I do love Ms Oates novels, just not as big a fan of short stories. She does tie this group together as what the future would be like if the main character had made different choices in life. Her writing style is brave and her subject matter seems almost personal as several of the stories explore aging and personal loss.

Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins for the ARC to read and review.

The (Other) You by Joyce Carol Oates is a collection of short stories that explores the impact of small decisions and what alternative lives may have happened had we made different choices. This is a powerful topic the book addresses and each short story provides a fresh perspective on these parallel lives.

One of the short stories that stood out to me was "The Happy Place". This was a unique story that explores the projections we place on those around us, particularly those that we do not know well but are intrigued by. The professor's creative life stories and trauma she placed on one of her students was unhinged as she notes her deceased husband recommended she detach emotionally due to her history. It's clear the professor is still unable to do so when she experiences a betrayal after meeting the students parents and that the students fictional writing may not reflect reality. However it is also an interesting commentary as the professor continues to project her own beliefs and interpretations when the "happy family" could still be true to the student's story whether they seem happy or not as an outsider. The writing is clear and has a stream of consciousness style. The voice of the characters in the short stories were distinct for each and the professor in this story had a particularly dramatic style that seemed to correspond well with her profession. Overall this was an interesting read and I believe many readers would find several short stories to enjoy in this collection!

Many thanks to the publisher Ecco and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

In this newest collection of short stories, Joyce Carol Oates explores the “what ifs” and “what might’ve beens” that exist in the corners of the mind. Sometimes the alternatives seem better, and sometimes they don’t, and sometimes places aren’t as you remembered them. A woman who dreamed of being a writer becomes a bookshop owner instead. A girl arrives home from school early to find a memorial service taking place in her apartment. And a man waiting for an old friend at a café meets two familiar strangers. With these meditative narratives, Oates seems to be urging her reader not to dwell in a past that has already occurred but to be present, to be the person you want to be rather than a shadow of that other self. But she acknowledges and even explores difficulty of pursing that self. With this collection, Oates also expertly illuminates how easily women can lose pieces of themselves in their efforts to care for others, especially men. Overall, these focused stories round out an excellent collection.

This collection is an incredible, if at times unnerving, exploration of what could have been. Each story takes a wholly original approach to the question of what if, and most left me feeling vaguely out of it in the best way possible. Collections of short stories can often feel either so closely connected that stories become repetitive or so disconnected that the entire thing feels disjointed, but this one fell perfectly in the middle. Plus, it starts with a story in the second person. I love nothing more. Joyce Carol Oates is one of my favorite authors for a reason, and for me, this collection simply cemented her place at the top.

A book of short stories running along the theme of who we are and who we might have been. The book was a delightful quick read and the stories and lessons learned from them are thought provoking. The only thing is I do prefer Joyce Carol Oates full length novels. She does character in depth so amazingly well but she did a fantastic job with these short stories! Highly recommended!

"The (Other) You" is an intimate collection of short stories, almost like narrative (fictional) essays that focus on aging, grief, and the effects of choices that we make, how it impacts others. There is something surreal about these stories I cannot express. I guess almost like the ghost of memories, out of body experiences, or Déjà vu. Even more strangely, many of the stories feature second-person narration ("you") so it's as though Joyce Carol Oates is actually describing your dreams to you. There is something meta about these stories; Oates has scattered throughout the collection a number of linked stories about encounters that take place in a cafe called The Purple Onion.

I personally loved the collection of shorts. It was almost Borges in nature.

Thank you NetGalley and Ecco for the ARC for my honest review.

I have been a huge Joyce Carol Oates fan since I read "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" when I was in high school. While "The (Other) You" is a collection of short stories, it still packs the same JCO punch that I have come to love. She tackles difficult and sensitive topics in a respectful, yet realistic, way. This story collection was very thought-provoking and didn't shy away from anything. Thank you for the opportunity to review this book.

The (Other) You is only the second work by Oates that I’ve read. The first was Black Water, which I read way back in high school. I remember that it impressed me but also made me deeply uncomfortable. I had the same experience with this collection of short stories. In these stories, Oates explores themes such as identity, aging, grief, choices, and memory. They are depressing, and there is no relief from it, no break from the darkness. A small ray of light tries to break through in “Hospice/Honeymoon” but is quickly dashed. This type of book certainly isn’t for everyone, and it really isn’t for me. While I like having darkness and tragedy in my books, I typically prefer a happy ending. Despite this, I was still easily able to appreciate Oates’ beautiful writing, and I particularly liked her use of parentheses in many of the stories.

The title story, “The (Other) You,” and the final story, “The Unexpected,” make perfect bookends for this collection. In the first, a woman muses on her choice to remain in her hometown and start a family rather than take a scholarship. She thinks about what she could have been versus what she has. In the second, a woman who left her town and became an author returns for a book signing and is confronted with the life she could have had if she stayed. I loved that Oates chose to begin and end the collection with these complementary stories. But my favorite of the whole collection was “The Blue Guide,” which explores aging and memory as a retired professor and his wife return to an Italian city he went to as a young man and find it changed. These were the two characters in the collection I connected with the most, and I found the story as a whole poignant.

As with many short story collections, there were several that I just didn’t find memorable. There were also a few that didn’t work for me. I had this issue particularly with the three stories set at the Purple Onion, a café that is the site of a suicide bombing. I found all three of these confusingly written; Oates plays with time in them, and it made it hard for me to understand what was going on. I also felt they were trying to do too much. In addition to dealing with the suicide bombing, each story also dealt with the issues of characters unrelated to the bombing. Ultimately, I just felt there wasn’t enough space in a short story for all of this.

Overall, The (Other) You is a strong collection that contains some lovely though uncomfortable short stories. Even though some of them didn’t work for me, I was able to appreciate the beauty of Oates’ writing in all of them.

Contents:

The (Other) You - 3
The Women Friends - 5
The Bloody Head - 2
Where Are You? - 3
The Crack - 3
Waiting for Kizer - 1
Blue Guide - 4
Assassin - 5
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God - 4
Hospice/Honeymoon - 5
Subaqueous - 2
The Happy Place - 5
Nightgrief - 5
Final Interview - 2
The Unexpected - 5
= 3.6 ⭐️, or rounded up to 4 ⭐️

Any time I get to read an ARC of an upcoming Joyce Carol Oates release is exciting as she is my favorite writer. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for supplying me with an early copy!

Written around the loose theme of choices characters make/don’t make, these stories show how tiny decisions can make huge impacts on our lives. For the most part this theme is carried out successfully, though I wasn’t quite keen on what I think of as the “Purple Onion Trilogy”—three stories herein that take place at the Purple Onion Cafe and are loosely connected. Experimental and artful, the three stories (“The Women Friends”, Waiting for Kizer”, and “Final Interview”) range from intriguing to irritating. Oates’s over-reliance on parenthesis ruins what is already an uninteresting and bogged-down story in “Waiting for Kizer”, while “The Women Friends” is an effective commentary on middle-aged friendship with a tense, unexpected ending. I just didn’t find the Purple Onion to be a particularly gripping or interesting location, ditto for the main “event” (a suicide bombing) the stories are centered around. Maybe reading these so soon after the Nashville bombing left a bad taste in my mouth.

I think my personal favorite story here is “Nightgrief” which is about, you guessed it, grief: middle-aged parents deal with the emotional fallout from their young son committing suicide. The collection closer, “The Unexpected”, is another favorite: featuring a published, rather unfulfilled writer coming home for the first time in 36 years and having an epiphany? a breakdown? a chance at love for the first time? it’s up to you. “Hospice/Honeymoon” also stands out, with one of Oates’s classic heartbreaking endings—she does a lot with a little here. And there’s “Assassin”, a story with a conceit so bizarre—an angry woman beheads the British Prime Minister, and nearly falls in love with the head—and bleak one can’t help but laugh . . . when not holding their stomach from Oates’s wickedly graphic descriptions.

<i>The (Other) You</i> is a relatively uneven collection, sure, but what collection isn’t? The highs here are really good, and the duds I just won’t ever reread. Due out next month, this one is worth a look!

I've been a huge fan of Oates' work for years, and this collection did not disappoint. Definitely one of my favorite short story collections by her.Many of the stories were surprisingly heartfelt and made me tear up, which I was not expecting. My absolute favorite was "Hospice/Honeymoon."

Thank you to NetGalley for the free e-copy.

I raved about this for AARP. Oates has crafted a strange and unsettling (and isn't that what she always does?) collection of stories about what it means to be ourselves--and how we yearn to be the other. Any chance she might come on A Mighty Blaze to be live interviewed?

The (Other) You is a collection of short stories all centered around a similar theme, "what if". What if I aced that test, married that person, skipped lunch that day, had more patience, acted on my dark thoughts, how would that affect my current reality? Some of these stories share the same setting, some similar thoughts, but all are unique. Be prepared for thoughts of "what did I just read?" And "wait, is that the person or is THAT the person?" I had to read a few of the stories twice to understand them better. These are not for the faint of heart.
Overall, a compelling, sickening and sometimes hilarious collection of stories that will make you question your own choices in life.
Thank you for the ARC.

I am a big Joyce Carol Oates fan, but this was not my favorite. The best thing about Oates’ books are the lengthy development of the characters and storylines, so the short story format just didn’t deliver.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me an advanced copy.

In The (Other) You Stories by Joyce Carol Oats we are afforded a glimpse into the raw, inner workings of the human condition. This is not a bright, shiny book oozing with positivity. This is a real glimpse at the inner vs outer us. The author takes us on a journey as if the choices we made had been different. She explores the possibilities lost to our other selves in a masterful way. Joyce Carol Oats always challenges and satisfies but this collection of stories are simply a masterpiece.

In this collection of short stories, Joyce Carol Oates looks at aging, grief and the idea of the other lives we might have lived had we chosen differently or had different things happen to us. The book begins with the author imagining her life had she never left her hometown, remaining to get married, run a bookstore and maintain and deepen her ties to that community. It's a different life, but not necessarily a worse one. That story sets the tone of the book, where widows grieve in complicated ways, men chase possibilities lost in the past and aging is confronted in a dozen different ways.

The same place shows up in a few of the stories; the patio dining area of a California restaurant at lunchtime, and Oates uses this setting to play with ideas about time and self. In one, a woman sits at a table thinking about a tragic event that occurred there, until she realizes that the event may not yet have happened. In another, a man is annoyed that the person joining him for lunch is late, then notices a man sitting at a nearby table who resembles him and as they talk they discover they share a name and are waiting for the same man.

This is only a collection that an author familiar with grief and contemplating the end of her life could write, and these stories are as sharp, imaginative and well-crafted as any she's written.

As an English teacher, I've had the privilege of reading Oates work before, but as talented as she is, I'd never had an intimate experience with her work--until now. Some of these stories were horrifying. Some were woeful. Some made me question whether this whole book was going to end in a Deus ex Machina where the writer (or reader) wakes up and realizes it's been one long nightmare.
Yet, there were moments so REAL that that made me question my own life choices. First, there's my obvious connection to Marian Beattie. What if I hadn't stayed in my hometown and become an English teacher? Could I have been a prolific writer if I'd just given myself the chance? Next, there was my connection to the parents in Nightgrief. Not that my own teenagers have committed suicide, but there's always the what if fear living inside us. As a high school teacher, I've seen several cases where the nightmare became reality. Also, I identified with the professor who encouraged her students to write lies that become truth only to turn around and believe the lies. Just because my students grow up in a high-poverty area, I cannot assume ANYTHING to be true. Last, I felt such sadness for the professor and his wife following the Blue Guide. To think you can put off your dreams until the future and find them in the same pristine condition you left them in is the stuff of poetry-- not the happy kind--but the Langston Hughes rotting and festering kind.

Although this book won't give you a feeling of comfort and nostalgia, Oates has accomplished what most writers cannot by forcing you to see yourself as you MIGHT have been if only....

This was my first book by Joyce Carol Oates and while I’ve heard incredible things about her I did not know quite what to expect. The stories in this book were chilling, thought provoking, and in some cases disturbing. I thoroughly enjoyed the thought that was put into making this a connected collection without having truly connected stories.

This was a depressing book. I knew it would be dark going in, but there wasn't much to look forward to for me when picking up this book. The short stories are all based on the roads not taken, the different decisions that could've been made, or the way things could've been. The emotional writing style was superb. It just wasn't for me. These are dark stories that lift the curtain to something darker if we consider them in the likes of truth.

Joyce Carol Oates is without peer. I'm a long time fan. And I'm stunned by this short story collection which she must have written in the last 6 months. Or is she prescient? What are we all pondering these days? Life off the rails. How could this have happened. What if . . . ? These stories examine life as it is and as it might have been. For better or for worse? How does she do it?

A collection in which the inner lives of all of the characters are revealed to be miserable in the face of aging, full of regrets, secretly hating their friends and partners, and ready to die. Many of these intertwined stories ponder about paths not take, decisions that might have been made differently, and in each case, we read the flailings of disintegrating memory and hallucinations, bitterness and anger, and the desire to remain young and in control. AS a meditation on age, these are dark tales, but they are even darker if we consider them at all honest appraisals of humankind.