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    Dis Mem Ber
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    Dis Mem Ber
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    Dis Mem Ber
    Ebook282 pages3 hours

    Dis Mem Ber

    By Joyce Carol Oates

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From the towering imagination of Joyce Carol Oates, literary icon and author of BLONDE, now a major motion picture, seven feverishly unsettling works of suspense..

    A precocious eleven-year-old, in thrall to the mysterious black sheep of the family, climbs into his sky-blue Chevy to be driven to an uncertain, unforgettable, fate. A university student becomes obsessed with the murder of a female classmate as her own sense of self deteriorates. A recent widow grieves inside her lakefront home and fantasizes about transforming into a great flying predator – unerring and pitiless in the hunt.

    These meticulously crafted, deeply disquieting stories confront the dangers that surround us, and the dangers that lurk within.

    Reviews for Joyce Carol Oates:

    'A writer of extraordinary strengths.' Guardian
    'Oates chillingly depicts the darkness lurking within the everyday.' Sunday Express
    'Both haunting and sublime.' Literary Review
    'Splendidly chilling.' Financial Times
    'Visceral, psychologically involving, and socially astute.' Booklist

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHead of Zeus
    Release dateJun 6, 2017
    ISBN9781786693969
    Unavailable
    Dis Mem Ber
    Author

    Joyce Carol Oates

    Joyce Carol Oates is a novelist, critic, playwright, poet and author of short stories and one of America’s most respected literary figures. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University and a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction.

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    Reviews for Dis Mem Ber

    3.5/5

    29 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Another great collection - Welcome to the Friendly Skies was a perfect end to this book.
    • 4/5
      I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.In this collection of seven short stories, Oates explores the darker side of human nature, through the psychological lens of various women protagonists and narrators.I always enjoy Oates' short story collections. Her stories always have an eerie edge to them, frequently verging on gothic or even supernatural horror. She draws inspiration from everywhere, big and small-from a girl looking back on the car rides with her uncle, to tales surrounding widows, to a story based on the true tale of Elisa Lam.It's not something I don't like, it's more just a heads up, that Oates stories don't frequently have a resolution nicely tied up in a bow. She leaves her readers' imaginations working, which actually makes the stories scarier.I definitely recommend this short story collection, but it is not for everyone. These stories are dark, and twisted, and scary.
    • 4/5
      I have recently read quite a few stories by Oates, and although she is one of my favorite authors, I didn't enjoy this set of stories as much as I have some others. They were good, just not my favorite.
    • 4/5
      This is a collection of previously published stories, that are both dark and delightful. My favorites were as follows.
      In my opinion the best was definitely saved for last, as I laughed my way through the final story “Welcome to Friendly Skies” while thinking yes I have flown on this over booked plane, no seat left for you? stuff yourself in the overhead compartment. A dark satire that filled me with dread and giggles.
      I also enjoyed the first story "Dismember" though poor Jill should have chosen a better role model.
      "Great Blue Heron" was an amazing story of fear and grief culminating in a satisfying twist at the end. "Heartbreak" is what happens when Stephanie's jealousy of her sister gets the best of her.
      All in all a good solid collection that is well worth a read.

      I received an advance copy for review
    • 1/5
      “Dis Mem Ber” is a collection of seven short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. This collection is not her strongest stories. The collection is described as “gothic,” but I did not find these stories to fit this description at all.The best story was the title story, “Dis Mem Ber.” It is a strong, creepy story of a child molester and the victims. I thoroughly enjoyed this story. The other stories fell short.“The Crawl Space” wasn’t too bad, but the ending fell short for me. It centers on a widow who is obsessed by the house she and her husband used to live in.“Hearbreak” is about teenagers and a gun. What could go wrong, right? Not a bad story, but Oates’ anti-gun feelings show through in this story.“The Drowned Girl” is about a college girl who drowns in a water tank and her fellow student who is obsessed over the death. The story, especially the ending just didn’t engage me.“The Situations” is a disturbing story of a dad who drowns kittens his daughters just found on the side of the road and rescued.“Great Blue Heron” is a strange story. The story is full of allegory and symbolism with a touch of magical realism thrown in.“Welcome To Friendly Skies” is a satirical view of the routine pre-flight instructions given by the flight crew. This story just fell flat. Not engaging at all.Overall, the stories are not a fair representation of Oates’s talent. “Dis Mem Ber,” “The Drowned Girl,” and “The Situations” were the best stories, especially the title story.
    • 5/5
      First, thank you to NetGalley (Mysterious Press) for an e-book copy of Dis Mem Ber for my enjoyment and review. I have been a fan of Joyce Carol Oates for many years, so looked forward to this new collection. I started reading at the gym, and absolutely biked as fast as I could, through the first of her 7 short stories in this wonderful collection, entitled Dis Mem Ber: the story of an eleven year old girl and her experience with Rowan Billiet, such a fast and intense read. Her collection continues at this pace – with the next six in her collection, just as fast and furious. I loved this mystery e-book series, and looked forward to more from Ms. Oates.
    • 4/5
      This collection of mostly longish short stories features Oates’s sly humor and penchant for the off-kilter. There’s something just a little bit obsessive, just a little wrong about many of the stories’ protagonists, until there’s a LOT wrong. Someplace along the line, they take a turn into some very dark places.The disarticulated title of the story, “DIS MEM BER” anticipates the menace underlying the tale of a pre-teen girl fascinated by her older step-cousin—handsome, mysterious, and just disreputable enough to charm a young girl and enrage her father. The first-person narrator mostly misses the sinister potential in his attentions, but you will not, and you read on with growing unease.Similarly, in the story “Heartbreak,” a lumpy young teen is jealous of her attractive older sister and her budding relationship with their stepfather’s handsome nephew. It opens as follows: “In the top drawer of my step-dad’s bureau the gun was kept,” signaling that Oates will follow Chekhov’s famous advice: “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.” Although these two tales turn out quite differently, they show an affinity for the voice of a young girl troubled by her sexuality and the impact on men that she has, may have, may never have, wants, and fears. Oates mimics the progress and backtracking and stuttering nature of thought with liberal use of interjected italics and parenthetical phrasing: “Even when Rowan was furious with me, and disgusted with me, still he was fond of me. This I know. It is a (secret) memory I cherish.” These devices in places feel excessive, even intrusive. Parentheses within parentheses send you down a rabbit hole.Young girls are not the only females prey to second thoughts. The eerie story “The Crawl Space” concerns a widow haunted by—and haunting—the home she shared with her husband, now in other hands. Similarly, in “Great Blue Heron,” a new widow is plagued by her husband’s brother, determined to wrest the executorship of his estate—and, undoubtedly, all his assets—from her. What precisely happens in these two stories, as the women’s ghosts and fantasies take hold, is not clear. Their trace of ambiguity leaves you free to interpret. Letting readers “do some of the work themselves” can be a strength of the short story form.In “The Drowned Girl,” a college student becomes obsessed with the unexplained death of a fellow student. “Like gnats such thoughts pass through my head. Sometimes in my large lecture classes the low persistent buzzing is such that I can barely hear the professor’s voice and I must stare and stare like a lip-reader.” In this, as in all of these stories, Oates deftly creates a specific, concrete setting for her characters. The believability of these environments makes you believe the characters also are plausible until you’ve traveled with them pretty far into the deep weeds of their bizarre perceptions.The final story, “Welcome to Friendly Skies!” is not a thematic fit with the others, but ends the book on a decidedly humorous note. Passengers on a you-can-anticipate “ill-fated” flight to Amchitka, Alaska, are taken through the standard airplane safety monologue with a great many ominous additions.
    • 4/5
      Dis Member by author Joyce carol Oates collects together seven short stories which, along with the mystery and suspense outlined in the subtitle, also contain elements of horror. But, since this is Oates, these stories can be read simply for the creep factor, something she excels at – no other author except, perhaps, Poe, can make my skin crawl the way Oates can – or they can be mined for the meanings under the surface eg feminist musings about the position of women in society in the manner of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. However you read them, though, perhaps the thing that makes them so chilling is that they are, at least at some level, conceivable.As in any compilation, I liked some of these stories more than others. The titular story is perhaps my least favourite entry. Dis Member, is the tale of a little girl named Jill who becomes infatuated with an older relative who hides some very dark secrets. The ones I like best in no particular order are:Heartbreak - the sibling rivalry between two sisters is exacerbated by the arrival of a handsome relative. Drowned Girl - the narrator, a university student, sinks slowly into madness as she becomes obsessed with another student whose body was found in a rooftop water tank some months earlier. The Blue Heron - the story of a new widow who is being harassed by her brother-in-law and depicts, although in a very quiet way, Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ second stage of grieving – anger. I can honestly say, though, that there was only a slight gap between my likes and dislikes and I enjoyed them all. The stories are all compelling, atmospheric, and, dare I say, dis turbing. Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review