Raven's Wing [Hardcover]

Joyce Carol Oates (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This is a dazzling collection, in themes and style a masterly addition to the author's oeuvre. Oates is again concerned with men and women caught up in complex, destructive, adulterous relationships, as exemplified by the stories "Ancient Airs, Voices," and "Double Solitaire." "Surf City," "Golden Gloves," and "Raven's Wing" depict the lives of working class men who suffer the irony of luck meted out in insignificant doses. The brutish, shocking worlds of "Little Wife" and "Testimony" are in stark contrast to the elegance of "Nairobi," in which every spare detail implies an insubstantial truth. "Little Blood-Button" is a needling, repellent gem of a monologue. Oates expertly draws in the reader to bear witness to a wide range of richly experienced and realized lives. A searing, faultless performance. Mary Soete, San Diego P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 305 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult; 1st edition (September 29, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525244468
• ISBN-13: 978-0525244462
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,104,927 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genius At Work, August 18, 2005

By 

Notnadia (Currently upstairs.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Raven's Wing (Hardcover)

This mid-1980's short story anthology shows Oates's talents just as strong at mid-career as ever. In the title story, a playboy finds his luck tied to the rise and fall of a race horse named Raven's Wing. In "Leilia Lee" a bank teller from the east coast escapes to a small southern town after a cruel divorce and in a deed she soon rues, marries the local country squire. She finds herself stuck between her much-older husband and the plots for revenge of the bitter teenage son the man relentlessly persecutes. Some have criticized Oates' short tales as being "situations rather than stories" and valid or not, her situation/stories stick in the memory and compel the reader to finish each and every one. She is a giant in American literature.