The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares: Novellas and Stories of Unspeakable Dread [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Joyce Carol Oates' latest collection of stories isn't for the faint-heated. The title story -- about a girl who doesn't come home from school -- focuses less on the terror that the girl will experience than on the guilt her working class mother feels at leaving her eleven-year-old daughter home alone until she returns from the late shift she's forced to work. Guilt gives way to fear: What kind of problems will she cause for herself if she calls 911? What judgments will she face? What will the police think about the beer she's drinking to calm her nerves as she considers where her daughter might have gone? Oates uses the chilling circumstances to explore diverse sources of terror: the twisted child responsible for the missing girl's fate; the police officers who accuse and intimidate the innocent; journalists who are willing to report innuendo in their lust for a sensational story; therapists who insist that it is healthy to dredge up memories best left dormant. This is a powerful, sometimes touching, incredibly intense piece of writing. It is the longest and best of the seven stories in the collection.

My second favorite story, "Helping Hands," tells of a new widow who, in desperate loneliness, takes up with a wounded veteran. Envisioning herself as his savior and him as her protective companion, she invests him with qualities of sensitivity and intelligence that he clearly lacks, while remaining willfully blind to the man's dangerous instability.

The other "nightmares" in the collection are: "Beersheba," about a man who is forced to confront his long-forgotten failings as a stepfather; "Nobody Knows My Name," in which a young girl's natural jealousy of her newborn sister may or may not be responsible for a tragic ending; "Fossil-Figures," about a demon brother's dominance, from their days in the womb to the end of their lives, over his frail twin; "Death-Cup," another story of mismatched brothers, one of whom contemplates poisoning the other with deadly mushrooms; and "A Hole in the Head," in which a doctor revives the practice of trepanation -- drilling holes in the skull to release evil spirits.

Oates tells her stories in lush, rhythmic sentences. She sketches characters with deft precision. She fills their mouths with strong dialog, spoken in unique and realistic speech patterns. Each story builds a sense of dread, bit by bit, often indirectly -- when a mean gray cat starts stalking through the story, you know something awful is going to happen. Yet these aren't simple, predictable stories of horror or suspense. In the two stories about brothers, the characters behave surprisingly; they reveal an unexpected capacity for late-life change. Most of the stories reveal their own little surprises; all of them deliver electric jolts of anxiety before they end. I would give The Corn Maiden 4 1/2 stars if that option were available.

Joyce Carol Oates has a way of writing horrific stories that aren't quite "horror" in the traditional sense of the genre. Dark, violent and emotional, her short stories explore human desperation and depravity without supernatural forces. Her latest, THE CORN MAIDEN AND OTHER NIGHTMARES, is just as creepy, provocative and finely crafted as her earlier collections.

In these seven stories, Oates examines the fragility of the human mind as well as the human propensity for destruction. The title story, and by far the longest, "The Corn Maiden" tells the tale of the kidnapping of 11-year-old Marissa Bantry by three 13-year-old schoolmates. The beautiful but sensitive and awkward Marissa draws the attention of Judah Trahern, a disturbed and neglected girl from a prominent family. The self-styled "Master of Eyes," Jude orchestrates Marissa's kidnapping and designates her the Corn Maiden. The Corn Maiden is meant as a crop-ensuring sacrifice, but for Jude, the enterprise is tangled in her jealousy, attraction and hatred toward Marissa and her mother, Leah.

In the days Jude and her accomplices keep Marissa drugged and naked in her basement, Leah is frantic with worry and guilt. As a single working mother, she fears the accusations she'll face in contacting the authorities. Her inner dialogue is frantic and riveting, and perfectly parallels that of Mikal Zallman, the teacher questioned in the wake of Marissa's disappearance. In fact, though the plot moves actively forward, the genius of this short story is the inner dialogue of main characters Jude, Leah and Mikal, as well as the two friends who help Jude. Marissa is observed and reacted to, a placeholder for the emotions of the others. Oates resolves this tense story in an unexpected and shocking way.

Jude's motivation is never quite clear, but her mania is consistent. She is the evil foil to Leah's concern, to Mikal's innocence and to Marissa's purity. In this story, as in the others, the world (here generally confined to a region of upstate New York, a blend of fictional and real geography) is a dangerous place, almost impossible to successfully navigate, and people are never quite who they seem to be.

The remaining six stories are equally frightening and strange. Siblings play a prominent role with three stories examining their relationships. In "Nobody Knows My Name," nine-year-old Jessica is the only one who sees a gray cat threaten her infant sister. Both "Fossil-Figures" and "Death-Cup" are about twin brothers and, like Jessica's tale, center on not just rivalry and jealousy, but also identity, life and death. The very short but brutal "Beersheba" also deals with a damaged child; this time, a stepdaughter exacts revenge on the man she believes caused her mother's death.

While the other two stories differ in theme, they share the same edgy psychological tone. The drama in this collection is often unresolved, but the stories never feel unfinished. Oates's voice is strong and unique; the words come at the reader in a rushed and breathy fashion but remain elegant and well-chosen. She is a master at balancing the shaky or unstable viewpoint of her subjects with a cool intellectual narrative style. The anxiety is palatable here. Perhaps it is because Oates so well illuminates the interior self by writing about the moment it manifests in the physical that her stories transcend the traditional ideas about horror stories, thrillers and even post-modernism. However you understand her gift for storytelling, a gift it is, and THE CORN MAIDEN proves it once again.

Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

After reading this book the question arose: have I really changed this much, or has Joyce Carol Oates? I used to look forward to every new Oates book (and given how prolific she was, I rarely had to wait long!) and proudly declared her my favorite living writer. That was then. Now I usually get her books from the library instead of buying them because after a score of disappointments, I've learned not to invest money in reads that let me down so badly.

The Corn Maiden resides in the tradition of a long string of its recent predecessors in that it bored, repulsed and annoyed me by being the quite honestly bad literature that it was. Not one story in this collection had any shine to it, not one enthralled, not one entertained, not one of them mirrored anything like the talent Joyce Carol Oates proved long ago that she had. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, and instead would point a would-be Oates reader back to her pre-1995 canon where many fine titles await.

I think it is fair to say Oates' career can be broken down as follows:

1960-1989 was an epoch of magnificent writing from Joyce Carol Oates. No writer in America or for all I know the world could touch the consistency and quantity of her gloriously cerebral yet visceral output.

1990-1999 gave us a mixed bag. In this era was the polished brilliance of her short story collection Heat, the gritty psychodrama of Foxfire and Zombie, yet also the melodrama-by-the-numbers of the inexplicably well-received We Were the Mulvaney's.

2000-2012 has been a sad time in this author's career. Middle Age is the one book of hers from this period I have actually enjoyed and whose quality I would rank among that of her books from the 20th century. Alas Middle Age stands alone among a veritable heap of other Oates books that merit, at one's kindest, the designation "barely mediocre."

No unestablished writer could get into the business with the stories Oates is putting into print these days, which is a sad thing to say, but a true one. As for The Corn Maiden...I'm glad I didn't buy it, let me say that!