Review: "Flint Kill Creek" by Joyce Carol Oates

 

Flint Kill Creek Stories of Mystery and Suspense by Joyce Carol Oates Mysterious Press, 2024     Joyce Carol Oates’ latest collection, Flint Kill Creek: Stories of Mystery and Suspense, is a masterpiece of the macabre. Its twelve tales, which the publisher tells us have been “reformulated”—perhaps meaning they have been revised from their original publications—deal with meaty issues: loneliness, envy, and fear are the most prevalent. “The Phlebotomist,” about a confused and timid woman drawn into an uncomfortable conversation with the male phlebotomist that helped draw her blood, is as troubling and dark as any tale I’ve read. An ambiguous ending acts only to amplify its foreboding. “Weekday” follows a distracted father driving to work; worrying about the list of errands his wife assigned to him that morning and all but forgetting about his toddler daughter in the backseat. There is no doubt where it will end, but the journey is a harrowing (and worthwhile) ride into the frenzied shadows of modern parenting. “Friend of My Heart,” about a dissatisfied adjunct professor meeting a far more successful former classmate, is a bitter pill of loneliness, betrayal, and envy. And that ending—well, read it and you’ll know. “Bone Marrow Donor” is a macabre tale about fear and medical hope. It reads with the abstract delirium of a drug-induced high. “The Nice Girl” is about a young high school graduate—the type of girl that always does the right thing—overshadowed by her mentally ill and addicted older sister. The tale’s jagged edges cut the reader a thousand times before its images settle into memory. “Happy Christmas” is a razor-sharp story about family, love, and loneliness. The dark secrets it reveals make the story linger in the reader’s mind long past the final word. “Late Love,” which is my favorite story in the collection, is a marvelous play on love and sanity. The narrator is unreliable and every word is precise and perfect. Flint Kill Creek is a brilliant collection. It should appeal to fans of Joyce Carol Oates and anyone else with a humanist bent and an eye for the phantasm of gothic hallucinatory realism.

Check out Flint Kill Creek on Amazon: Kindle edition here and hardcover here.