Joyce Carol Oates - The Barrens

Dust Jacket Blurb

In this compelling new novel from one of the most versatile and original voices in contemporary American fiction, National Book Award-winner Joyce Carol Oates (writing as Rosamond Smith) turns her abundant literary skills to the startling, complex tale of a serial killer and the stories of the people that his ghastly crimes touch-and transform.

People like Matt McBride. Matt was barely out of junior high when the mutilated body of the first victim—a popular, pretty teenager—was uncovered in the desolate New Jersey Pine Barrens. Although he had hardly known the girl, Matt has long felt guilty at not having been able somehow to prevent the atrocity Its horror has haunted Matt's memory for years, and now another attractive young woman has disappeared. Matt knew this victim, too. Just possibly he knew her more intimately than he is prepared to admit.

By degrees Matt becomes obsessed with a guilt he can neither comprehend nor assuage. The fabric of his seemingly happy marriage begins to unravel. His increasingly erratic behavior heightens police suspicions. It also draws official attention away from an artist—a man of limited talent but of fierce, demented vision—who signs his work Name Unknown.

Under the spell of the missing woman, Matt follows a path that takes him out of the maze of tortured memory to an inevitable confrontation not only with the baleful Name Unknown but also with his long-unacknowledged self. The outcome is shattering.

Excerpt

The Internet: the insomniac's solace. That vast depthless uncharted sea in which the lonely, the yearning, the confused, the lost, the hopeful and the desperate are swimming alongside one another, invisible to one another, yet excitedly aware of one another as blind, insensate sea creatures might be aware of one another, if only as faint electronic impulses. The Internet, which, more and more frequently these sleepless spring nights, Matt was cruising; and where he'd made the acquaintance of an erudite individual known only as "Hugo"—self-described connoisseur of "Serial Killers of the Eastern Seaboard, Mid-20th Century Onward." After several wittily intense, enigmatic exchanges, Matt found himself unexpectedly invited to visit Hugo, who lived in Paramus, New Jersey. Even on the computer screen, Hugo's boast had an air of breathless authenticity:

If you want to know HOT ZONE CLASSIFIED SICKO STUFF never released by cops to the public, HUGO is your Man!

Matt thought uneasily, Yes. He wanted to know.

Epigraph

Ultimately one loves one's desire, not the desired object.

—Frederich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Reviews

Booklist, February 15, 2001, p. 1085
Publishers Weekly, March 26, 2001, p. 60
Library Journal, April 1, 2001, pp. 133-134
New York Times Book Review, May 20, 2001, p41
The Independent (London), May 17, 2002, p. 18
The Scotsman, May 18, 2002, p. 8
The Times (London), May 29, 2002, sec. Features
Birmingham Post, June 15, 2002, Saturday, p. 49

Notes

Working Title: "The Bridegroom"

Other Editions

book cover

The Barrens

A Novel of Suspense

by Joyce Carol Oates writing as Rosamond Smith