Celestial Timepiece: A Joyce Carol Oates Home Page

The Female of the Species

Tales of Mystery and Suspense

by Joyce Carol Oates

Orlando: Harcourt, 2006

275 pages

Dust Jacket Blurb

A young wife is home alone when the phone rings in "So Help Me God." Is the strange voice flirting with her from the other end of the lone her jealous husband laying a trap, or a stranger who knows entirely too much about her? In "Madison at Guignol" an unhappy fashionista discovers a secret door inside her favorite clothing store and insists the staff let her enter. But even her fevered imagination cannot anticipate the horror they have been hiding from her. In these and other gripping and disturbing tales, women are confronted by the evil around them and surprised by the evil they find within themselves.

With wicked insight, Joyce Carol Oates demonstrates why the females of the species—be they six-year-old girls, seemingly devoted wives, or aging mothers—are by nature more deadly than the males.

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

Excerpt

From "Angel of Mercy"

A pillow. A pillow is best. She'd come to believe so. for when the patient is smothered, oxygen ceases to flow to the brain and the heart races and lunges and begins to falter and fails and will stop. And where, in the City of the Damned, hearts are old, leaky, strained, there is a yearning to stop. And so an ordinary pillow over the mouth and nose satisfies this yearning. And so the death pronouncement will be cardiac arrest. And so no physician would suspect, for why would he? Nor any nurse, mostly. Though Agnes must be alert to her sister nurses who look upon her (she has reason to think) with some suspicion.

Awards

Best American Mystery Stories, 2006: "So Help Me God"
National Magazine Awards, 2006 finalist: "So Help Me God"
Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, 2004: "The Haunting"
Best American Mystery Stories, 2004: "Doll: A Romance of the Mississippi"
Bram Stoker Award, 2003 nomination: "The Haunting"

Reviews

Publishers Weekly, September 19, 2005, p. 40
Library Journal, October 1, 2005, p. 62
Booklist, October 15, 2005, p. 33
Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2005, p. 1165
New York Times, January 22, 2006, Sec. 7, p. 14
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), January 29, 2006, p. F8
Boston Globe, March 5, 2006, p. E7
San Diego Union-Tribune, April 9, 2006, Books, p. 1
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 4, 2006, p. 5K
The Observer (England), June 11, 2006, Review, p. 23

Other Editions

paperback

Page address:
http://jco.usfca.edu/works/stories/female.html


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University of San Francisco • Educating Minds and Hearts to Change the World	last modified: 2008-06-18 12:46:55.972