Synopses & Reviews
Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most prominent writers of her generation, and she is fearless when exploring the most disturbing corners of human nature. In
Evil Eye, Oates offers four chilling tales of love gone horribly wrong, showing the lengths people will go to find love, keep it, and sometimes end it.
In "Evil Eye," we meet Mariana, the young 4th wife of a prominent intellectual. When her husband's brazen first wife visits one night, Mariana learns a terrible secret that threatens her marriage and sanity. In "So Near, Anytime, Always," shy teenager Lizbeth meets Desmond, a charming boy who offers this introverted girl the first sparks of young romance. Yet just as their relationship begins to blossom, Lizbeth realizes that beneath Desmond's perfect façade lies a dark soul that could wreak havoc on Lizbeth and her loved ones. In "The Execution," spoiled college student Bart Hansen has planned the perfect, brutal crime to get back at his parents for their years of condescension. Yet what he didn't plan for is a mother whose love is more resilent than he could have ever imagined, who threatens to derail his carefully laid-out plans.
Review
"A quartet of shrewd and unnerving novellas....Oates has a superbly disconcerting gift for orchestrating slowly coalescing realizations that something is horribly wrong." Booklist
Synopsis
Few authors are able to create an atmosphere of unease and terror as well as Oates, and the four novellas in this collection prove the point. In the title story, "Evil Eye", a young woman has recently become the fourth wife of a man who is demanding. When his first wife comes to stay with them, she warns her that he is insane, and that she must protect herself.
A fateful meeting in a library leads to a boys obsessive interest in a teenage girl in So Near Any Time Always”, which originally appeared in the renowned mystery journal Ellery Queen.
In The Flat-Bed,” which was written specifically for this volume and is in print for the first time, a beautiful young woman, for reasons she cannot comprehend or explain, struggles with frigidity. The act that finally releases her will shock readers.
All the novellas in this collection feature love that is somewhat askew, just off center and, ultimately, horrifying.
About the Author
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of such national best-sellers as The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys. She has been nominated for six National Book Awards, winning for Them.