Amid all the current events and weather-related entries of late, here is a quick mini-review of Flint Kill Creek: Stories of Mystery and Suspense. I have recently worked my way through the stories in this volume by the extremely prolific Joyce Carol Oates.
Speaking of Oates: she was born almost exactly 30 years before me, in the summer of 1938. Oates will turn 87 this year, and she continues to write and publish. This is a testament to both a sharp mind and a solid work ethic. Her style has not deteriorated, nor even changed much in recent decades. Her latest books are very similar to the ones she published years ago.
Flint Kill Creek, as the full name of the book implies, is a collection of dark tales. Many of these stories involve a crime, but not all of them do.
These stories are what JCO does best: explorations of the dark corners of the human mind and its motivations. These stories often have surprise twists. Oh…I didn’t see that coming.
Joyce Carol Oates is known as a writer of literary fiction. This means, among other things, that her work sometimes requires some effort to get through. And so it is with Flint Kill Creek. Some of these stories are quite accessible and fast-paced. (I particularly liked the opening, titular story.) Others are slower and more abstruse.
As is always the problem (for this reader, anyway) where JCO is concerned: few of her characters, even the innocent ones cast in victim roles, are very likable. I often find that in a JCO story, I have no one to root for.
If you already like Joyce Carol Oates’s work, you’ll like Flint Kill Creek. If you don’t like her style, this book will do nothing to change your mind.
As for me: I have always been somewhere in the middle regarding Joyce Carol Oates’s fiction. I most always admire her work; but I enjoy it to varying degrees.
-ET
**View Flint Kill Creek: Stories of Mystery and Suspense on Amazon