Synopses & Reviews
An unprecedented collection of the best of Joyce Carol Oates's short stories combined with eleven new stories
No other writer can match the impressive oeuvre of Joyce Carol Oates, and High Lonesome: Selected Stories, 19662006 gathers stories from Oates's seminal collections, including "The Wheel of Love" (1970), "Marriages and Infidelities" (1972), and "Heat" (1991), arranged by decade. All demonstrate what the Chicago Tribune has praised: "the fierce originality of Oates's voice and vision, but also how she has imbued the American short story with an edgy vitality and raw social surfaces."
Review
"For Oates fans and readers who want an overview of her ability to create a snapshot in time, this is an excellent volume." Library Journal
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"Oates' daring oeuvre, immense in size, depth, and spirit, will stand as a pillar in American literature, and this collection of stories that Oates feels are her best is as significant as it is breathtaking." Booklist
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"At 664 pages and spanning the work of 40 years, High Lonesome is not a collection to be read in one gulp. It's a nice window on Oates' writing for those not familiar with her work, or a revisit for those who have read her novels but are not familiar with her shorter pieces." Denver Post
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"The Dark Lady of American fiction, Joyce Carol Oates is best taken one extraordinary short story at a time....She's that good." Cleveland Plain Dealer
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"In a perfect world, this big, lavish collection will do for Oates what similar volumes did for Katherine Anne Porter and John Cheever....Her pell-mell prose can speed on toward devastating, bloody conclusions and leave us gasping in the wake." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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"Sometimes [Oates] seems to be drawing her material from the daily political pages, sometimes from the crime section, gathering evidence with the skill of a canny reporter and turning it into fiction of the highest aesthetic sensibility." San Francisco Chronicle
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"[A] welcome addition. The collection...spans Oates's career and gives a remarkably coherent picture of her work." Cathleen Schine, The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and The Falls. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. In 2003 she received the Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature and the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, and in 2005 was honored with France's Prix Femina Award for The Falls.