Accident: As a thirty-something mom works overtime and stresses about putting on a party for her deceased sister’s recently engaged daughter, her own inattentive ways lead to disaster. Her thirteen year-old daughter, Evie, goes out for pop and ice with a rich male friend of the family, then runs away on her bike when she gets home and is asked to shower. Her fearless bicycling leads her to have a serious accident on the local bridge, throwing her family into turmoil and changing their lives forever. This is a really good story, but it ends in a strange way that I didn’t really like. Still, it’s one of the best in this collection, and hints at hidden trauma that can tear people apart.
The Call: A lady named S is awakened in the middle of the night, to a call saying that her previously deceased father has just passed away. She’s told that she needs to get home, because her mother needs her. This good story explores grief, caregiving and lost time.
The Return: A novelist starts to feel bad about not calling or visiting her widowed friend just before, during or after the pandemic. They were once close, but she worries that it’ll now seem like she’s been avoiding said friend. As such, she calls her and they make plans to meet at the friend’s rural property. However, things take a turn when said friend talks about visions of her deceased loved one, and how he was behind closed doors. This is another strong story.
The Redwoods: One of the better stories in this collection, The Redwoods begins as a young man goes for a long hike in a California forest filled with massive trees, the likes of which you cannot see the tops of. While there, he hopes to clear his head and make his mind up about his future. However, he ends up coming across a young woman with braided hair who’s being mistreated by the man she’s with, and becomes obsessed with her. The story chronicles his life, his continued obsession and what he may or may not have done. It deals with what ifs, grief, loss, despair, attachment, obsession, love, marriage and the like.
Small Veins: A lady goes to the local cancer centre where, like me, she is told that she has small veins. The phlebotomists are unsure if they’ll be able to access them in order to take her blood, which is also familiar to me. She needs it done, though, and is worried that she’ll faint before, during or after. The same is true of when she goes to see her doctor afterwards, regarding a slow moving form of leukaemia. Alone, scared and widowed, she questions her life and what’s next over the course of what is a solid story.
Refuse: By far the weakest of all of the shorts found within this book, Refuse, is about a young woman who’s married a strange older man who has a very high opinion of himself. That husband has gone missing for thirty-seven days, though, and —unused to living alone, and unsure of where he is — she sets off to rural Pennsylvania from her home in New Jersey. Why? A strange, muffled and unclear phone call she’s received, which makes her think that her husband is staying at the Buddhist temple he used to spend a lot of time meditating at. She’s not used to driving, though, and is afraid of bridges, not to mention scared. I didn’t like this one much, and was happy when it was over after an hour or so.
Night Fishing at Antibes: Two recently widowed women, who weren’t close before but had husbands who worked at the same nearby intellectual institution, form an unlikely bond after their passing. Together, the two start to blend into each other, and share personalities. Furthermore, they’re almost inseparable, and will rush to see one another if a call or text isn’t answered. It’s a decent story of love, loss, connection and more.
Each of the above stories ranges from about twenty minutes in length to just over an hour, but that’s with my slower reading speed. Still, it only took me several days to finish this one. I read a lot of it one night, but then slowed down some.
All of them feature important, difficult and very human themes and issues, and all are very well written. In fact, the writing is some of the best I’ve experienced in a long time. However, the quality does vary some, in terms of story strength, and The Frenzy: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates doesn’t end as strongly as it starts. That’s ok, though.
Almost all of this release is set in the New Jersey area, it seems, which must be where the author lives. I wish there had been a bit more variety, but that’s ok.
Going in, I wasn’t sure of what to expect from this one, but it had caught my attention and was something that I’d wanted to read. I’m glad that it did, too, because — overall — The Frenzy: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates is a really strong and well crafted collection of tales.
This review is based on a copy of the book which we were provided with.