BiblioBlog

July 31, 2003
The Collector of Hearts: New Tales of the Grotesque by Joyce Carol Oates

The Collector of Hearts: New Tales of the Grotesque by Joyce Carol Oates: normally I love anthologies and enjoy reading them greatly, but this one was an exception.

I’ve mentioned before that while I don’t mind “vague” stories - stories where you don’t really know what’s going on, who the people are, or why they’re there - full books of them always are tedious for me to make my way through. Unfortunately, most of the stories is The Collector of Hearts were of the vague kind, so I didn’t really enjoy the book and couldn’t wait for it to be over.

There were some good stories in it - notably “The Sky Blue Ball,” “Death Mother,” “Schroeder’s Stepfather,” “The Sepulchre,” “The Sons of Angus Macelster,” “The Affliction,” “Unprintable,” “Valentine,” and “The Crossing.” Mostly these stories had less of a vagueness to them and I felt it easier to connect to the characters.

All in all, not a bad book, but not really recommended unless you’re a fan of the short story or of her.



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Comments

Oooh, I agree with you here about Joyce Carolyn Oates. I read her first "Tales of the Grotesque" book (I think it was called "Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque") and most of the stories were pretty vague and not scary at all. A few were good, but as a whole, the book pretty much sucked.

Posted by: megan on September 1, 2003 07:54 PM




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