Joyce Carol Oates was born in New York in 1938. She has written many novels and numerous collections of stories, poetry and plays. Oates is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and has been nominated several times for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national best sellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde; and the New York Times best seller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. In 2020 she was awarded the Cino Del Duca World Prize for Literature. She is currently the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University.
Writing under an accustomed pseudonym, Oates offers a psychological thriller that isn't so much about the actual murders as a bystander's obsession with them. Matt McBride has had a lifelong preoccupation with the unsolved abduction and murder of a high school acquaintance. When an artist friend is murdered in a similar fashion, the obsession grows to the point of completely taking over McBride's life, destroying his marriage and career in the process. His uncommon interest and some incriminating evidence found in the victim's home make him a suspect in the eyes of the police. The story is taut, though the author misses several opportunities to capitalize on the circumstances she sets up. After over 200 pages of buildup, the resolution of the multiple murders comes so swiftly that it disappoints and leaves many questions unanswered. But the story seems to be more about missed opportunities, and the ending fits the flawed characters that Oates is so expert at creating. Recommended for all public libraries. Caroline Mann, Univ. of Portland Lib., OR Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
A serial killer and his pursuer engage in a lurid dance in this overextended psychological thriller written under the name Oates uses for her psycho-dramas (like Double Delight). The novel charts the emotional ruin of Matt McBride, a real estate agent in the upscale New Jersey suburb of Weymouth, where he lives with his attractive wife and their two sons. McBride has been haunted since childhood by the memory of a high school classmate whose body was found ravaged in the desolate Pine Barrens. Now, 20 years later, McBride becomes a suspect in the disappearance of local artist Duana Zwoll, a woman whom McBride knew and admired. Although McBride manages to convince the police of his innocence, he remains wracked by guilt that a second female acquaintance has met a ghastly end. As his marriage slowly crumbles, McBride fixates on finding the killer. He narrows his search to another local artist, the marginally talented yet ghoulishly eccentric Joseph Gavin, whose artwork appears to incorporate human body parts. Could he be the man responsible for the deaths of countless East Coast women in recent years? It's a testament to Oates's skill that the suspense is instant and intense. Her setting, which contrasts Weymouth's chi-chi facade with the tormented lives of its residents, is exquisite, as is her treatment of McBride's personal tailspin. Yet the motivation for his obsessive quest for the killer guilt at being unable to prevent two murders never quite convinces. Nor does the character of Gavin, whose repetitive spiritual rants and egomania bloat the story and make him more a figure of absurdity than a credible threat to human life. (May) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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