“I Am No One You Know” ~ Joyce Carol Oates

“I Am No One You Know” ~ Joyce Carol Oates

Harper Collins / 2009 / 296 pp

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Never one to shy away from grim or sensational themes, Oates writes about murder, rape, arson and terrorism in her latest collection of short fiction. In these 19 stories, she evokes the underbellies of small towns and the bizarre and obsessive desires of their inhabitants. In "Upholstery," a teenager finds herself helplessly attracted to a lecherous older man. A 14-year-old in "The Girl with the Blackened Eye" is brutally abducted but afraid to break her kidnapper's trust by escaping. In Oates' precise psychological renderings, victims are as complex as villains and almost always more interesting. The lure of the criminal is seductive, impossible to resist. Two stories, "In Hiding" and "The Instructor," feature middle-class female intellectuals inexplicably drawn to convicts. The prototypical victim, Marilyn Monroe - also the subject of Oates' acclaimed 2001 novel "Blonde" - appears in disguise in "Three Girls," when two young coeds encounter her in the Strand bookstore and agree to help her remain anonymous. The collection closes with a story about September 11 that in anyone but Oates' hands would fall flat. But "The Mutants," in which a young woman trapped in her downtown apartment building refuses to be paralyzed by fear, is beautifully, uncannily affecting. "She was hollow-eyed and gaunt yet wakeful, no longer the dreamy-eyed blond. A mutant being, primed to survive." Indeed, even the strangest events in this sure-footed collection are painfully familiar.

Oates is vitally concerned, even obsessed, with the most primal and disturbing encounters between females and males, and her new searing short stories explore the malevolent aspects of human sexuality with unflinching authenticity and a cathartic fascination. Set in Oates' country - bleak, rural New York State - these bold and bloody tales enfold elements of the mystery genre as Oates introduces compellingly expressive young women threatened or assaulted by men, some of whom they should be able to trust. Race is frequently a factor, as is the vulnerability of literary women somewhat like herself, a concern Oates dramatizes to chilling affect in "The Instructor," in which a novice writing teacher, "a young woman with a quiet, implacable will," confronts a former death-row inmate. Then, in another exceptionally accomplished tale, "Me & Wolfie, 1979," wizardly Oates turns the tables by portraying a crazed and destructive woman. Ultimately, key truths emerge: family bonds can be shackles, and women possess the amazing ability to put their lives back together after even the most hellish ordeal.