Sourland: Stories

"...an intensity that we haven’t felt in the American art story—and I’m serious about this although it might seem extravagant to say—since the work of Poe. ... Making sense of life in a cataclysmic inner and outer landscape has been Joyce Carol Oates’ obsession for five decades. This evocative new collection shows just how much sense she can make of it now."

—Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune

"This is a trenchant book of “cruel fairy tales” in which people are severely tested, profoundly punished, and tragically transformed."

—Donna Seaman, Booklist

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In Rough Country: Essays and Reviews

The "rough country" of my title has a double meaning: it refers to both the treacherous geographical/psychological terrains of the writers who are my subjects ... and also the emotional terrain of my life following the unexpected death of my husband Raymond Smith in February 2008 after forty-eight years of marriage....

Reading and taking notes, especially late at night when I can't sleep, has been the comfort for me that saying the rosary or reading The Book of Common Prayer might be for another. Immersing myself in the imaginations of other writers, constructing a line of argument which is the structure of a literary essay—in contrast to the less calibrated and predictable swerves and leaps of fiction—has been a lifeline.

—Joyce Carol Oates, from the Preface

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