Faithless: Tales of Transgression
by Joyce Carol Oates
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joyce Carol OatesEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-06-04
ISBN: 0060933577
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of Faithless: Tales of Transgression
Book Review: one of the greatest living writers
Summary: 5 Stars
while i'm no longer an advocate reader with my busy schedule, i do like to read short stories or novellas from time to time. in fact, i think i tend to suffer from acute laziness when reading anything that doesn't pertain to my work or junk mail which are receive tons of all the time in my p.o. box. after years of reading a short story here or there, i'd never read a book of short stories all the way through & in such a short period of time. from the moment i picked this book up on the bargain rack in border's to the time i went to bed later that evening, i couldn't tear myself away from the book. believe or not, i actually stopped taking phone calls & i had no desire for any kind of noise in the background (or just the minimum noise) which is unusual because i love music, movies, & lotsa noise generally speaking. when i began reading oates, i couldn't bear the though of the least distraction. i wanted to be literally taken away into her world of destruction, despair, and the tortured sould which only ms. oates can give. in a world of little faith, we find so many people here losing their way and struggling to maintain balance and find hope. faithless tells the tales of the sins we commit against others and the sins commited against us both forgivable and unforgettable. here we stories steeped with violence, aggression, & confusion which we can all surely identify with in this day & time. whereas there are books that you can read one short story & skip the others, you will want to read every story here and then seek out other books this magnificent woman has written. of all the literary minds still living in the world today, joyce carol oates has proved once again that she is tops & has never been anything less than the serious writer she aspired to be. recognized everywhere now by literature lovers &critics or even talk show hosts like oprah winfrey, it's impossible to avoid her name so you might as well follow the phenomenon yourself & discover the urgency of her work. it is easy to understand now after reading faithless why ms. oates work has won so many accolades through the years. this volume of work alone is proof that she deserved them. i'm now in the process of finishing up her collector of hearts but that's another story & another review. seek out faithless, my devout reading friends.
Summary of Faithless: Tales of Transgression
In this collection of twenty-one unforgettable stories, Joyce Carol Oates explores the mysterious private lives of men and women with vivid, unsparing precision and sympathy. By turns interlocutor and interpreter, magician and realist, she dissects the psyches of ordinary people and their potential for good and evil with chilling understatement and lasting power.
Penzler Pick, March 2001: I guess it's no secret that I regard Joyce Carol Oates as one of the great living American writers, both of mystery-crime-suspense fiction and of virtually every other form invented. I previously reviewed Blonde, which went on to be nominated for a National Book Award, and it's my joy to be able to recommend Faithless: Tales of Transgression, the stories within which are about as good as the short story gets. (Full disclosure here, with the admission that I might be a trifle prejudiced in favor of this volume. It is dedicated to Alice Turner, the former fiction editor of Playboy, and to me--largely, I reckon, because several of these stories were written especially for several anthologies of which I was the editor.)
There are 24 stories in this generous volume and while some inevitably linger longer in the memory than others, there is not a dull spot in its nearly 400 pages. The title story is a haunting tale of the disappearance of a woman as recalled by her two daughters, grown now. The ending is utterly expected but, nevertheless, comes as a shock. "The Vampire" is not at all a horror story, at least not in the sense that it involves in any way elements of the supernatural, but has a growing sense of pure terror as the reader comes to see the way in which one person can absorb all the life out of another.
In "The High School Sweetheart: A Mystery," a famous mystery writer reads a speech as he accepts the presidency of the most prestigious of all mystery organizations. The speech is delivered as a piece of fiction that appears to be a confession of a horrific crime committed during his teen years while besotted with a girl two years older than he. When the speech ends, the audience cannot imagine applauding because the story seems so true. Is it?
Once again, the incomparable Joyce Carol Oates has produced a compelling and important volume for the shelves of anyone who cares about distinguished suspense fiction. --Otto Penzler
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