Sourland

Joyce Carol Oates

HarperCollins

Otago Daily Times, January 22nd 2011

The sixteen stories in Joyce Carol Oates’ latest collection, Sourland have been appeared in publications as diverse as Playboy and The Guardian. Despite this, they are tied together by common themes and images; survivor guilt, the chill of hospitals where visitor’s fingers freeze and memories pool beneath tables and in corners, the failure of parents to protect their children from the adult world, sexual and physical violation that shatters a life beyond recognition. 

Oates’ characters are typically vulnerable and damaged in some way by violence, loss, and death.  Their stories are similarly bleak and seldom leavened by any hope of rescue or redemption.  One that particularly disturbed me is told from the perspective of a terrified 4-year-old boy fleeing a father who has become a stranger to him.  Similarly unsettling are a trio that form the opening, closing and centrepiece of the collection.  Each features the literal or figurative rape of a newly widowed woman who, struggling with the sense her life too has ended, considers the abuse deserved and invites (challenges) the reader to concur. 

Oates is a compelling writer, although her tales are neither easy nor comforting reading.  The worlds that she creates are real, albeit often alien to the white, middle-class audience for which she writes, and to the white middle class characters confronted by them in her stories.  This is what is makes this collection so discomforting and so important; there but for the grace of God go we.