The Female of the Species: Tales of Mystery and Suspense [Paperback]

Joyce Carol Oates (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2007

A young wife is home alone when the phone rings in “So Help Me God.” Is the strange voice flirting with her from the other end of the line her jealous husband laying a trap, or a stranger who knows entirely too much about her? In “Madison at Guignol” an unhappy fashionista discovers a secret door inside her favorite clothing store and insists the staff let her enter. But even her fevered imagination cannot anticipate the horror they have been hiding from her. In these and other gripping and disturbing tales, women are confronted by the evil around them and surprised by the evil they find within themselves.

With wicked insight, Joyce Carol Oates demonstrates why the females of the species—be they six-year-old girls, seemingly devoted wives, or aging mothers—are by nature more deadly than the males.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As evidenced in this collection of nine stories, Oates's imagination is still fertile, feverish and macabre. These females are killers, either by their own hands or through manipulation. To be sure, they have provocation: abandonment, betrayal, abuse, the loss of reason to passion or obsession. In "Hunger," the longest and best of the stories, a rich but neglected corporate wife succumbs to a sexual obsession that ends in murder. Suspenseful and Lolita-like, "Doll: A Romance of the Mississippi," seduces with its lurid concept of a young prostitute who is pimped by her father and degenerates into a homicidal psychopath. Another father tries futilely to protect his frantic daughter from her cruel husband in the haunting "So Help Me God." It seems unlikely, however, that the six-year-old girl in "The Banshee" would be able to recognize the hors d'oeuvres at her mother's party as "Russian caviar [and]... smoked salmon on Swedish crackers," and such details undermine plausibility. Set against the familiar territory of upstate New York towns, but also Manhattan's Park Avenue, rich enclaves on Cape Cod and a hospital ward, these are powerful stories, but best read in small doses. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

For four decades, Oates has rendered razor-sharp tales of marginalized lives. This latest collection, showcasing her work in crime--related stories (several of which have landed in best-of-the-year anthologies), is no exception. From adulterers to murderers, the women portrayed in these pages possess a killer combination of venom and vice. In "The Haunting," a mother reinvents herself after her husband's suspicious death. Mysterious late-night phone calls prompt an unhappy young wife to seek vengeance on her volatile mate in "So Help Me God." But not all of Oates' feral females are focused on men. In "Madison at Guignol," a pack of vindictive salesgirls gives a haughty fashionista a deadly dressing-down in a dark, delirious tale that will make even casual shoppers shiver. The young also succumb to sinister behaviors. In "The Banshee," a precocious six-year-old girl uses her baby brother as bait to gain the attention of a neglectful mother. Oates' prose is luminous, but some readers might find her femmes a bit too fatale. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; Reprint edition (January 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156030276
• ISBN-13: 978-0156030274
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #573,310 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.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Chilling and insightful May 17, 2006

By M. Galishoff

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Scripture says that the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons. The meaning of this verse is commonly taken to imply the consequences of sinful parenting. For Oates, the sins of the parents are visited on the daughters. Here is an outstanding collection of women and girls of varying ages and circumstances who have in common both a horrible past or current hurt/injury by the one who they should trust the most and the horrible psychological and often sociopathic, violent and self-destructive effects of these hurts. Nabokov explores these themes. What makes Oates' contribution worthwhile is the brevity of the genre and glimpse into each life leaving you wanting to know more. In a sense, we often come across people with such backgrounds and who are severely disturbed as they briefly cross our paths. It is all too common and real. A book worth reading and thinking about.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars "Mommy held us all night long." January 6, 2006

By Luan Gaines HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

One should never assume that the fairer sex is the weaker and in this collection of stories, the prodigious Oates reveals the dark side of a woman's psyche, whether inspired by childhood abandonment or a married woman's rapidly escalating sexual obsession. Flying to the very edge of reason, each of these stories plunges into the darker waters of female behavior, some macabre, some grotesque, others giving voice to the secret impulses that drive women to extremes, to the edge of reason, innocent children taxed beyond the fragile structures of their emotional boundaries.

In the first tale, "So Help Me God", a young woman falls in love with a bad boy cop, caught in a web of abuse with the husband she met at fourteen and married at eighteen. The exhilarating sexual energy of their early encounters feels far more dangerous as he toys with her dependency, obsession turning to terror. In "Doll, A Romance of the Mississippi", eerily reminiscent and a cross between "Baby Doll" and Lolita, a young girl travels the Midwest with her (step)father, preying on the sexual fantasies of vulnerable paying customers, frequently betrayed by her own twisted demons, home-schooled from the trunk of their 1953 Buick La Salle. "Madison at Guignol" speaks to a woman's quest for perfection: "But it is my soul I seek continuously, where I can and however." This fashion maven is a victim of her own pathetic hubris, caught in a horror beyond her ability to comprehend.

A personal favorite is "Hunger", one of the longer pieces in The Female of the Species. Kristine, the second wife of a wealthy man, begins a casual dalliance with an enigmatic, exotic stranger, Jean-Claude, a new arrival in the elite oceanside community where she is vacationing with her small daughter.... In the accepting society of this well-heeled colony, Kristine opens a door she is unable to close, her impulsive romance imbued with the menace of incipient violence, helpless against her consuming passion for the forbidden, en route to a stunning and elaborate betrayal. There are more: "The Banshee"; "The Haunting"; "Tell Me You Forgive Me?"; "The Angel of Death" and "The Angel of Mercy", each with a uniquely bizarre perspective. This collection is fascinating and unsettling, written in the evocative prose that is natural to this author, with random images of threat and menace, birds screeching through the sky, teeming hordes of feral cats, bucolic scenes threaded with nature's unpredictability, the power of one character's preoccupation with another, stalking death, all the ingredients to send a chill up your spine in the dark of the night. Luan Gaines/ 2006. Read more ›

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Stories about Murderous Women January 8, 2006

By Debbie Lee Wesselmann TOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Joyce Carol Oates, a writer long fascinated with the macabre, has compiled a solid collection of tales of suspense and violence. These nine stories portray women at their most murderous, motivated by passion, desperation, righteousness, or just plain nastiness.

One of the most chilling tales is "Doll: A Romance of the Mississippi," a story about perpetually eleven-year old Doll, a shrewd child prostitute prone to "mean moods." Oates plunges into the psyches of both Doll and her (step)father Ira, exposing the deranged and macabre relationship between the two: what keeps them together and what divides them. "Hunger" is equally memorable, although less for its actual violence than for the way Oates develops the story of a woman hungry for passion. Kristine is vacationing on Cape Cod with her six year old daughter when she meets a mysterious stranger on the beach. When the stranger begins to show up at the upscale parties thrown in Kristine's circle, Kristine finds herself driven to possess him. But her actions have repercussions she does not expect. "The Haunting" focuses on the horrifying hallucinations (or are they?) of a girl whose mother is said to have burned her father alive. The more experimental "Angel of Mercy" entwines the lives of a long-dead, infamous nurse with the youngest nurse of the ward nicknamed "the City of the Damned." "So Help Me God," the story of a woman prompted to take action against her controlling husband after receiving a series of anonymous calls, is less successful, primarily because the motivation Oates provides is more overlaid than deep-seated in the protagonist.

Each story is this collection varies enough from the others to keep the reader's attention through one sitting or many.... While Oates's characters might not always seem to be capable of the atrocities they commit, the suspense she builds holds everything together. The most engrossing stories have the momentum of inevitability, where both the reader and the characters know where events are heading but from which neither can tear herself away. -- Debbie Lee Wesselmann Read more ›

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Crushingly Disappointing March 24, 2006

By Ellie Reasoner

Format:Hardcover

Would the woman writing under Joyce Carol Oates' name these days please return America's greatest living author to us?

Seriously, this was the most unenjoyable, in fact most distressingly bad, book by Oates I've read, among the maybe thirty I have had the utmost pleasure to read.

I don't know what vein Oates is tapping to construct these writings but the prose does not sound like her at all, the stories themselves are unimpressive, unwelcoming, unpleasantly centered on people who do not merit consideration. And worse still, I find this is a trend with Oates these days. I can't think of a single book she's published since Middle Age that has been (yes, strictly in my opinion) any good. The short story in Female of the Species that was called "Madison at Guignol" was perhaps the worst Oates story ever published. (And yes I do understand the connotation of the word "Guignol" in the title.)

Some might accuse me of approaching Oates with preconceived notions and then recoiling when she fails to deliver what I, myself, wanted, but that's not the case. One thing I have always applauded in this author is her chameleon-like ability to cross genre boundaries and create tales so divergent in theme and tone that they could have been the opus of a half-dozen different people. I have avidly read along thru Gothic stories, mysteries, romances, non-genre pieces, novellas, poems, short fiction, novels, literary criticism and plays by Oates, and so I believe I can fairly say I do not stereotype Joyce Carol Oates or expect any one thing from her, but in this case, as much as reporting it pains me, this was a bad book and I can only hope Oates bucks the trend and reaches back into the well of talent the world knows she has, and that her next book(s) will be much better.