Long established in the front rank of contemporary American authors, Joyce Carol Oates is virtually unrivalled in the breadth and diversity of her achievements. The present volume, Last Days, reaffirms her continuing commitment to the short story, the form which first brought her to prominence in the early 1960s and which she has practiced since then with an ever-deepening mastery.
The eleven stories here, ranging from the realistic to the fantastic, reflect with uncanny perception the seismic disturbances of life in the present. These stories are, as one would expect from their author, intensely dramatic and irresistibly readable, but what sets them apart is her genius for imagining the lives of her characters. A little girl who has witnessed a murder; a fragile, simple-minded woman deserted by her husband; a brilliant college student edging toward the brink of insanity; an American intellectual visiting in Poland, so closely identifying with "My Warszawa" that she finds her own sense of identity slipping away; a diplomat who returns to the United States defiled by his experiences in a poverty-stricken North African country-all are evoked with compelling authenticity. Oates persuades us that this is how they must be. We are in the presence of an author whose vision of life becomes our own.
In Last Days, Joyce Carol Oates makes yet another memorable contribution to the American short story.
***
[Again this morning though I prayed hard to God otherwise it is snowing - NIGHT. SLEEP. DEATH. THE STARS] ***(Dutton Books, 22 August 1984, hardback, 241 pages, bought from Amazon)
***
***
Stories included:
- The Witness
- Last Days
- Funland
- The Man Whom Women Adored
- Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars
- Ich Bin Ein Berliner
- Détente
- My Warszawa: 1980
- Old Budapest
- Lamb of Abyssalia
- Our Wall
***
Last Days: Stories is another great collection of stories from JCO. I'd never read any of the stories in this collection before. For such a prolific writer, some of her stories appear in multiple collections. It was a nice change to read stories I'd never come across before. The stories in Last Days: Stories are JCO's trademark stories, rich in characters, vivid and memorable. I particularly enjoyed The Witness, Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars, Old Budapest and Our Wall.
