An incomparable master storyteller in all forms, in The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares Joyce Carol Oates spins six imaginative tales of suspense. “The Corn Maiden” is the gut-wrenching story of Marissa, a beautiful and sweet eleven-year-old girl with hair the color of corn silk. Taken by an older girl from her school who has told two friends in her thrall of the Indian legend of the Corn Maiden, in which a girl is sacrificed to ensure a good crop, Marissa is kept in a secluded basement and convinced that the world has ended. Marissa’s seemingly inevitable fate becomes ever more terrifying as the older girl relishes her power, giving the tale unbearable tension with a shocking conclusion. In “Helping Hands,” published here for the first time, a lonely woman meets a man in the unlikely clutter of a dingy charity shop and extends friendship. She has no idea what kinds of doors she may be opening. The powerful stories in this extraordinary collection further enhance Joyce Carol Oates’s standing as one of the world’s greatest writers of suspense.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
From Publishers Weekly:
The seven stories in this stellar collection from the prolific Oates (Give Me Your Heart) may prompt the reader to turn on all the lights or jump at imagined noises. In the excruciating title tale, a novella subtitled “A Love Story,” an adolescent girl leads two of her friends in the kidnapping of 11-year old Marissa Bantry to enact the ritual sacrifice of the Corn Maiden as performed by the Onigara Indians. Children or childhood traumas play significant roles in “Beersheba,” in which a man’s past catches up to him, and “Nobody Knows My Name,” in which the birth of a sibling turns nine-year-old Jessica’s world upside down. Twins figure in both the eerie “Fossil-Figures” and the harrowing “Death-Cup” with its sly allusions to Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson.” In “A Hole in the Head,” a plastic surgeon succumbs to a patient’s request for an unusual operation with unexpected results. This volume burnishes Oates’s reputation as a master of psychological dread.
From Kirkus Reviews:
Seven nightmarish tales written over a 15-year period.
The first and longest story is the title novella, about Jude Trahern, a precocious and evil eighth-grader who abducts a fellow classmate, Marissa, to enact a ritual human sacrifice. Brilliant, charismatic and severely disturbed, Jude chooses Marissa because of the latter’s status as an outsider, both new to the school and set apart by her intellectual slowness. Jude enlists two of her friends in the elaborately planned ceremony, but their enthusiasm begins to wane as things start to get spookier and it becomes clear that Jude is serious about following through on the ritual. Meanwhile, Marissa’s mother, Leah, becomes frantic about her missing daughter and starts to believe in the guilt of Mikal Zallman, a part-time employee at the school whom Jude has cleverly implicated. The story ends on a jarring and somewhat surreal note as Leah and Mikal develop a romantic attachment. Throughout this collection Oates is fascinated by the idea of doubling, for example in “Death-Cup,” in which Lyle King tries to poison his evil twin Alastor with Amanita mushroom soup. Alastor is the “evil” brother, successful on the outside but unscrupulous within, and Lyle finds out that ultimately they can never be separated. (It’s no coincidence that Lyle is designing a new edition, “with hand-sewn pages and letterpress printing,” of Poe’s “William Wilson.”) Similarly, in “Fossil-Figures,” brothers Edgar and Edward Waldman mirror opposing sides of the self, while in the masterful “Beersheba” womanizer Brad gets his comeuppance at the hands of Stacy Lynn, who at first comes on to him seductively and then exacts a terrible revenge.
While the shadows of Poe and Hitchcock loom over these tales, it’s clear that Oates herself is a master at creeping out her readers.
Praise for Joyce Carol Oates:
"Oates is just a fearless writer ... with her brave heart and her impossibly lush and dead-on imaginative powers." —Los Angeles Times
"If the phrase 'woman of letters' existed, Joyce Carol Oates would be, foremost in this country, entitled to it." —John Updike
"What keeps us coming back to Oates country is her uncanny gift of making the page a window, with something happening on the other side that we'd swear was life itself." —The New York Times Book Review
"Her genius happens to be giant." —The Washington Post Book World
"No living American writer echoes the chord of dread plucked by Edgar Allen Poe quite like Joyce Carol Oates." —The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
The seven stories in this stellar collection from the prolific Oates (Give Me Your Heart) may prompt the reader to turn on all the lights or jump at imagined noises. In the excruciating title tale, a novella subtitled “A Love Story,” an adolescent girl leads two of her friends in the kidnapping of 11-year old Marissa Bantry to enact the ritual sacrifice of the Corn Maiden as performed by the Onigara Indians. Children or childhood traumas play significant roles in “Beersheba,” in which a man’s past catches up to him, and “Nobody Knows My Name,” in which the birth of a sibling turns nine-year-old Jessica’s world upside down. Twins figure in both the eerie “Fossil-Figures” and the harrowing “Death-Cup” with its sly allusions to Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson.” In “A Hole in the Head,” a plastic surgeon succumbs to a patient’s request for an unusual operation with unexpected results. This volume burnishes Oates’s reputation as a master of psychological dread.
From Kirkus Reviews:
Seven nightmarish tales written over a 15-year period.
The first and longest story is the title novella, about Jude Trahern, a precocious and evil eighth-grader who abducts a fellow classmate, Marissa, to enact a ritual human sacrifice. Brilliant, charismatic and severely disturbed, Jude chooses Marissa because of the latter’s status as an outsider, both new to the school and set apart by her intellectual slowness. Jude enlists two of her friends in the elaborately planned ceremony, but their enthusiasm begins to wane as things start to get spookier and it becomes clear that Jude is serious about following through on the ritual. Meanwhile, Marissa’s mother, Leah, becomes frantic about her missing daughter and starts to believe in the guilt of Mikal Zallman, a part-time employee at the school whom Jude has cleverly implicated. The story ends on a jarring and somewhat surreal note as Leah and Mikal develop a romantic attachment. Throughout this collection Oates is fascinated by the idea of doubling, for example in “Death-Cup,” in which Lyle King tries to poison his evil twin Alastor with Amanita mushroom soup. Alastor is the “evil” brother, successful on the outside but unscrupulous within, and Lyle finds out that ultimately they can never be separated. (It’s no coincidence that Lyle is designing a new edition, “with hand-sewn pages and letterpress printing,” of Poe’s “William Wilson.”) Similarly, in “Fossil-Figures,” brothers Edgar and Edward Waldman mirror opposing sides of the self, while in the masterful “Beersheba” womanizer Brad gets his comeuppance at the hands of Stacy Lynn, who at first comes on to him seductively and then exacts a terrible revenge.
While the shadows of Poe and Hitchcock loom over these tales, it’s clear that Oates herself is a master at creeping out her readers.
Praise for Joyce Carol Oates:
"Oates is just a fearless writer ... with her brave heart and her impossibly lush and dead-on imaginative powers." —Los Angeles Times
"If the phrase 'woman of letters' existed, Joyce Carol Oates would be, foremost in this country, entitled to it." —John Updike
"What keeps us coming back to Oates country is her uncanny gift of making the page a window, with something happening on the other side that we'd swear was life itself." —The New York Times Book Review
"Her genius happens to be giant." —The Washington Post Book World
"No living American writer echoes the chord of dread plucked by Edgar Allen Poe quite like Joyce Carol Oates." —The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
About the Author
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of over 70 works and the winner of a host of prizes including the National Book Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She has been nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Oates is Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University.
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More About the Author
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of more than 70 books, including novels, short story collections, poetry volumes, plays, essays, and criticism, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. Among her many honors are the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the National Book Award. Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
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.
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.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just as creepy, provocative and finely crafted as her earlier collections
November 11, 2011
By Bookreporter
Format:Hardcover
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
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
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
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!
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!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unputdownable
Her prose is spare,measured, and carries one along at a
rattling pace
I didn't want her tales to end
Mccartmary
rattling pace
I didn't want her tales to end
Mccartmary
Published 4 months ago by Mary McCarthy
4.0 out of 5 stars
Haunting, intense, and frighteningly familiar...
Joyce Carol Oates is a rarity among American authors in that she is not afraid to write stories which are both ambiguous and discomfiting, two things that, as some reviews... Read more
Published 4 months ago by C. Michael Hall
2.0 out of 5 stars
Too little suspense or horror and too much verbiage
This book is a collection of seven short stories by that great American author, Joyce Carol Oates. Billed as "terrifying," these stories nonetheless do not live up to Ms. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Kurt A. Johnson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Her weaker stories better than most by other authors
JCO takes a lot of chances. She generally avoids understatement, one part of the holy grail for a lot of 20th century fiction. Read more
Published 12 months ago by David Watson
3.0 out of 5 stars
She Has Her Moments
I was never enthusiastic over the novels of Joyce Carol Oates, because although there are brilliant and gripping scenes in them, I felt that the story often meandered. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Keith Otis Edwards
3.0 out of 5 stars
Six of one, half dozen of another
Joyce Carol Oates is an amazing storyteller. The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares is a compilation of some of Oates' short stories. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Christina Zapata
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not for all readers
I'll admit outright that I'm not overly a fan of Oates' writing style, but dangit... she knows how to write. Read more
Published 17 months ago by ChibiNeko
2.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty Weak
I read What I Lived For about ten years ago and thought it was brilliant. I then read a number of her novels, many of which I found to be terrific. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Beowulf
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great writer!
I started reading her books when I was in college (late 80s). She is a moving, versatile writer. The Corn Maiden has shocking short stories where the reader simply prays for a... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Alphi's Number One Fan
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chilling, Horrifying, and Mesmerizing Short Stories
Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares by Joyce Carol Oates is a collection of short stories which are chilling, horrifying, and mesmerizing. The book is a real page turner. Read more
Published 18 months ago by NYbooklover
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