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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Adolescent Tales, April 2, 2003
This review is from: Small Avalanches and Other Stories (Hardcover)
Small Avalanches is a collection of short stories previously published by Joyce Carol Oates whose thematic link is that each centers around the life of an adolescent or teenage girl. The focus on this age group is appropriate for this extremely talented writer who has written in an incredible range of styles and voices, but has often focused on the lives of young woman especially in her novels such as Man Crazy, Blonde and I'll Take You There to name just a few. Oates has said in an interview with Diane Rehm in 2002: "I feel probably quintessentially very adolescent... I guess it's just that age of romance and yearning and some scepticism, sometimes a little bit of cynicism." The temperament of this age group that Oates so readily identifies with is something that the author is able to ingeniously capture in this series of tales. She shows in her female characters those intense feelings she marks as emblematic of this age group from a variety of perspectives. Despite the close ages of all these girls there is a tremendous diversity of voice within the stories. They are sometimes vulnerable as the girls are primarily perceived or surprisingly self-aware which gives them the ability to manipulate their own situation. This occurs in some of the stories like Capricorn where a girl named Melanie meets a man on the internet who begins obsessively watching her play tennis and Small Avalanches where a girl walking home is followed by a suspicious looking man she nearly escapes. Some of the girls from these stories are timid, naive and orbit danger with curious innocence. In others, like Bad Girls where three close sisters invade the privacy of their mother's new boyfriend and The Model where a girl meets a man in the park who starts paying her large sums to pose for sketches, the girls are defensive to a militant degree. These diverse perspectives give a refreshing perspective when contemplating an age group so heavily stereotyped. Oates also uses multifarious structures to tell the girls' stories producing a wide range of possible meanings and giving a unique accent to their particular situations. Some take on a creepy gothic tone as in The Sky Blue Ball where a girl begins throwing a ball back and forth with a faceless participant over a wall and Haunted in which a mysterious violent woman appears to two curious girls who were searching a house they thought was empty. The most experimental structure Oates uses is in the story How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again where you read a girl's notes for a school paper that descend into an intense disjointed personal deliberation about her past and future. However, all the stories are incredibly accessible to read while still challenging the reader to think complexly about growing up and the nature of identity. Each gives a deep focus on the consciousness of these girls and presents in some way a close perspective of their point of view. The stories also examine the process in which these girls become self conscious about how they are viewed by the rest of the world. It is an extremely emotional, varied and pleasurable read.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
For the Bad Girls, May 7, 2003
This review is from: Small Avalanches and Other Stories (Hardcover)
Joyce Carol Oates dedicates her latest collection of short stories, Small Avalanches to The Bad Girls. Be it Ingrid in Man Crazy, or Anellia in Ill Take you There, Oates has always been fascinated, really infatuated with the outcasts, the fringe dwellers, the lonely hearts. More to the point, Oates enjoys writing female characters that struggle and fight against what society considers normal behaviorwhatever the heck normal means in the society of Oates world and in the world in general. It is the tension of this ambiguity that Oates revels in. Small Avalanches begins with the story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? which was the basis for the film Smooth Talk starring Laura Dern as Connie and Treat Williams as Arnold Friend. Reading it again now, and even with the visuals of the film spinning around my head, I was struck by the smoldering sexuality of the story. Connie is 15 and she has one foot stuck in childhood and the other one, always ready to high-tail it to the highway roadhouses, in adulthood. Oates describes her: Everything about her as two sides to it, one for home and for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make someone thinking she was hearing music in here headher laugh, which was cynical and drawling at home but high pitched and nervous anywhere else. Arnold Friend becomes Connies friend, stalker really. Arnold is older, handsome, drives a spiffy car and is definitely dangerous and what he offers Connie is a view of adulthood she cannot turn down: its glamour and attraction cannot be ignored. The denouement finds Connie more experienced in the adult world that she craves but is not ready for. The inevitability of the situation is decidedly sensual yet undeniably moralistic: Connies story is ultimately a cautionary tale. One in which a bad girl gets what she deserves or is asking for. But is she better for it? Oates mines this particular subject matter again in the more up to date, computer savvy story Capricorn also included in this collection. The title story of this collection, Small Avalanches is cruel but slight: a young girl Nancy, through the unaffected, natural conceit and innocence of youth avoids the advances of an older man: He looked so funny, bent over and clutching at his chest, pretending to have a heart attack or maybe having one, a little one, for all I knew. This will teach you a lesson, I thought. It is this youthful innocence and lack of foresight that also imbues Bad Girls a story about three daughters who set out to investigate their mothers boyfriend: Nor did we set out to destroy our mothers man friend Isaak Drumm, exactly(but we) confirmed the neighborhoods and our relatives judgment of us, that we were bad. And not only bad in ourselves but the cause of somebody else being bad, too. Throughout Small Avalanches we encounter writing of uncommon grace: Her eyes were like washed glass, her eyebrows and lashes were almost white, she had a snub nose and Slavic cheekbones and a mouth that could be sweet or twisty and smirky depending on her mood. Or razor sharp writing that cuts to the heart of a matter: Its true, all you have heard of the vanity of the old. Believing ourselves young, still, behind our aged facesmere children, and so very innocent! Small Avalanches was intended for the young peoples market as was Oates earlier Big Mouth and Ugly Girl. But Oates has not toned down her natural gift for revealing the underside and the emotional truth of her characters actions and words. Far from it, she pulls no punches in revealing her patented, twisted yet humanistic worldview. Be forewarned, though: a visit to Oatesiana will leave you a bit shocked and warm under the collar but startlingly as refreshed as having just stepped out of a cool shower on a hot day.
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1 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Do adolescent teens like reading about stupid adolescent teens?, January 25, 2006
This review is from: Small Avalanches and Other Stories (Hardcover)
I was on a 7-hour train ride, and figured I'd give the book a shot. My first sign of trouble was the dedication of the first story to Bob "Lingerie" Dylan, but I pressed on. A lot of seemingly intelligent people are still under his spell, blissfully coasting on the remnants of his image from the days when he wasn't a Starbucks sellout.
Anyway, the first story is about a bad thing that happens to an innocent teen-aged girl. Throughout the story you feel like you're watching a bad horror movie, screaming "don't go into the attic." This feeling, I would learn, is the unifying theme of this book.
Exhausted after one story, I put the book down and looked at the bland countryside passing by. Boredom took over after 15 minutes, and after cursing myself for not bringing along a backup, I went back to the book.
I stopped reading the next story, "The Sky Blue Ball," after it looked like another horrible thing was going to happen to another stupid little girl. She may have turned out fine, but I just didn't have the emotional energy. I took another break and headed to "Small Avalanches." This one, again, is about a stupid teen girl and a horrible thing that could happen to her. This 13 year-old girl, incidentally, is the one portrayed on the cover. Maybe it's the hormones in the food, but the person on the cover looks a little too busty to be 13.
I skipped around a bit, figuring the stupid little girl theme was bound to run out. "Haunted" and "Capricorn" were, refreshingly, about TWO stupid teen girls hurtling blindly into certain doom. The book finally abandons the idiot theme in the last two stories, "The Visit," and "The Model." These are excellent stories about strong girls who, instead of being thrown to the wolves by their own ignorance, make their own decisions, explore their feelings, and are active participants in their lives.
Maybe this book was meant as a series of cautionary tales about how teens should avoid danger (it mostly boils down to "don't talk to slimy looking strangers"), but for anyone with half a brain, it's an extremely frustrating and annoying read.
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