Joyce Carol Oates' Haunted is an excellent collection of stories that, for the lack of a better word, are "scary". However, these are not "scary" in the sense that Edgar Allan Poe or H.P Lovecraft are. These tales are much more like the plot of an episode of Twilight Zone with a twist at the end. As other reviewers have stated, her stories range from traditional scary stories that could to told on Halloween, to creepy tales with psychological implications, to horrific passages of violence.The ma...

As a fan of The Melvins, I've long since gotten used to their penchant for suddenly ending songs just when they sound like they're really getting underway. And, I was quickly reminded of this aspect of their music while reading Joyce Carol Oates' stories of murder and bloodshed, which often share that truncated quality. However, when The Melvins cut a song off, they simply proceed onto the next one without any demand on listeners to understand what they have just heard. This is not quite the cas...

Somehow, in some indescribable way, Joyce’s words and stories in Haunted changed me, soaked into my DNA and made me something different than I was before. And I like it.

I was interested in reading something in the spirit of the season (Halloween) so I picked up this book of short stories, which ranged from creepy to downright disgusting. As an author, Joyce Carol Oates shows an uncanny ability to come up with strikingly different situations within which she weaves remarkable tales. With Oates, you never know what you're going to get because each story is completely different than the one before.However, what is the same about each of the stories in this book is...

Mostly good or great, all unsettling, a few wonderfully horrifying.The Doll was probably my favorite of the bunch. The terror is slow and before you know it, it has surrounded you and drifted over your head from which there is no way out. Mega heebie-jeebies. The Bingo Master, Thanksgiving and The White Cat were fantastic as well.

Joyce Carol Oates is a fantastic writer, but I think what this anthology shows is that good writing does not always lead to a good story. At best, some of these stories (particularly the finale "Martyrdom") are engaging, full of twisted and nightmarish scenes, containing an element of social commentary... but not really satisfying in terms of a beginning, middle, and end; like a series of scenes that exist to create a feeling but not to function as a tale. Poetry in prose form.At their worst, an...

Heard nothing but glittering reviews for anything and everything by Oates. Perhaps I set the bar too high because I was mildly disappointed. I liked the writing style well enough but I was honestly bored and kept falling asleep while reading, halfway through I just kept hoping the next story would be the one that would validate the book for me. I wasn't expecting scary, but I just wanted the stories to go a little farther, a little something more. I am intrigued enough and plan on reading more w...

The first two stories were really good, particularly "The Doll," but it was all downhill from there with the exception of "The White Cat" (a re-imagining of Poe's The Black Cat.) If it weren't for the first two, I would have given this book only one star. Her endings are often weak and the stories just didn't do anything for me - in fact they often pissed me off because they were so ridiculous. After getting half way through the second to the last story (a re-imagining of A Turn of the Screw) I

Very gripping stuff. Some of the stories are so twisted that I winced in reading them...but I kept reading.

Violence Against Women: The Book! Now with more rape, torture, and dead babies for your $$!

This collection of short stories is uneven, but its best stories are quite strong. Oates is exploring horror here, but she mostly avoids standard genre thrills, instead aiming for psychological horror and unease instead of physical danger or supernatural threats (though those do make appearances as well). One repeated theme is repressed (often sexual) needs or truths breaking through the persona a protagonist has constructed for themselves. This is strongly handled in "Haunted" - where traumatic...

Obviously I am in the minority with my rating, and I'm ok with that. Very few times in my life has a book pissed me off so much that I wanted to burn it on the spot. This book will forever live on my DNF shelf, and I will likely never read anything by JCO again. Granted, I only made it through two of the stories in this collection, but it was enough to know I just don't care for the author, or more specifically her writing style.

I rather enjoyed this collection. I felt that there were a few stories that lagged on a bit, but overall I found the stories to be either slightly or extremely disturbing. Looking forward to reading more Oates in the future!

Classic Oates: uneasy stories, unlikable characters, indeterminate endings. Amusingly, one story is essentially fanfic (though I guess with an author of Oates' stature one has to call it an homage or a riff or something): Henry James' Turn of the Screw retold from Jessel and Quint's perspective. Best part was Oates' afterword, where she says this:One criterion for horror fiction is that we are compelled to read it swiftly, with a rising sense of dread, and so total a suspension of ordinary skept...

Weird... I skimmed over my JCO "to read" list and wondered why I hadn't not marked this collection as read. I will never forget reading the last story, "Martyrdom", during my lunch at work. Warning: do not read this wrenching story while eating. The vivid, lurid descriptions made me nauseous... needless to say I didn't want to finish my meal. Trust JCO to make me almost cry over a rat's fate.The post-apocalyptic tale "Thanksgiving" is also one not to read while eating. Come to think of it, with

I was really into horror books growing up. When I was in eighth grade, my mom checked this one out from the library, read it, and passed it on to me. I remember being totally engrossed by these stories. However, when I think back on what they were about, I can hardly see what my mom thought was appropriate about this book for a 13 year-old! Ah well, the fact that she didn't censor, or dumb things down for me is probably a major reason that we got along growing up. Still...Be prepared for grotesq...

Wow... My husband and I decided to read this collection of macabre tales together, and after wading through story after story, I have to say that Ms. Oates truly knows how to terrify people.My favorite stories in the book were those that were ambiguous and subtle, ending up like a Rorschach test for people who interpret the story differently. My favorite such tale was the first, a story about a deadly haunting (or perhaps not a haunting at all?). Some of the more gruesome tales involve rape or c...

Horror fans take serious note of all of Joyce Carol Oates' collections of macabre tales. She is a master of writing a story which will unsettle and disturb you, but for reasons which are difficult to put your finger on. There's always just something profoundly eerie about her not-quite-supernatural stories, and she's got plenty of them.

Fantastic. Reading this right along with EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE by Flannery O'Connor, and I highly recommend both to young horror writers trying to get at very human, everyday characters. Some of the stuff in here is speculative, some of it just stories about conflicted, troubled, burdened people...but stories about human frailties, all.

Goodreads should adjust the star system. Rather than stars meaning 'really liked it' they should be geared to judge the quality of the writing. These tales really were grotesque. 'Really liked it' isn't exactly the way I would phrase my feelings towards it.

There are a couple misses but more than a few big hits in this collection, including my favorite JCO short story, "The Doll," which I think is clearly (and somewhat humorously) autobiographical.

Oates is hardcore, to say the least. This is not a collection for the weak at heart or squeamish.

Well that was interesting.....

This collection gets off to a really strong start. The title story, and to a lesser extent the one after, The Doll, is a disorienting and unsettling tale, with intoxicating prose and a really engrossing narrator. Unfortunately the rest of the collection resonated less with me than I'd hoped after those initial high-water marks. They're an ambitious and diverse set of stories, and the way they experiment feels a lot more compelling to me than the structural exercises of John Langan's short storie...

[rating = B]This is my first Joyce Carol Oates; I had decided to avoid her novels and so thought that short stories would be a good way to observe her writing style. Most of the stories are purely Metaphor; by this I mean that a woman might have a child that abuses her but it is really just her unconscious, or a family will be burying an animal/human and it will actually be how people treat their other people or even their own children. This is not problematic, but sometimes, Miss Oates does not...

https://thebookloversboudoir.wordpres...JCO is one of my favourite writers but she’s not always perfect. I didn’t enjoy this collection as much as others I’ve read. The opening story, Haunted is bleak and monstrous and the stand-out piece in this collection. None of the other stories reach this one’s level of amazing and many fell quite short. Judging by the title and blurb I thought I was going to be reading horror stories and dark gothic tales. That’s not quite the case. Many the stories are j...

Having enjoyed Oats work before and seeing as I enjoy horror of all varieties I found this short story collection to be a let down. The way in which the stories are "haunted" is more academic and there really isn't a grotesque about it (although you can feel it trying really hard at times to come across as 19 century gothic). It wasn't poorly written I was just let down from what I was expecting by the blurb and title and for that reason I gave it only two stars.

I read this book when it first came out . Loved all the stories. But the one story that I just couldn’t get out of my head was Thanksgiving. And 15 years later, my entire family still talks about this story not only at Thanksgiving, but all year round. Because if we see something that might trigger our minds with something from it, we start all over talking about it. Read this book . If for any reason for the Thanksgiving story. You will see the world so different.

I appreciate her discussion in the Afterward, regarding the distinction between the grotesque and horror, as genres, or sub genres. If found that very interesting.I find I prefer horror, whether or not it has elements of the grotesque.I only like grotesque works with strong elements of horror.The stories and pieces themselves were okay.I wasn’t overly moved or stirred by any one of them.I’m glad I read it, though.

Here's the thing about JCO: her writing is more-often-then-not grotesque, violent, and rapey. And I usually hate those themes. However, her stories always draw me in anyway because her writing is just SO GOOD. I would say the last story in this collection crossed the line for me and I wish I could go back and un-read it. However, overall, it's a varied and fullfillingly grotesque collection.