Give Me Your Heart: Tales of Mystery and Suspense

Author:   Joyce Carol Oates
Publisher:   Atlantic Books
Edition:   Main
ISBN:  

9781848875654


Pages:   270
Publication Date:   01 January 2012
Recommended Age:   From 0 to 0 years
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable   Availability explained
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Give Me Your Heart: Tales of Mystery and Suspense


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Overview

In the chilling world of Give Me Your Heart, the need for love is obsessive, self-destructive and unpredictable. It takes us to forbidden places, confronts us with gruesome truths, and leads us beyond our control. In the unsettling 'Strip Poker', a reckless teenage girl must turn the tables on a group of threatening young men. Can she outplay them? In the award-winning 'Smother!' a daughter's nightmarish childhood memory brings trouble to the door of her bourgeois mother. Which of them will win? In 'The First Husband,' a jealous man discovers his wife lied about her first marriage, and plans a cruel revenge. Will he go through with it? In these and other powerful tales, children move beyond their parents' reach, wives and husbands wake up as strangers, haunted pasts intrude upon uncertain futures, and lives hang in the balance.

Full Product Details

Author:   Joyce Carol Oates
Publisher:   Atlantic Books
Imprint:   Corvus
Edition:   Main
Dimensions:   Width: 12.90cm , Height: 1.90cm , Length: 19.80cm
Weight:   0.265kg
ISBN:  

9781848875654


ISBN 10:   1848875657
Pages:   270
Publication Date:   01 January 2012
Recommended Age:   From 0 to 0 years
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable   Availability explained
The supplier advises that this item is temporarily unavailable. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out to you.

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Reviews

Oates can tell a story in one liquid throw, like a cowgirl uncoiling a rope... A born writer, silky fluent and intimate * Sunday Times * Suspense fiction is like a powerful drug: one page, one taste, can induce such a tingly, speedy feeling that it takes an almost superhuman effort not to finish everything off in just one sitting. At least that is how it is with Joyce Carol Oates... you cannot put [her] book down. * New York Times Book Review * Joyce Carol Oates is a genius * Guardian * Violence forever simmers beneath the surface of [Oates's] fiction... few American writers can match her for unsettling intensity and insight. * Sunday Times * As ever, Oates shows a perfect ear for everyday speech and the longings of people who might never have a chance.' * Scotsman * Her prose is peerless.. few writers move so effortlessly from the Gothic tale to the psychological thriller to the epic family saga to the lyrical novella. Even fewer authors can so compellingly and entertainingly tell a story * Scotland on Sunday * This latest collection of stories leads us deeper into the chambers of Oates's sinister mind... Give Me Your Heart is electrifying in its range and its sizzling nastiness. * Scottish Sunday Herald * Unsettling? Yes. Brilliant? Undeniably. * DIVA * Powerful narratives... further evidence, as if it were needed, of the tremendous versatility of this author. * Daily Mail * For a writer as formidably prolific as she is, it is remarkable that the stories here have a freshness and versatility that leave the reader wanting more. * Times Literary Supplement * Joyce Carol Oates at 72 remains one of America's most prolific writers, churning out fluent prose and poetry with enviable regularity. There's a lot of it in print and a little goes a long way. * Evening Standard * A writer at the height of her powers, Joyce Carol Oates takes a shiver of an incident by the scruff of its neck, and dazzles. -- Deborah Lawrenson


Oates can tell a story in one liquid throw, like a cowgirl uncoiling a rope... A born writer, silky fluent and intimate Sunday Times Suspense fiction is like a powerful drug: one page, one taste, can induce such a tingly, speedy feeling that it takes an almost superhuman effort not to finish everything off in just one sitting. At least that is how it is with Joyce Carol Oates... you cannot put [her] book down. New York Times Book Review Joyce Carol Oates is a genius Guardian Violence forever simmers beneath the surface of [Oates's] fiction... few American writers can match her for unsettling intensity and insight. Sunday Times As ever, Oates shows a perfect ear for everyday speech and the longings of people who might never have a chance.' Scotsman Her prose is peerless. few writers move so effortlessly from the Gothic tale to the psychological thriller to the epic family saga to the lyrical novella. Even fewer authors can so compellingly and entertainingly tell a story Scotland on Sunday This latest collection of stories leads us deeper into the chambers of Oates's sinister mind... Give Me Your Heart is electrifying in its range and its sizzling nastiness. Scottish Sunday Herald Unsettling? Yes. Brilliant? Undeniably. DIVA Powerful narratives... further evidence, as if it were needed, of the tremendous versatility of this author. Daily Mail For a writer as formidably prolific as she is, it is remarkable that the stories here have a freshness and versatility that leave the reader wanting more. Times Literary Supplement Joyce Carol Oates at 72 remains one of America's most prolific writers, churning out fluent prose and poetry with enviable regularity. There's a lot of it in print and a little goes a long way. Evening Standard A writer at the height of her powers, Joyce Carol Oates takes a shiver of an incident by the scruff of its neck, and dazzles. -- Deborah Lawrenson


Virginia writes: Give Me Your Heart by Joyce Carol Oates is subtitled Tales of Mystery & Suspense. The cover art compares the heart to an antique terrain able to be mapped with curious locations such as fraud, guilt and folly. The word 'tale' connotes fairy tales, or the possibility of tall tales, and notions of foul or fair underpin several of the stories. One anticipates horror, love, blood and violence. Snow White, while not referred to directly, comes to mind with its ensuing ideas around jealousy, beauty, youth and the heart. Each story is compelling, claustrophobic and ambiguous and feels more like a besieged carousel than a ghost train. One expects and receives excellence from the recipient of innumerable literary awards and prizes. There is a cumulative aspect to the collection wherein the structure of the work imitates increasing increments of tension. Oates delivers ten stories of household doom and dread. Her writing is prolific (she has written 23 collections previous to this one, and one since) yet images are rarely repeated and stories are executed with freshness and clarity. The stories take a variety of forms with the first, a letter, and the second - a single paragraph of stream of consciousness written in the third person. The third story,'The first Husband' narrates the impact of the discovery of old Polaroids and systematically charts a man's obsession and perhaps misplaced jealousy to a violent end. Families are broken and maligned. One of the most acutely jarring stories, 'Strip Poker' is written in the first person through an eleven-year-old girl. This story contains a storytelling that perhaps saves the protagonists life, while in 'Smother' a story recalled/or invented has potentially destroys a life. Even the scent of flowers can be rendered vile. Pandora and her box is a fitting reference in 'Smother' reminding the reader of the powerful integration of myth in story and life. The gothic history of the American short story is recalled in 'The Spill'. Dialogue cleverly creates the voice of retarded 'John Henry'. This character is reminiscent of Lenny Small in Of Mice And Men. Young mother Lizabeta decides that John Henry is a sexual threat to her children and decides that 'he will have to leave'. Her actions are neither condoned nor punished. Psychogeography is utilized effectively in 'Nowhere' and 'Tetanus' heightening characterization. Nonetheless Oates seems less interested in comeuppance than in the dramatic presentation of relationships, behaviours and happenings. 'Tetanus' is set in a building that is described as 'actively ugly'. It refers to a kitchen fork used as a weapon, deftly linking to an earlier story that uses a pitchfork and recalls Grant Wood's brutal image 'American Gothic' from 1930. The final story in the collection, 'Vena Cava', told in the first person tells the story of a returned veteran honorably discharged. Oates imagines a spectacularly distressing tale that creates inerasable images. Defiantly grim, Oates entertains and presents a vivid, frightful cast of plausible characters, narrated with restraint necessary to the form.


A writer at the height of her powers, Joyce Carol Oates takes a shiver of an incident by the scruff of its neck, and dazzles. -- Deborah Lawrenson Joyce Carol Oates at 72 remains one of America's most prolific writers, churning out fluent prose and poetry with enviable regularity. There's a lot of it in print and a little goes a long way. * Evening Standard * For a writer as formidably prolific as she is, it is remarkable that the stories here have a freshness and versatility that leave the reader wanting more. * Times Literary Supplement * Powerful narratives... further evidence, as if it were needed, of the tremendous versatility of this author. * Daily Mail * Unsettling? Yes. Brilliant? Undeniably. * DIVA * This latest collection of stories leads us deeper into the chambers of Oates's sinister mind... Give Me Your Heart is electrifying in its range and its sizzling nastiness. * Scottish Sunday Herald * Her prose is peerless.. few writers move so effortlessly from the Gothic tale to the psychological thriller to the epic family saga to the lyrical novella. Even fewer authors can so compellingly and entertainingly tell a story * Scotland on Sunday * As ever, Oates shows a perfect ear for everyday speech and the longings of people who might never have a chance.' * Scotsman * Violence forever simmers beneath the surface of [Oates's] fiction... few American writers can match her for unsettling intensity and insight. * Sunday Times * Joyce Carol Oates is a genius * Guardian * Suspense fiction is like a powerful drug: one page, one taste, can induce such a tingly, speedy feeling that it takes an almost superhuman effort not to finish everything off in just one sitting. At least that is how it is with Joyce Carol Oates... you cannot put [her] book down. * New York Times Book Review * Oates can tell a story in one liquid throw, like a cowgirl uncoiling a rope... A born writer, silky fluent and intimate * Sunday Times *


Author Information

An American literary giant, Joyce Carol Oates is the author of over 70 works and the winner of a host of prizes including the National Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, the Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature, and the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement. She also has been nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University. She lives in New Jersey.

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