The Assignation
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: 1996-08-01
ISBN: 0880014407
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Ecco
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780880014403
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Assignation
Book Review: Collection of stories 40 years in making
Summary: 4 Stars
This review related to the hardcopy version of the same book. I have never read any of Joyce Carol Oates' books before, but I do know about her and the fact that she is often compared to John Updike in terms of her being a prolific writer. She publishes almost a book per year in addition to her full time teaching job at the Ivy League University. This is comprehensive collection of her stories written in the period of the last 40 years. The early ones seem to be about people who change in many ways after experiencing dramatic events in their lives. Those could be tick attacking woman's scalp, drive by shooting, or witnessing armed robbery. Her later stories seems to be about middle-aged women strong enough to stand up to their husbands and lovers and even have a lover or two while married, or in some sort of relationship. These women are empowered, strong and almost giddy about their choices. My favorite stories are "Secret" and "Homestead". I wish I could find these stories compelling, but I do not. Most of them seem to follow some formula that are not allowing story to stick around for the long time...
Summary of The Assignation
A woman's lover seems not to recognize her on the street. A teenage girl accepts a ride from a stranger in a rust-speckled Cadillac. An old man is obsessed by the memory of his innocent childhood intrusion on a half-dressed aunt.
In forty-four very short, very powerful stories, Joyce Carol Oates fashions brief, intensely compact dramas out of the unwieldy material of human experience. The stories in The Assignation are infused with a "radiant intensity," wrote James Atlas in the New York Times Book Review, and they convey the depth and scope of a novel in a few charged pages. The Assignation is an electric display of the talents that make Joyce Carol Oates one of our finest short story writers.
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