Cardiff, by the Sea (Oates novellas)
First edition | |
| Author | Joyce Carol Oates |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Gothic, Suspense |
| Publisher | The Mysterious Press |
Publication date | 2020 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 402 |
| ISBN | 978-0-8021-5799-7 |
Cardiff, by the Sea: Four Novellas of Suspense is a collection of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published in 2020 by The Mysterious Press.
The novella "Phantomwise: 1972" was included in The Best American Mystery Stories in 2018. "The Surviving Child" received The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror award in 2020.[1]
Novellas
Periodical and date of original publication provided where available:[2]
- "Cardiff, by the Sea" (Ellery Queen, March 1, 2020)
- "Miao Dao" (Amazon Original Stories, December 27, 2018)
- "Phantomwise: 1972" (Ellery Queen, 2017)
- "The Surviving Child" (Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, August 20, 2019)
Reception
Publishers Weekly writes: "The four novellas in this spellbinding collection from Oates carefully tread the boundary between psychological and supernatural expressions of the macabre...This superb outing is sure to captivate."[3]
Literary critic Elena Hartwell at the New York Review of Books writes: "Using her remarkable, literary voice to investigate the psychological experiences of victims, Oates requires that we willingly suspend our disbelief and reject realism as a means to identify societal truths."[4]
Reviewer Rob Latham at LARB provides a critical compendium of Oates's oeuvre. Latham writes:
While some of Oates's thrillers verge on classic noir in their hard-boiled tone, the novellas in Cardiff, by the Sea have a more languid, melancholy air, strongly reminiscent of the work of Daphne du Maurier.[5]
Despite the reassuring settings and tone, readers should be prepared for "eruptions of violence as dark and ugly as in any splatter movie."[6]
Footnotes
- ^ "Cardiff, by the Sea: Four Novella of Suspense". Celestial Timepiece: A Joyce Carol Patchwork. Celestial Timepiece. Retrieved March 14, 2025.
- ^ Oates, 2020, Opposite credits, Acknowledgments
- ^ "Review: Cardiff, by the Sea". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved March 14, 2025.
- ^ Hartwell, 2020.
- ^ Latham, 2021: "Despite the reassuring settings and tone, readers should be prepared..."
- ^ Latham, 2021.
Sources
- Hartwell, Elena. 2020. "Review: Cardiff, by the Sea: Four Novellas of Suspense." New York Review of Books. October 8, 2020. https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/cardiff-sea-four-novellas Accessed 13 March 2025.
- Latham, Rob. 2021. "The Ineluctable Agon of Desire: Joyce Carol Oates's Suspense Fiction." Los Angeles Review of Books, January 8, 2021. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-ineluctable-agon-of-desire-joyce-carol-oatess-suspense-fiction/ Accessed 9 March 2025.
- Oates, Joyce Carol. 2020. Cardiff, by the Sea: Four Novellas of Suspense. The Mysterious Press, New York. ISBN 978-0-8021-5799-7