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Beautiful Days
A new collection of thirteen mesmerizing stories by American master Joyce Carol Oates, including the 2017 Pushcart Prize–winning “Undocumented Alien”
The diverse stories of Beautiful Days, Joyce Carol Oates explore the most secret, intimate, and unacknowledged interior lives of characters not unlike ourselves, who assert their independence in acts of bold and often irrevocable defiance.
“Fleuve Bleu” exemplifies the rich sensuousness of Oates’s prose as lovers married to other persons vow to establish, in their intimacy, a ruthlessly honest, truth-telling authenticity missing elsewhere in their complicated lives, with unexpected results.
In “Big Burnt,” set on lushly rendered Lake George, in the Adirondacks, a cunningly manipulative university professor exploits a too-trusting woman in a way she could never have anticipated. In a more experimental but no less intimate mode, “Les beaux jours” examines the ambiguities of an intensely erotic, exploitative relationship between a “master” artist and his adoring young female model. And the tragic “Undocumented Alien” depicts a young African student enrolled in an American university who is suddenly stripped of his student visa and forced to undergo a terrifying test of courage.
In these stories, as elsewhere in her fiction, Joyce Carol Oates exhibits her fascination with the social, psychological, and moral boundaries that govern our behavior—until the hour when they do not.
The diverse stories of Beautiful Days, Joyce Carol Oates explore the most secret, intimate, and unacknowledged interior lives of characters not unlike ourselves, who assert their independence in acts of bold and often irrevocable defiance.
“Fleuve Bleu” exemplifies the rich sensuousness of Oates’s prose as lovers married to other persons vow to establish, in their intimacy, a ruthlessly honest, truth-telling authenticity missing elsewhere in their complicated lives, with unexpected results.
In “Big Burnt,” set on lushly rendered Lake George, in the Adirondacks, a cunningly manipulative university professor exploits a too-trusting woman in a way she could never have anticipated. In a more experimental but no less intimate mode, “Les beaux jours” examines the ambiguities of an intensely erotic, exploitative relationship between a “master” artist and his adoring young female model. And the tragic “Undocumented Alien” depicts a young African student enrolled in an American university who is suddenly stripped of his student visa and forced to undergo a terrifying test of courage.
In these stories, as elsewhere in her fiction, Joyce Carol Oates exhibits her fascination with the social, psychological, and moral boundaries that govern our behavior—until the hour when they do not.
343 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 6, 2018
About the author
Joyce Carol Oates
803 books8,700 followersJoyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She is also the recipient of the 2005 Prix Femina for The Falls. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, and she has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 152 reviews
July 17, 2018
The title is a trap, which is very representative of the story themes.
The writing is very good. It is worth experiencing Oates craftsmanship, but that said, this is not easy reading. The themes are heavy, disappointment-filled, and agitative. The quality is higher than my rating implies, and I want to read more Oates--after a spell.
"Once upon a time, a man and a woman had as many children as God sent them. That is, the woman had as many children as God directed the husband to afflict upon her."
Oates holds up a mirror of middle-age, suburban white women. Often times they appear neurotic, but is that them or the choices life has made them make? There's a focus on the schism of womanhood between modern and traditional roles and how it tears. Educated, becoming more frantic, and set in their patterns. Women troubled by relationships with men. Obsessive.
"Lovemaking. The Making-of-love.
As if love does not generate itself, but has to be made--by the effort of two."
Water, symbolic of sex features prominently in several of the first stories. I'm always drawn to interactions people have with water, how they approach it, and their underlying relationship with it. Here, water is troubled and unsettling, reflecting the characters' lives.
"Like swimmers drowning together, but gripping hands. Tight."
There is always a foreign element or a sense of "other" present, shading the interaction. Eastern European males, French-Canadian setting, black versus white; nothing is comfortable. A bizarre sense of exoticism and threat. Even pleasant interludes have ominous undertones that envelope the characters.
"The man was her lover, but not her friend."
"It is hard to live in a body, we have learned. The body betrays the pretty doll-face and makes of its prettiness a mockery."
"Oh, this strange panic-sensation! She had left him behind in his own dull bell-jar life, to suffocate."
Time plays a major theme in a couple works: disorientation, the past, lost.
"They were not that sort of parents. Not that sort of people. Not ever.
But words too can lash. Words too can sting."
The last story is the only one that doesn't contain women. While the first half is strongly focused, the stories begin to evanesce away in the second half to themes of time and political issues, war and abuse. After writing this review I realized that I liked this book more than I thought. Intellectually, at least.
The writing is very good. It is worth experiencing Oates craftsmanship, but that said, this is not easy reading. The themes are heavy, disappointment-filled, and agitative. The quality is higher than my rating implies, and I want to read more Oates--after a spell.
"Once upon a time, a man and a woman had as many children as God sent them. That is, the woman had as many children as God directed the husband to afflict upon her."
Oates holds up a mirror of middle-age, suburban white women. Often times they appear neurotic, but is that them or the choices life has made them make? There's a focus on the schism of womanhood between modern and traditional roles and how it tears. Educated, becoming more frantic, and set in their patterns. Women troubled by relationships with men. Obsessive.
"Lovemaking. The Making-of-love.
As if love does not generate itself, but has to be made--by the effort of two."
Water, symbolic of sex features prominently in several of the first stories. I'm always drawn to interactions people have with water, how they approach it, and their underlying relationship with it. Here, water is troubled and unsettling, reflecting the characters' lives.
"Like swimmers drowning together, but gripping hands. Tight."
There is always a foreign element or a sense of "other" present, shading the interaction. Eastern European males, French-Canadian setting, black versus white; nothing is comfortable. A bizarre sense of exoticism and threat. Even pleasant interludes have ominous undertones that envelope the characters.
"The man was her lover, but not her friend."
"It is hard to live in a body, we have learned. The body betrays the pretty doll-face and makes of its prettiness a mockery."
"Oh, this strange panic-sensation! She had left him behind in his own dull bell-jar life, to suffocate."
Time plays a major theme in a couple works: disorientation, the past, lost.
"They were not that sort of parents. Not that sort of people. Not ever.
But words too can lash. Words too can sting."
The last story is the only one that doesn't contain women. While the first half is strongly focused, the stories begin to evanesce away in the second half to themes of time and political issues, war and abuse. After writing this review I realized that I liked this book more than I thought. Intellectually, at least.
June 19, 2018
For all the daring stylistic variations and rich diversity of subject matter found in Beautiful Days, Joyce Carol Oates’s latest collection of short stories, there is a common theme throughout of disruptively close encounters with the “other.” At the Key West Literary Seminar in 2012, Oates gave a talk titled ‘Close Encounters with the Other’ and in this session she describes how “There comes a time in our lives when we realize that other people are not projections of ourselves - that we can’t really identify with them. We might sympathize or empathize with them, but we can’t really know them fully. They are other and they are opaque.” So in these stories characters strive for connections which often tragically break down. These encounters document the awkward or sometimes violent clashes that occur between individuals who are so dissimilar there is an unbreachable rupture in understanding. The factors that divide these characters include issues such as romantic intention, gender, age, race, class, education and nationality. Oates creates a wide array of situations and richly complex characters to show the intense drama that arises from clashes surrounding these subjects.
Read my full review of Beautiful Days by Joyce Carol Oates on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Beautiful Days by Joyce Carol Oates on LonesomeReader
February 27, 2018
Oates's collections of short stories are often arranged into groupings or 'parts' - sometimes seemingly arbitrarily - and Beautiful Days follows this format, though this time it does at least make sense: Part 1 is a collection of realist stories, Part 2 is more fantastical or experimental. The first group are, whilst not up there with her best, a solid and thoroughly enjoyable set of stories. The same cannot be said for the second group. With the exception of 'Fractal', which is both very readable and pretty cleverly constructed, these are fairly weak: ideas that could support a ten page story stretched out to twenty or thirty pages, or ideas that just don't work at all. I love JCO's writing (this is the 22nd book of hers I've read, and I have copies of a further 47) but Beautiful Days is, though by no means bad, not her best.
June 4, 2018
No one writes a great short story like Oates. Though many of her later novels leave much to be desired, these stories do not disappoint.
September 24, 2017
A short story is, in some ways, like a photograph- a captured moment of time that is crystalline, though sometimes mysterious, arresting, though perhaps delicate. But while a photo may or may not suggest consequences, a short story always does. In the story's moment of time something important, something irrevocable has occurred. The change may be subtle or obvious, but it is definite and definitive.
Pick up Joyce Carol Oats and read about Beautiful Days. Enjoy!
I read this EARC courtesy of Harper Collins and Edelweiss pub date 02/05/18
Pick up Joyce Carol Oats and read about Beautiful Days. Enjoy!
I read this EARC courtesy of Harper Collins and Edelweiss pub date 02/05/18
April 14, 2021
Perspektiv som med en van författarhand skiftas, knappt märkbart. Läsaren följer naturligt med i vändningarna. Oates för läsaren tryggt mellan nutid och minnen, lika naturligt som det vore ebb och flod. Det är livfulla dialoger, och precis som allt annat Oates skriver känns det angeläget. Hon undersöker karaktärernas gränser – moraliska och sociala – utan att en enda gång falla ner från den lina hon balanserar.
March 12, 2018
Joyce Carol Oates is a celebrated writer who looks deep into the lives of people as if the reader is looking through a window at the intimate details off the people inside who assert themselves in defiance with acts that open up the secret lives they had so desperately tried to hide. The first story is "Fleuve Blue"and in it the intimacy of lovers who are married to other people in a way that opens up the honesty behind the façade of a marriage which shows the reader the complicated detail that end in shocking results, The second story is "Big Burnt" set in the lush landscape of Lake George in in the Adirondacks. A cunningly manipulative university professor exploits of a too-trusting women in a way she could never have anticipated. The third story "Les beauxex jours" examines the erotic exploitive relationship between an artist and his adoring young female model. And the tragic "Undocumented Alien" depicts a young Africa student in an American university who is suddenly stripped of his student visa and forced to undergo a terrifying test of courage.
Joyce has mastered the art of delving into the secret lives of her characters in such a way that the reader feels as if they understand the motives for their actions. Gillian Flynn , author of Gone Girl claims Joyce is, "Simply the most consistently Inventive, brilliant, curious , and creative writer going"
Joyce has mastered the art of delving into the secret lives of her characters in such a way that the reader feels as if they understand the motives for their actions. Gillian Flynn , author of Gone Girl claims Joyce is, "Simply the most consistently Inventive, brilliant, curious , and creative writer going"
June 18, 2019
RATING: 3 STARS
2018; Ecco/HarperCollins
(Review Not on Blog)
Joyce Carol Oates is much like Munro in that she can pack a lot into a short story. Most of her stories in this collection are interesting - I think I did not read one story in it's entirety. It took me a while to finish the book, as I did not feel the tug to go back to it. It was good for the nights I knew I would pass out after a few pages.
***I received an eARC from EDELWEISS***
2018; Ecco/HarperCollins
(Review Not on Blog)
Joyce Carol Oates is much like Munro in that she can pack a lot into a short story. Most of her stories in this collection are interesting - I think I did not read one story in it's entirety. It took me a while to finish the book, as I did not feel the tug to go back to it. It was good for the nights I knew I would pass out after a few pages.
***I received an eARC from EDELWEISS***
August 9, 2018
This is a remarkably effective and intense collection, so I would suggest reading it when you’re in a good state of mind. Joyce Carol Oates’ words cut sharp and deep; there’s nothing gentle about her prose. One story in particular, Fractal, completely destroyed me.
Some other reviewers claim that these are not Oates’ best stories. This is actually the only Oates I’ve read, and I can’t even imagine how her work could get any better than this. Now, I’m beyond excited to read more of her stories!
Some other reviewers claim that these are not Oates’ best stories. This is actually the only Oates I’ve read, and I can’t even imagine how her work could get any better than this. Now, I’m beyond excited to read more of her stories!
March 16, 2018
This is a decent collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates.
The stories were not outstanding, nor were they horrible; they were “good,” with a couple being favored more positively over the others.
The stories were not outstanding, nor were they horrible; they were “good,” with a couple being favored more positively over the others.
March 11, 2021
Joyce Carol Oates is one of those writers who I know more for being a writer than for her writing, and I doubt I'm alone. I was assigned some of her short stories in class and occasionally encountered her name associated with various controversies: her bizarre and frequently racist tweets, for example, or her accepting a solicitation from a scammy vanity press that preys on aspiring writers. This is the first of her collections that I've sat down to read in full, after picking it up on a free shelf at university. It only backed up my initial impressions and then buried them even deeper.
Oates can portray exactly one kind of character with any guise of sympathy: middle-aged, white, very wealthy, highly educated and -- crucially -- thin. In other words, identical to herself. (She's shown off this bias on Twitter, too, where she's expressed the belief that women aren't sexually harassed in wealthy neighborhoods in Manhattan and suggested that cats are a standard part of the Chinese diet.) Every character who strays an iota from that mold is made into a grotesque caricature, often with such overt and cartoonish racism that I had to keep flipping back to the copyright page to confirm that this book came out just three years ago. They reminded me, in fact, of the kind of unhinged submissions I used to read from the slush pile while interning at a publishing company. I doubt most of these stories would see print if they weren't associated with such a famous name.
But the terrible burning hankey of a candle that tops the whole mediocre cake is the title story: a trite and disgusting sexual fantasy that romanticizes the openly pedophilic painter Balthus, one of those men whose continuing popularity is a symptom of a culture that also continues to enshrine Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Nabokov and the rest. (A quick Google shows that Oates has, of course, also expressed her admiration of Allen's work on her maelstrom of a Twitter feed.) The story reads in every way like the kind of amateur erotica one might have encountered on a Listserv on the early internet, down to the obsession with velvet and flappy silk kimonos, and might just be laughable if it didn't eroticize the sexual abuse and torture of an 11 year old girl. And yet, like Balthus, Allen, Polanski and the rest, the media-on-the-media still fawns over Oates and this collection. All I can say is that I'm glad I didn't pay for it.
Oates can portray exactly one kind of character with any guise of sympathy: middle-aged, white, very wealthy, highly educated and -- crucially -- thin. In other words, identical to herself. (She's shown off this bias on Twitter, too, where she's expressed the belief that women aren't sexually harassed in wealthy neighborhoods in Manhattan and suggested that cats are a standard part of the Chinese diet.) Every character who strays an iota from that mold is made into a grotesque caricature, often with such overt and cartoonish racism that I had to keep flipping back to the copyright page to confirm that this book came out just three years ago. They reminded me, in fact, of the kind of unhinged submissions I used to read from the slush pile while interning at a publishing company. I doubt most of these stories would see print if they weren't associated with such a famous name.
But the terrible burning hankey of a candle that tops the whole mediocre cake is the title story: a trite and disgusting sexual fantasy that romanticizes the openly pedophilic painter Balthus, one of those men whose continuing popularity is a symptom of a culture that also continues to enshrine Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Nabokov and the rest. (A quick Google shows that Oates has, of course, also expressed her admiration of Allen's work on her maelstrom of a Twitter feed.) The story reads in every way like the kind of amateur erotica one might have encountered on a Listserv on the early internet, down to the obsession with velvet and flappy silk kimonos, and might just be laughable if it didn't eroticize the sexual abuse and torture of an 11 year old girl. And yet, like Balthus, Allen, Polanski and the rest, the media-on-the-media still fawns over Oates and this collection. All I can say is that I'm glad I didn't pay for it.
October 4, 2024
short stories are hard to rate bro. oates’ writing is kinda jarring btw she has a cool mind!
February 27, 2022
I could be mistaken, since I know nothing about the author and I'm not usually in the habit of making assumptions about an author from their writing, but I came away from this collection of short stories with the feeling that the author is a bitter, narcissistic human being. Other than that, there's not much to say about the short stories other than that they are repetitive, the women seem neurotic, lacking in self respect, and sycophantic, and the author seems to have an obsession with academia that makes me think she is someone who barely made it through a mediocre MFA and wishes she had gotten a PhD. This collection also seems extremely dated, I was surprised to see it was written so recently.
The first half was unmemorable. At least it was a quick read.
The second half, I don't even know what to say. So contrived and cringe worthy, I just felt embarrassed for the author that she wrote this down and let anyone else read this.
"Dusk is when Master comes. I am in love with Master. Daddy, no! I do not love Master at all, I am terrified of Master. He is not like you, Daddy. (...) Daddy, we have not forgotten. How your eyes fostered with knowledge of what lay secret and hidden between our legs that you did not (allow yourself to) touch. Master touches us everywhere. Of course, Master touches us there."
I'm pretty sure the average Twilight fan fiction is not as cringe worthy as Joyce Carol Oates's writing. And why does the author seem to think the Alps are in "Eastern Europe"?
The first half was unmemorable. At least it was a quick read.
The second half, I don't even know what to say. So contrived and cringe worthy, I just felt embarrassed for the author that she wrote this down and let anyone else read this.
"Dusk is when Master comes. I am in love with Master. Daddy, no! I do not love Master at all, I am terrified of Master. He is not like you, Daddy. (...) Daddy, we have not forgotten. How your eyes fostered with knowledge of what lay secret and hidden between our legs that you did not (allow yourself to) touch. Master touches us everywhere. Of course, Master touches us there."
I'm pretty sure the average Twilight fan fiction is not as cringe worthy as Joyce Carol Oates's writing. And why does the author seem to think the Alps are in "Eastern Europe"?
May 28, 2021
Eclectic is the only way to describe this collection of 11 very different stories by the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates. Some are absolutely riveting to read, while others are…well, kind of weird. But this IS Joyce Carol Oates, so each one is a little literary masterpiece.
My favorite is the first story, "Fleuve Bleu" in which a couple having a secret adulterous affair vow to be totally honest with each other in a way they aren't in their respective marriages. The outcome is heartbreaking.
"Except You Bless Me," about a young college instructor and a particularly difficult and obstinate student is by turns frightening and enlightening. "Fractal" was one of the stories I found incredibly riveting, but I'm not sure I fully understood it.
One thing each story has in common: They delve into the souls and psyches of the characters, sometimes in mundane ways and other times in deeply startling ways but always in a way that elucidates what it means to be fully human. Chances are, you will learn something about yourself in at least one of the stories.
These erudite short stories are not easy reads. All require the reader to think, pay attention, and continue thinking when the book is closed. But then again, that's classic Joyce Carol Oates.
My favorite is the first story, "Fleuve Bleu" in which a couple having a secret adulterous affair vow to be totally honest with each other in a way they aren't in their respective marriages. The outcome is heartbreaking.
"Except You Bless Me," about a young college instructor and a particularly difficult and obstinate student is by turns frightening and enlightening. "Fractal" was one of the stories I found incredibly riveting, but I'm not sure I fully understood it.
One thing each story has in common: They delve into the souls and psyches of the characters, sometimes in mundane ways and other times in deeply startling ways but always in a way that elucidates what it means to be fully human. Chances are, you will learn something about yourself in at least one of the stories.
These erudite short stories are not easy reads. All require the reader to think, pay attention, and continue thinking when the book is closed. But then again, that's classic Joyce Carol Oates.
August 21, 2024
I can tell that that this collection of short stories has been told by a highly skilful storyteller and had I judged it as a writer or literary expert I would have given it five stars - but - by the end I was so depressed by the absolute absence of anything even imitating the genuine goodness in some people and the pleasure that can be had that three stars it is. For a lot of it I read mesmorised by the almost microscopic exploration of misery each of her characters suffered. Lives explored: every minutiae of anxiety, terror, despair, arrogance, rage, jealousy, self-deception, self-aggrandization, snobbery acted out or suffered - everything nasty or desperate, small, ugly or weird - but as experienced by people we might pass walking down the street. Ordinary people. I need to emerge from a book changed a little and what this book did was narrow my world and shut out the sunlight. I have tried to find good, and did in that it is extremely well written for what it is. There is also a fascinating world created in 'Fractals', til about half way through where that world became, I thought - and others may disagree - incoherent. But, overall a Stephen King never blighted my hours the way this book did, as he at least scared me. This book just left me dead.
February 28, 2018
Joyce Carol Oates is so prolific that I am surprised I have not read her before, though I do vaguely remember dipping into On Boxing at some point. I wanted to like these stories, but I found them too didactic and message-driven for my taste; they were either too focused on gender, or race, or on the power dynamics of human relationships. In the end, I only managed to get through half of the stories in this volume. I did find the creepily disturbing "Undocumented Alien" interesting, while at the same time hoping no neoconservative Republicans find inspiration in it.
August 15, 2018
Pretty much what you expect from Joyce Carol Oates stories. The writing is good. The plots are engaging. We encounter some neurasthenic women married to older university professors. But do we we expect to meet a mother who loses her son inside a Serepinsky triangle maze? So, some dabbling with the surreal and the mathematical. I didn't care for the last two or three experimental stories, but otherwise the collection was quite good.
March 5, 2018
Wonderfully written collection of short stories. Many remind me of Joyce Carol Oates’ much earlier work. Owl Eyes, the Quiet Car, and the Bereaved were my favorite stories in this collection. What a treasure JCO’s writing is.
September 23, 2023
A wide variety of stories? Started to fizzle out at the end as they got more bizarre but I liked the intimate ones at the beginning. :)
January 7, 2023
Först och främst är jag förvånad över hur mycket jag uppskattade att boken är en novellsamling. Jag har nog aldrig läst det någon gång (tror jag) men det är väldigt underhållande med flera olika små berättelser. Speciellt under vissa delar som jag inte tyckte om så mycket. Då kändes det bra att veta att jag snart skulle läsa om något nytt. Hur som helst kommer jag från och med nu att ha novellsamlingar i åtanke när jag ska leta nya böcker – det finns säkert många bra.
Boken får en trea eftersom den, enligt mig, är ganska svajig i kvaliteten. Vissa noveller tycker jag verkligen om medan andra var helt obegripliga. Det kan dessvärre bero på mig (kanske är det inte optimalt att lyssna när man är trött o.s.v.) men jag tycker generellt att boken tappade lite i slutet.
Samtidigt tror jag att jag kommer att tänka mycket på de noveller som var bra och som lämnade en med fler funderingar. Jag tror att formatet gör att man som läsare vill ha reda på mer också.
Mindre roliga delar var de noveller som innehöll extremt märkliga beskrivningar och kommentarer angående tjocka personer. Jag förstår inte riktigt vad Oates ville åt med det. Det skavde verkligen hos mig och jag såg ingen mening med det.
Jag har aldrig tidigare läst något av Oates och tror egentligen inte att den här novellsamlingen är den mest optimala boken att börja med av henne. Jag vill läsa mer av henne och ser fram emot att få läsa en av hennes romaner.
Boken får en trea eftersom den, enligt mig, är ganska svajig i kvaliteten. Vissa noveller tycker jag verkligen om medan andra var helt obegripliga. Det kan dessvärre bero på mig (kanske är det inte optimalt att lyssna när man är trött o.s.v.) men jag tycker generellt att boken tappade lite i slutet.
Samtidigt tror jag att jag kommer att tänka mycket på de noveller som var bra och som lämnade en med fler funderingar. Jag tror att formatet gör att man som läsare vill ha reda på mer också.
Mindre roliga delar var de noveller som innehöll extremt märkliga beskrivningar och kommentarer angående tjocka personer. Jag förstår inte riktigt vad Oates ville åt med det. Det skavde verkligen hos mig och jag såg ingen mening med det.
Jag har aldrig tidigare läst något av Oates och tror egentligen inte att den här novellsamlingen är den mest optimala boken att börja med av henne. Jag vill läsa mer av henne och ser fram emot att få läsa en av hennes romaner.
June 17, 2022
Oates is obviously in tune with the human condition when she tackles the age-old binary of man/ woman- I thought the morally ambiguous love stories at the beginning were very strong and convincingly “gray.” “Except You Bless Me” was an interesting look into race (between a white instructor and a black student); the lack of knowing and understanding despite outwardly sympathizing is familiar, and highlights the opacity of such relationships. She hones in on the fact that some people just can’t meet in the middle, despite one or both individuals’ efforts. “The Bereaved” was a good one as well- I enjoyed the way she portrays how perception alters during vacation. “Les Beaux Jours” and “Fractal” were devastating and dazzling. But the last three stories really fell apart, stylistically and thematically (too political/ on the nose). 3.7 stars? I still can’t fully enjoy short story collections (something just feels missing- I can’t get invested into the characters as much?) so that might be on me.
December 12, 2023
JCO was born in 1938 and so is now 85 years old. This book was published in 2018 so she would’ve been about 80 years old at that time. Aging has not made her writing any less fierce.
Let me just mention the last story in the book which is as riveting as anything that I have ever read by her. It is about an ex-president of the United States, who is forced to dig up bodies that were killed in the wars that he oversaw. The fate of the war criminals of our country are rarely so ignominious. This is not a long story, and I wish I could copy it into this review.
Let me just mention the last story in the book which is as riveting as anything that I have ever read by her. It is about an ex-president of the United States, who is forced to dig up bodies that were killed in the wars that he oversaw. The fate of the war criminals of our country are rarely so ignominious. This is not a long story, and I wish I could copy it into this review.
April 25, 2018
I had decided to no longer read JCO, however I changed my mind after reading Rebecca Solnit’s essay, “What do we do with monstrous men?” It was a very thought-provoking essay, unlike this book. This book was meh.
June 14, 2019
These are multilayered, tremendous stories. Some will be useful for 20th and 21st century literature next semester.
July 9, 2020
First half is blah, second half is amazing.
March 13, 2018
Joyce Carol Oates is a great writer. She plumbs the depths (and shallows) of the psyche with aplomb. Her prose is richly lyrical and approachable. She cuts to the core of humanity and lays bare all the flaws and foibles and bullshit within. But, boy, is she depressing!
April 23, 2024
Enjoyed a few of the stories, but overall not a book I’ll be returning to.
August 30, 2019
Fractal blew my mind, so good.
February 14, 2018
Didn’t enjoy some of these stories, though 3-4 were interesting. It seems that all these stories originally appeared in other works and were thrown together to make this book! I feel it isn’t a Joyce Carol Oates best.
January 27, 2024
“Beautiful Days” is Joyce Carol Oate’s unsettling, triumphant collection of short macabre tales.
The eleven diverse stories included in this book are anything but beautiful. One of my favorite stories, “Fractal,” is gathered in the second part of the 334-page collection and is reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode. A mother drives her impetuous eleven-year-old son to the Fractal Museum in Portland, Maine, for an afternoon of art observing.
When the mother loses her son in the museum’s labyrinth exhibitions, the reader gets more than they bargained for as Oates delivers a terrifying tale of intrigue.
In the Pushcart Prize-winning story “Undocumented Alien,” a young African American is traveling abroad and stripped of his student visa and complete identity. He is forced to undertake a handful of examinations that test his courage, strength, and will to live. In one of the most vital stories in the collection, Oates writes with unwavering earnestness, and the reader is put under a spell by her grimly gorgeous prose and honest but damaged exploration of the human psyche.
The writing is honed to perfection and bursting with range as Oates experiments with various structures and dialogue. “Beautiful Days” is a distinguishable cluster of fast-paced and unforgettable stories to devour in a single sitting.
The eleven diverse stories included in this book are anything but beautiful. One of my favorite stories, “Fractal,” is gathered in the second part of the 334-page collection and is reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode. A mother drives her impetuous eleven-year-old son to the Fractal Museum in Portland, Maine, for an afternoon of art observing.
When the mother loses her son in the museum’s labyrinth exhibitions, the reader gets more than they bargained for as Oates delivers a terrifying tale of intrigue.
In the Pushcart Prize-winning story “Undocumented Alien,” a young African American is traveling abroad and stripped of his student visa and complete identity. He is forced to undertake a handful of examinations that test his courage, strength, and will to live. In one of the most vital stories in the collection, Oates writes with unwavering earnestness, and the reader is put under a spell by her grimly gorgeous prose and honest but damaged exploration of the human psyche.
The writing is honed to perfection and bursting with range as Oates experiments with various structures and dialogue. “Beautiful Days” is a distinguishable cluster of fast-paced and unforgettable stories to devour in a single sitting.
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