The Frenzy

“Haunting . . . masterfully orchestrated . . . Oates’s best work is simmering and remorseless.”—Vogue

“Barely a year after the release of her last novel, Fox, prolific American writer Joyce Carol Oates returns with this astounding collection of short stories. As the title suggests, agitation and turmoil form the emotional foundation for all of these tales. Whether she’s writing about a young woman on vacation with her older and married lover or about a hiker coming across an arguing couple in the woods, Oates imbues this entire book with psychological suspense and high stakes.”—Harper’s Bazaar

“Oates is a highly cinematic writer, and we navigate these passages feeling the urge to cover our eyes. . . . The stories in her new collection deal in jagged emergencies and in wounds both physical and psychic. . . . Like the dire predicaments they unfurl, [these stories] are spurred by a dark, relentless force. You want to keep reading. Even with eyes half covered.”—The New York Times Book Review

“In her latest collection of stories, Oates explores moments of change and crisis in the lives of her characters, who behave violently, childishly, unpredictably, cravenly, or, occasionally, bravely when they find themselves in situations they can’t entirely control. The first line of the book’s title story, which is one of two that appeared first in The New Yorker—‘Is the irrevocable, unforgivable act behind him, or ahead?’—could open almost any piece in this collection. The question is not if but when, and what the fallout of that act will be. Oates answers these questions in breathless, visceral prose that matches the definition of literature she gave in a Q. and A. for [this] magazine: ‘a texture of words evoking life in the most vivid ways—psychologically, physically.’”—The New Yorker

“Yes, Oates’s fiction dwells on the dark side of life—‘I’m holding a mirror up to the world we’re in,’ she explained to AARP last year—but it’s also brilliant, as evidenced by these engrossing short stories that dive into the minds of characters prone to cruelty or struggling with destructive desires.”—AARP

“This terrific collection from Oates includes nine sly and sinister stories of human behavior at its most unsavory. . . . Delightfully subversive . . . Full of parenthetical asides that call much of what the reader knows into question, the stories range from sharply compressed to vertiginously recursive. Oates has few competitors as a purveyor of deeply disturbing fiction about the porous border between life and death.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Exceptional . . . [‘The Frenzy’ is] perhaps Oates’s finest short fiction since ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been.’”—Literary Hub