In the seven feverishly unsettling works that compose
DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense
, exquisite prose stylist Joyce Carol Oates focuses on the inner lives of vulnerable girls and women—some victimized, others provoked by deep emotional unrest—to commit violence against others. This is an arresting fiction collection from “one of the great writers of our time” (John Gardner).
In the title story, a precocious eleven-year-old is in thrall to an older male relative—the mysterious, attractive black sheep of the family—and climbs into his sky-blue Chevy to be driven to an uncertain, and unforgettable, fate. In the Bram Stoker Award-winning short story, “The Crawl Space,” a widow obsessively returns to the house she once shared with her husband, until an invitation from the new owners to come inside takes a turn for the menacing. In “The Drowned Girl,” a university transfer student becomes increasingly obsessed with the drowning/murder of another female student as her own sense of self begins to deteriorate. And in the final story, “Welcome to Friendly Skies,” a trusting group of bird-watchers is borne to a remote part of the globe—and to a harrowing fate.
At the heart of this meticulously crafted, deeply disquieting collection are girls and women confronting the danger around them, and the danger hidden inside their turbulent selves.