Nine short stories like nine nightmares. Each story focuses on a woman, but a man is never far away. Lucretia that fears her husband, a little girl seeking the attention of her father who has abandoned her, Doll whom her father forces meeting men in motel rooms… Every story could just be “banal” stories of abuse, already quite disturbing, but Oates is capable of adding a final twist that one can sense throughout the story, building up so that there is no way out. Weird, creepy, dark. I loved it.
“The three-inch heel of the exquisitely fashioned kidskin sandal is thrust repeatedly into the groaning woman’s vagina; in fistfuls, her champagne-blond hair is torn from her head and scattered to the air; her fingernails that were manicured and polished only the previous day at Elizabeth Arden are torn one by one from her fingers, her breasts razor-slashed, and the nipples removed with unsentimental surgical precision.”
Contents
So Help Me God / The Banshee / Doll: A Romance of the Mississippi / Madison at Guignol / The Haunting / Hunger / Tell Me You Forgive Me / Angel of Wrath / Angel of Mercy