Cardiff, by the Sea: Four Novellas of Suspense

 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Joyce Carol Oates
Mystery (Ghost Thriller)
288 pages
Published  October 6, 2020 by Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press

An academic in Pennsylvania discovers a terrifying trauma from her past after inheriting a house in Cardiff, Maine from someone she has never heard of.  A pubescent girl, overcome with loneliness, befriends a feral cat that becomes her protector from the increasingly aggressive males that surround her.  A brilliant but shy college sophomore is distraught to discover that she’s pregnant, and the professor who takes her under his wing may not have innocent intentions.  And a woman who marries into a family shattered by tragedy finds herself haunted by her predecessor’s voice, an inexplicably befouled well, and a compulsive attraction to a garage that took two lives.

In these psychologically daring, chillingly suspenseful pieces, the author of We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde writes about women facing threats past and present, once again cementing her reputation for “great intelligence and dead-on imaginative powers” (Los Angeles Times Book Review).

My Thoughts:
Whenever I read a  Joyce Carol Oates book, I get a sense of something hidden just around the edges, waiting to jump out at me, but it's often more my fear of that happening than it actually happening.  Cardiff, by the Sea, is no exception.  Four stories are told in a set of atmospheric novellas tied together with several themes; literary figures (authors and poets), mold, mildew and decay, disreputable men,  father figures, upstairs or attic rooms that have mysterious connotations, and mostly, abandonment, or fear of abandonment.  

For Clare, in Cardiff, it's the thought that she has been abandoned by her birth parents. What she discovers when she inherits a house and property is far worse. She invents stories in her head, backing them up with research, the whole time forgetting what she has left behind. 

For Mia, in Miao Dao, it's not just her father who abandons her, but her fear that the feral cat she has befriended will leave and not come back.  But she finds a loyalty as fierce as her own.

Alyce, in Phantomwise, is afraid to reveal her pregnancy, for fear her (non)lover will abandon her. But her of need to be taken care of causes her to enter a relationship that she knows is wrong, and would be considered odd if revealed. But she is in more danger than she knows.

In The Surviving Child, Elisabeth marries a man whose wife commits suicide, killing her daughter in the process, while her son survives. The path to her suicide is revealed in the verse of her poems, almost like a foreshadowing. 

While JCO's books are very literary, her style is quite unique and does not make for light reading. I found these stories hard to get through because of all of the (asides), poetic interludes, and meanderings. But I will always treasure Oates for the places she allows us to go in our minds.

Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press for an advanced reader's copy for review.