Pursuit by Joyce Carol Oates

Published by Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press on October 1, 2019

Joyce Carol Oates writes horror stories with a literary sensibility, at least when she’s not writing literary stories that are informed by horror. Her horror stories do not depend on zombies or slasher-killers. Her characters suffer from the horrors of abuse and neglect and the awful things that people do to each other, particularly spouses and parents. A horrifying childhood and its impact on a young woman are at the heart of Pursuit.

Abby Hayman (her real name is Miriam, but she prefers Gabriela, the name she invented for herself) has been married to Willem Zengler for less than a day. She was a virgin when they married because Willem is very religious. Willem “identifies strongly as a Christian but not the kind of somber-faced Christians who take themselves too seriously.” Yet taking himself too seriously is the exact definition of Willem, even if his face might not always be somber.

Early in the novel, Abby steps in front of a bus and is in a coma for a few weeks before she is treated, rehabilitated, and sent home with Willem. Why did newlywed Abby step in front of the bus? The answer is not immediately clear.

Abby’s father, Lew, was an angry veteran, blaming the world for his misfortune. Like many angry vets, it is not obvious whether he was scarred by war or whether he went to war because it suited his scarred personality. In any event, Abby’s mother, Nicola, eventually kicked Lew out of the house. A section of the novel tells us that story from Lew’s self-interested perspective. Another section tells the same story from Nicola’s very different perspective. Oates paints Nicola as a vulnerable woman, easily manipulated by a manipulative man, who gains strength from her experience. Lew is considerably less sympathetic. By the end of Nicola’s story, after Lew has left and returned, her life has become tragic and grotesque.

Abby’s perspective, on the other hand, is that of a child who does not understand her parents and who blames herself for everything that happens, including her apparent abandonment by them both. One big event occurs when Abby is only six, an event for which both of her parents are to blame, neither having given much of a thought about how their conduct will affect their child. A later event, while Abby is spending a summer with her aunt, leads to a life-shaping discovery that Abby does not fully understand and that she tries to block from her mind.

Back in the present, Abby is haunted by nightmares and memories of skeletons, making Pursuit a good Halloween read. Once out of the hospital, Abby decides to visit her aunt, an aunt she feels guilty for abandoning, who does not know of her marriage to Willem. The trip with Willem is necessary to complete Abby’s journey, to exorcise at least some of her demons, to help her overcome fears — not just fears of horrifying events, but the ordinary fear of being alone, even in marriage.

Pursuit ends on a more hopeful note than some of Oates’ work. Nicola’s story is more powerful than Abby’s, but the two stories work together to explain Abby’s timidity, a characteristic that makes her an unremarkable ghost of a character, devoid of personality. Willem turns out to be a surprising character, in that he is capable of growth and is not shaped entirely by his crabbed religious upbringing.

Oates’ signature style is less dependent on quotation marks and parentheticals than some of her other work, which is fine with me — I think she’s been there and done that. Otherwise, she displays her characteristic economy of language, shading scenes with just the right amount of detail while leaving room for readers to fill in the color. Pursuit isn’t Oates’ best work, but it is recognizable as the kind of horror story that only Oates can tell.

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Daddy Love by Joyce Carol Oates

Published by Mysterious Press on January 8, 2013 

Joyce Carol Oates writes about horrors that none of us want to imagine, and does it with such seductive prose we can't stop reading. Yet Oates' great talent is to find the horrific in both the commonplace and in the unthinkable. Daddy Love begins with a momentarily misplaced car that leads to a child's barely contained panic and a mother's sense of failure, a small horror that evolves into the larger horror of child abduction.

Part one takes place in 2007. Dinah Whitcomb has invested "all of her volcanic Mommy love" in her only child, Robbie. She strives to make every moment a learning experience for her five-year-old son. She faults herself when she feels tired, because a happy mother should always feel strong. Later she will blame herself for letting go of Robbie's hand when Robbie is snatched from her. Although she is faultless -- the abductor strikes her, first with a fist and then, when she runs after him, with a van -- Dinah feels "the defeat of her life as a mother."

The first four chapters tell the same brief story, each from a slightly different perspective, adding or subtracting facts, revealing more of Dinah's life, her sense of connection with her husband and son. In chapter five, time again begins to move forward. But can life really move forward for someone who has been as badly damaged, both physically and emotionally, as Dinah?

In the chapters that follow, Oates changes the perspective, allowing the reader to follow Robbie and his kidnapper. Oates reveals the demented mind of Daddy Love with the same skill that makes her portrayal of Dinah's tormented mind so convincing. It is nonetheless disappointing that Oates chose to make the character so purely evil, when a more nuanced approach -- a sex offender who struggles against urges he can't control, as is usually the case -- would have been less obvious.

Part two takes the reader to 2013. Robbie, now known as Gideon Cash, is in sixth grade. His true history, unknown to the teachers who believe he is Daddy Love's autistic son, is reflected only in his macabre drawings. Perspective changes again as the reader sees the world through Robbie's eyes. And as she does with Dinah, Oates enters Robbie's mind with uncommon insight. She presents a more subtle view of Robbie than is typical in fictional portrayals of abuse victims. Robbie's personality and behavior provide some of the novel's most thought-provoking moments.

Although Oates' prose is always first-rate, it doesn't soar to the same height in Daddy Love as it does in her best work. The story isn't particularly innovative. It is, in fact, too predictable to have the impact Oates probably intended. After the strong opening chapters, I felt let down by the pedestrian path that the plot follows.

The characters, as a reader expects from Oates, are fully developed and completely convincing. On the other hand, while Oates often paints portraits of victims, the characters in Daddy Love are not as memorable as those some of her other fiction: they evoke sympathy in ways that are just too easy, too predictable. To her credit, however, Oates avoids coating her characters in sugar. She understands that people rarely respond to tragedy in ways that make them noble and likable, as so many writers would have us believe. Dinah wouldn't be the ideal spokeswoman for mothers of abducted children; her connection with reality is tenuous, her fragility is unnerving. Dinah's husband realizes that he's lost perspective, that he's defined his entire life by a single catastrophic event, but he's powerless to change. Although these aren't Oates' best creations, it is for the characters rather than the plot that I recommend Daddy Love.

Be warned: Some scenes involving Daddy Love and Robbie are disturbing, and while none of them are described in graphic detail, sensitive readers should be cautioned that child abuse is very much a part of the book's content. There are also a couple of chapters that will make dog lovers cringe. Oates has never been a writer who shelters her readers from the darkest realities of life.  She does not do so here.

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The Corn Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates

Published by Mysterious Press on November 1, 2011

Joyce Carol Oates' latest collection of stories isn't for the faint-heated. The title story -- about a girl who doesn't come home from school -- focuses less on the horror that the girl will experience than on the guilt her working class mother feels at leaving her eleven-year-old daughter home alone until she returns from the late shift she's forced to work. Guilt gives way to fear: What kind of problems will she cause for herself if she calls 911? What judgments will she face? What will the police think about the beer she's drinking to calm her nerves as she considers where her daughter might have gone? Oates uses the chilling circumstances to explore diverse sources of terror: the twisted child responsible for the missing girl's fate; the police officers who accuse and intimidate the innocent; journalists who are willing to report innuendo in their lust for a sensational story; therapists who insist that it is healthy to dredge up memories best left dormant. This is a powerful, sometimes touching, incredibly intense piece of writing. It is the longest and best of the seven stories in the collection.

My second favorite story, "Helping Hands," tells of a new widow who, in desperate loneliness, takes up with a wounded veteran. Envisioning herself as his savior and him as her protective companion, she invests him with qualities of sensitivity and intelligence that he clearly lacks, while remaining willfully blind to the man's dangerous instability.

The other "nightmares" in the collection are: "Beersheba," about a man who is forced to confront his long-forgotten failings as a stepfather; "Nobody Knows My Name," in which a young girl's natural jealousy of her newborn sister may or may not be responsible for a tragic ending; "Fossil-Figures," about a demon brother's dominance, from their days in the womb to the end of their lives, over his frail twin; "Death-Cup," another story of mismatched brothers, one of whom contemplates poisoning the other with deadly mushrooms; and "A Hole in the Head," in which a doctor revives the practice of trepanation -- drilling holes in the skull to release evil spirits.

Oates tells her stories in lush, rhythmic sentences. She sketches characters with deft precision. She fills their mouths with strong dialog, spoken in unique and realistic speech patterns. Each story builds a sense of dread, bit by bit, often indirectly -- when a mean gray cat starts stalking through the story, you know something awful is going to happen. Yet these aren't simple, predictable stories of horror or suspense. In the two stories about brothers, the characters behave surprisingly; they reveal an unexpected capacity for late-life change. Most of the stories reveal their own little surprises; all of them deliver electric jolts of anxiety before they end.

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