One time best selling author Joyce Carol Oates (“Blonde") latest book is an onslaught of awful stories; four to be exact.
Wearisome characters in a web of weird terrible tales define 'boring' perfectly in the novella” Evil Eye." The first story and title track, "Evil Eye" is a tiresome tale focusing on three fictional characters. Mariana is the 4th wife for Austin Mohr who is 32 years her senior. Ines Zambranco, Mohr's first wife and her niece Hortensa come to visit Mariana and him.
As the story unravels it is found out that Mohr and Zambranco's infant son Raoul died of crib death; Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Suspicions are aroused that maybe Mohr or Zambranco killed the child. Also at a glance, Mohr is generous, kind and brilliant while working for a film and theater institute. His intense anger at Mariana for simply rearranging some furniture makes one question his kindness.
Is Mohr a wife beater, a murder? When all is said and done, "Evil Eye" because of its non-existing character development is as entertaining as a spot of darkness in the farthest corner of the cold universe.
The second story, "So Near Anytime Always” is even more colorless and drab than "Evil Eye." This story takes place in Strykerville, N.Y. in 1977. Lizbeth, a not so attractive 16-year-old girl, self proclaimed falls for Desmond, a 21-year-old college student. The two become very close in a plutonic relationship. Like the first yarn, "So Near Anytime Always" has no characters of interest. There is simply no pull to the people in this lame saga.
Desmond, when he was 14-years-old bludgeoned his sister to death on a canoe asks Lizbeth to go on a canoe ride with him there is absolutely no tension, why? The reason is because when he asks Lizbeth to go on the canoe ride with him; the reader does not know what he did to his sister till later in the story.
Toward the end of "So Near Anytime Always", one of the two teenagers dies while driving drunk at a high rate of speed, but because it's a poorly written yarn, there is no feeling what so ever, no joy, nor remorse.
The 3rd story, "The Execution" was another disastrous debacle featuring idiotic beings living in Lameville, USA. Incidentally, that is not the name of the town in Oates story, but it might has well been.
"The Execution" is a bizarre tale of a college aged rich kid named Bart who clings to his mother the way a preschooler might. Oates manages to bore the reader with drugs, alcohol use and a brutal axe murder. It was simply a twisted tale of love between a mother and grown son. Thank all the powers that be, the two were never lovers, because of this, the novella receives a one star rating instead of zero.
The last story, "Flatbed" was a real flat liner to the senses. By far the worst story in the book which is quite feat of futility. In nutshell, "Flatbed" was a story of far-out dreams and necrophilia. The best thing about "Evil Eye" was that is was only 216 pages, another reason I managed to give it one star.
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