I was looking forward to this book of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. I'm sorry to say that I was disappointed. While the majority of the stories began on a very intriguing note, they all ended very abruptly and lacking in any sort of closure at the end. The reader is left to imagine what might have been going on under the surface and since the narrators of these tales are unreliable, we are left with more questions than answers. The stories were wonderfully imagined. For me though, they lost something along the way, and left me flat. It seemed that one right after the other for the entirety of the book had little or no explanation at the end. Each time I started a new story I hoped for a better strategy by the author at the end, but reading between the lines is not my thing, so these stories were not for me.

Those who read regularly this blog know that Joyce Carol Oates is one of my favourite authors. I am fascinated by the multiplicity of voices in her work, her intelligent and creative writing, her openness, and her curiosity to learn from everything around her. Each of her books is a world unto itself. Oates is one of these writers that brings the invisible into view. She is a prolific (although to say that Joyce Carol Oates is prolific would be an understatement) writer who often writes mystery and violent short stories.

DIS MEM BER is a disquieting collection of seven short stories published independently between 2015 and 2017. They are centered on girls and women that are boxed in by gender stereotyping, women that are forced to confront uncomfortable, and sometimes creepy situations ( “DIS MEM BER”, “The Crawl Space”). Mostly are stories about girls and women that have to confront their own fears and insecurities. All stories are narrated by the protagonists. We become privy to their thoughts and we are able to understand and relate to them more easily. Two of the stories, “The Crawl Space” and “The Blue Heron” are about widows who lost their husbands suddenly and unexpectedly. These are stories of grief, loss and search for identity. They speak, I think, to Oates’s own experience of widowhood after losing her first husband.

“Heartbreak” is the story that really hit me. It’s a gripping story about jealousy and sibling rivalry between two adolescent sisters. It is also a look at the American love of guns. It shows the social, emotional, and physical impacts of “accidental” shootings and the effects in family instability and mental health of the children and youth exposed to gun violence.

An unsettling, emotional dense, and thought-provoking read from one of the American masters of the short story.

Here are 7 tales: deeply-disturbing, dark and fraught with danger. With a Gothic overtone and a dash of heart, each maudlin story is entrancing and moving. Oates has done a superb job of drawing the reader in and keeping you in suspense, swiftly turning the pages late into the midnight hours. In, her, I have discovered a new author to add to my favorites list.

*I received a complimentary ARC of this story collection from NetGalley and Grove Atlantic in order to read and provide a voluntary, unbiased and honest review, should I choose to do so.

Dark, ominous and nuanced stories of deceptive, vindictive and malign behaviour. Beware step-cousins!

Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic.

Dis Member by author Joyce carol Oates collects together seven short stories which, along with the mystery and suspense outlined in the subtitle, also contain elements of horror. But, since this is Oates, these stories can be read simply for the creep factor, something she excels at – no other author except, perhaps, Poe, can make my skin crawl the way Oates can – or they can be mined for the meanings under the surface eg feminist musings about the position of women in society in the manner of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. However you read them, though, perhaps the thing that makes them so chilling is that they are, at least at some level, conceivable.

As in any compilation, I liked some of these stories more than others. The titular story is perhaps my least favourite entry. Dis Member, is the tale of a little girl named Jill who becomes infatuated with an older relative who hides some very dark secrets. The ones I like best in no particular order are:

Heartbreak - the sibling rivalry between two sisters is exacerbated by the arrival of a handsome relative.

Drowned Girl - the narrator, a university student, sinks slowly into madness as she becomes obsessed with another student whose body was found in a rooftop water tank some months earlier.

The Blue Heron - the story of a new widow who is being harassed by her brother-in-law and depicts, although in a very quiet way, Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ second stage of grieving – anger.

I can honestly say, though, that there was only a slight gap between my likes and dislikes and I enjoyed them all. The stories are all compelling, atmospheric, and, dare I say, dis turbing.

Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

A collection that reads as a slapdash endeavor that mistakes vagueness for suspense and shamefully overuses the unreliable narrator. Each story can be summed as as - unfocused female protagonist with an inability to connect with reality feels menaced by her surroundings and either acts out, cries, or goes mad. There, now you don't have to read them! A hard pass.

I’ve always wanted to read a Joyce Carol Oates book but never have until now - and I’m not encouraged to read any more! Dis Mem Ber and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense is a collection of seven horror short stories, none of which are especially good.

The title story is interesting in a morbid way - it’s about a pedo killer, narrated by a little girl who sorta knew him. The dark details of the murders grabs your attention for its shock value but it’s not at all a great story. The Crawl Space is probably my favourite of the bunch - Oates doing her own modern version of Poe’s Cask of Amontillado (also one of my favourite Poe stories).

The rest of the book is total crap. Heartbreak is a dull story about a teenage girl who feels left out and does something crazy; I didn’t get The Situations at all - something about an evil father who drowns kittens and some stranger in a town somewhere?! Welcome to Friendly Skies! is a bad David Sedaris-wannabe story with Oates proving comedy is beyond her abilities.

Unfortunately the two longest stories are also the worst. The Drowned Girl is about a student who’s obsessed with the corpse of another girl student who died in a water tank at the top of a university building. It reminded me of the real life case of Elisa Lam which I guess is what inspired this story. Oates doesn’t really do much with the material though, just kinda makes her already-tense protagonist become more unhinged until the terribly weak ending.

Great Blue Heron features another unstable female narrator. A widow deals with her husband’s death while being badgered by her obnoxious brother-in-law. It goes for a magical realist vague finale that I didn’t care about one bit because everything preceding it sucked.

Elements here and there might work in the hands of a better horror writer but Oates’ execution is very lacking, particularly the characters’ voices which are uniformly timid and unimpressive. In trying to be more acceptably “literary”, her style dilutes the subject matter’s impact. I won’t remember any of these stories within the year and all I’ve taken away from this book is the knowledge that Joyce Carol Oates isn’t for me! Dis Mem Ber and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense is definitely not recommended - check out Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and Other Stories for quality horror shorts instead.

Dark and haunting short stories comprise this book. The author makes the characters and situations very real in the short context of a short stories. Excellent writing as always and stories that one will remember.

Dis Mem Ber is another good set of creepy and unsettling stories from Joyce Carol Oates. The seven stories gathered here were all published elsewhere in 2016 and form a very good collection.

The stories feature some familiar Oates character types: controlling and domineering husbands, damaged and traumatised young women, a self-deluding student who may or may not have stumbled on something sinister and so on. Each story, some told in the first person and some in the third, portrays convincing characters whose story becomes very involving, often with a growing sense of menace. This is done with a light touch and by suggestion rather than explicit exposition and it is very skilful. I have to say that in a couple of the stories, The Drowned Girl and The Situations, it was *so* inexplicit that I'm still not quite sure what the overall point was – but I still found them involving and well worth reading.

The final story is different in character; it's well done, of course, but more satirical and darkly humorous in tone. It's a good piece but less suspenseful, so I don't think it fits well in this collection. Nonetheless, this is a very satisfying read overall by a fine writer. Recommended.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

Dis Mem Ber is an excellent collection of stories previously published elsewhere. The only threads they have in common is that they are all from a woman's point of view, (except for WELCOME TO FRIENDLY SKIES!), and they are all unsettling.

My favorite had to be the first story, DISMEMBER, in which a young girl narrowly escapes what could have been a nasty end.

HEARTBREAK was the story of two sisters, one beautiful and the other, not so much. Sometimes jealousy can get out of hand, before we even realize we are jealous.

I also enjoyed BLUE HERON quite a bit. This is the story of a widow dealing with her grief while trying to avoid her scummy brother-in-law who wants her to sell her lake-house.

Lastly, WELCOME TO FRIENDLY SKIES! had to be one of the funniest stories I've read in years. I'm not going to say anything further about it, as I think it's best to go into it cold.

Overall, this was a satisfying collection of stories from one of the masters of American short fiction.
Highly recommended!

You can get your copy here: DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

*Thanks to NetGalley and Mysterious Press for the free e-ARC in exchange for my honest review. This is it!*

When I saw DIS MEM BER by Joyce Carol Oates I knew I needed to have it - short horror stories? Obviously that's going to be something I'm going to read! Being a huge Stephen King fan, I really appreciate the really scary short stories, sometimes the short stories are the creepiest because they can pack a quick punch. This was also my introduction to Oates and I love her writing style.

This is a collection of dark, suspenseful, and unsettling stories, with the last one being more of a dark kind of satire story:
-DIS MEM BER
-The Crawl Space
-Heartbreak
-The Drowned Girl
-The Situations
-Great Blue Heron
-Welcome to Friendly Skies!

The underlying theme to all of these stories is about girls or women having to confront the danger that surrounds them, and then the danger that is hidden deep within themselves. I love her writing style - the only thing that threw me off right away in the first story was that there weren't any quotation marks used in conversations. That took a little bit to get used to.

I'd highly recommend this to anyone that wants some creepy psychological thrillers all in one book!

I give this a solid 4/5 stars! I'll definitely be looking for her other novels!

A big thanks to Grove Atlantic for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

This is a collection of short stories published in various magazines by Joyce Carol Oates over the past couple of years. Many are dark with horror floating just under the surface. You can read as much or as little into them as you like. Oates writes with so many layers I'm sure I missed as many metaphors as I found.

The short story Dismember is one of my least favourite stories in this collection. It is a story of abduction and control, of horrors no family wants a part of but cannot always avoid.

The Crawl Space
A widow “haunts” the home she and her husband once shared.She drives by this house day after day for seven years until one day the current owners invite her in telling her they’ve found some boxes left behind by her husband in a crawl space in the basement. An introspective look at a woman damaged by life with a surprising conclusion.

Heartbreak
A young girl's feelings of isolation when her mother remarries and she and her sister learn to live with their stepfather, the intimidating Mr. Lesinger. Prepubescent jealousy, budding interest in boys and easy access to firearms make this another chilling look at the human condition.

The Drowned Girl
A young woman enrolls in a general studies program at a university. Rumours of a coed found dead in a water tank on the roof of her apartment building the year before she arrived fascinates Alida. The woman had not been found for eleven days, her decomposing body contaminating the plumbing in the Magellan. When found, her death is ruled an accident or suicide. The more Alida questions the lack of results from the investigation, the more difficulties she has in school. It reads like a nightmare you have where everything that can possibly go wrong in your life is going wrong and you are helpless to pull yourself away.

The Situations
An odd story about a dad who lets his children know he is in charge. An unpleasant tale.

Great Blue Heron
A widow's grief. The Great Blue, a metaphor for death; cold, calculating, ruthlessly efficient. Powerful prose and the highlight of this book of short stories.

Welcome to the Friendly Skies
Tongue-in-cheek look at the not so friendly skies for today's passengers. This flight to Amchitka, Alaska has the best safety instructions ever. After many a grim read, this short story lifted my mood and raised my rating for this collection from 3.5 stars to a solid 4 star read.

A disturbing and delightful read.

I have recently read quite a few stories by Oates, and although she is one of my favorite authors, I didn't enjoy this set of stories as much as I have some others. They were good, just not my favorite.

3.5★
I was so looking forward to reading these stories, knowing how popular the author is, but I’m afraid none of them lit much of a spark for me.

Most are narrated by a girl or woman, all of them seemingly negatively affected by what other people have said about them. The characters are certainly peculiar enough that the reader is never quite sure if perhaps some of those other people are right.

The first is the title story “Dis mem ber”, about a girl who’s flattered by the attention of her “step-cousin”, whom her friends describe as a lighter-haired Elvis. He’s no longer in high school, uses bad language which makes her giggle, and seems to like her, meeting her after school, when she tells her mother she’s with friends. As they begin cruising parking lots and such, the story takes a darker, creepier turn.

In the second story “The Crawl Space”, a widow appears to be stalking her old home. She thinks back on her life with her husband and wonders what might have been had they lived differently.

“Approaching the house she begins to feel her heartbeat quickening. A visceral alertness of the kind you might feel approaching the edge of a great height. Vertigo, it is called. A sensation of dread, and yet yearning.

You dare not approach—yet, you are drawn to approach. Almost, you feel an opened hand on the small of your back, gently pushing. ‘Come here! Come forward. Yes! You know exactly what to do.’”

The new owners invite her in, saying mysteriously that "'there seem to be things of yours still in the house, of which you’re probably not aware.’”

Every story seems to have someone who’s not quite rational, whether from grief or jealousy or anger doesn’t matter. They are capable of doing something unexpected, which makes for a bit of page-turning, but there wasn’t enough to really hold my interest.

The last story “Welcome to Friendly Skies!” was a hoot! It’s the in-flight announcements to passengers on a small flight to Alaska, and the crazier each announcement is, the more terrified the passengers must feel.

First, the pilot is introduced as having returned from Afghanistan and a “restorative sabbatical at the VA Neuropsychiatric Hospital in Wheeling, West Virginia to his ‘first love’—civilian piloting for North American Airways.”

Then, after explaining why there are too many passengers on board because of common airline policy of overbooking, the announcement goes on to say:

“We have dealt with the emergency situation by assigning sets in four lavatories as well as in the hold and in designated areas of the overhead bin.”

That story and some of the odd characters in the other stories are enough to encourage me to look for some more of Oates’s very popular work.

Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted. These stories have been published previously in various magazines and publications.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars. I don't read many short story collections (Stephen King's aside) but I found the majority of these stories intriguing. All are mysteries (except the last, which was pretty funny!) and some are pretty creepy. I thought the first one, DIS MEM BER, was particularly well done, with excellent characterization for such a short story. But "The Drowned Girl" didn't hit the mark for me at all. I had a hard time sympathizing with the main character. And "The Situations" just made me angry, and I didn't understand the middle part at all. But then I really enjoyed "The Great Blue Heron." So it was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I'm glad I read the stories, and will look for other works by this author as I did overall feel her writing was well done.

My students love creepy stories and Joyce Carol Oates never fails to deliver.

This is a selection short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. Some are disturbing, some are just plain scary. All have to do with the unknown ...

These are the ones I found most memorable .....

DIS MEM BER ---
What happens when a young girl brushes elbows with a serial killer

THE CRAWL SPACE ---
When her husband dies, she begins visiting the home they once shared. The new tenants invite her in ... they hav found some boxes in the crawl space that belong to her or to her late husband. What she finds in the crawl space is not what she expected.

THE DROWNED GIRL ---
A new university student obsesses over the horrible death of another student

Other Stories: Heartbreak - The Situations - Great Blue Heron - Welcome To The Friendly Skies

These are very short stories , well-written, guaranteed to make you shudder in the middle of the night.

Many thanks to the author / Grove Atlantic / Mysterious Press / Netgalley for the uncorrected advance proof of DIS MEM BER. Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

Awful writing style, confusing and difficult to read. The stories made no sense so I gave up after 40%.

By this point i cn say that Carol Oates is an amazing writer and i wish i meet her before. Just a great way to create short but intense stories