Joyce Carol Oates’s multitudinous collections are repeatedly subtitled “tales of suspense” or “stories of mystery”. You tend to know what you’re getting with an Oatesian short – a disquieting snapshot of American life on the verge of individual or ideological collapse – and these nine additions to her oeuvre don’t disappoint.
The first, Detour, is a classic of its type. A diversion forces a woman down a forest road, she wrecks her car and, looking for help, ends up a befuddled prisoner in an isolated house. The set-up is cliched to the point of being arch, but Oates brilliantly toys with our understanding of a confused mental state.
